Anchorage

Worn-out organizers of Spenard Farmers Market call it quits, hope for a successor event

For five summers, the Spenard Farmers Market has been a Saturday morning neighborhood destination in West Anchorage, a place to stock up on Prince William Sound shrimp, Palmer carrots and perhaps a fistful of peonies in the unlikely locale of the Chilkoot Charlie's parking lot.

For 40 or so local artists, growers and fishermen, the market meant selling to a crowd that on a good day numbered in the thousands.

Now it is ending, at least in its current incarnation.

Board members posted a letter on the Spenard Farmers Market website over the weekend announcing the closure.

The reason is simple, they say: They are exhausted.

Running the market 20 Saturdays a year, May through September, has fallen to a core group of a half-dozen unpaid volunteers, all of whom have day jobs, said board member Cindy Shake.

Together, they have overseen every aspect of the operation, dealing with tasks that range from arriving at 5 a.m. to ensure vehicles left overnight in the Chilkoot Charlie's parking lot are moved so vendors can begin setting up, to renting porta-potties and securing insurance.

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While the market has grown in popularity and recognition, recruitment of volunteers hasn't kept pace, Shake said. People offered to help for a Saturday here or there, but few were willing to commit to the whole season.

"Our biggest competition was the beautiful Alaska summer," she said.

Running a farmers market is hard work, said Arthur Keyes, owner of Glacier Valley Farm, the Spenard market's first vegetable vendor.

Keyes also is the proprietor of the South Anchorage Farmers Market at Old Seward Highway and O'Malley Road. His market is for-profit, unlike the nonprofit Spenard market.

"They had 40 vendors there (at the Spenard market). To manage 40 vendors on a weekly basis is just tremendous," he said. "They poured their heart into it. Blood, sweat, tears."

Despite the announcement, board members say they don't want -- or expect -- Spenard to be without a market this summer.

The existing board is open to talking to groups that would be willing to take it on. Shake said she'd heard of a few groups interested, but she wasn't ready to share names.

Any new group should be a nonprofit, Shake said. Chilkoot Charlie's has donated its parking lot to the market, as well as storage space and electrical hookups, since the beginning.

"The numbers don't work when it turns into a for-profit venture," she said.

At least one such endeavor may be in the works.

Renee Haag, owner of Blaine's Art and a co-founder of the Spenard market, is interested in starting a new market that would incorporate local produce, seafood, and arts and crafts, said Mark Butler, another co-founder who is working on the idea with her.

It's not clear whether a new market would carry a different name or be in the same location.

"Nothing has been locked up yet," Butler said. "And maybe there will be someone else organizing something else. But I think this has a high chance of success."

Michelle Theriault Boots

Michelle Theriault Boots is a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News. She focuses on in-depth stories about the intersection of public policy and Alaskans' lives. Before joining the ADN in 2012, she worked at daily newspapers up and down the West Coast and earned a master's degree from the University of Oregon.

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