Vendors meeting on April 7

With spring finally here, the Ironton aLive is meeting with vendors to set up its 10th year of the Ironton Farmers Market.

The vendors meeting will be at 5 p.m. on April 7 at the Ironton City Center to help plan the upcoming season.

Sam Heighton, market manager and executive director of Ironton aLive, said they have 30-40 vendors who sign up every year, but they don’t set up every week.

“And we are always looking for new ones,” he said. “We have about 20 that show up every week and they are a good group.”

Heighton added this year, the market will be expanding into the parking lot to make room for more vendors, “so there is no limit to how many we can have, really.”

With the Farmers Market hitting the decade mark, Heighton is glad for its continued success and that it draws people from all over to Ironton. He helped start the farmers market, and acted as the market manager, and didn’t know what kind of expectations to have when it started.

“We are pleased,” he said. “We are really excited with the growth that it has had and how people have accepted it. We started with just five vendors who had been selling around Ironton and they are still with us.”

He said he has learned a lot of about running a farmers market over the years.

“I do a lot of online meetings with other market managers around the state. I think our growth has been a lot better than some of the others,” Heighton said. “I don’t know if we will ever be a big market like some, but we are a nice small town, family-orientated market and we have a lot of customers who really enjoy it.”

And not all the customers are from Lawrence County. Heighton said the farmers market brings in people from all three states and he’s talked to quite a few people that were just traveling through when they stopped by.

A couple years ago, he found a lost credit card and tracked the owner down through Facebook.

“I got a hold of her and found out she lived in Huntsville, Alabama,” Heighton said. “She’s from Jackson, Ohio and she’d been home to see her family and stopped at the farmers market on her way back home.”

He mailed the card back to her.

The vendors meeting will be at 5 p.m. at the Ironton City Center to help plan the upcoming season.

The Ironton Farmers Market is located at Market Square on Second Street in downtown Ironton. It will start on Friday, May 6 and run until the end of October. The market is open from 7 a.m.–3 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays until late fall.

Anyone with questions can call or text Heighton at 740-533-7951.