Rain, snow or shine, the last farmer’s market of the season in Red Deer is Saturday.
And after seeing crowds dwindle due to wildfire smoke in August and then bitter cold and snow in September, organizer Dennis Moffat will be happy to finish out the last Public Market at the Memorial Centre with a bit of sunshine.
Partial sun is in the forecast for Saturday, along with a high of 6 C — so “I’ve got my fingers crossed that people will show up and we’ll have a good day,” said Moffat.
He described the last few weeks as pretty dismal. The worst day was two Saturdays ago, he recalled, when temperatures plunged to below zero and a carpet of snow covered the parking lot.
Only 11 hearty vendors showed up — to hardly any customers.
“It was the worst. Just miserable… the cold was hard on the vendors. They work hard and deserve better,” said Moffat.
He figures the market crowds thinned by 20 to 30 per cent this season — also due to thick smoke that blew over the Red Deer area from wildfires in B.C. in August.
Through it all, Moffat said the market never missed a Saturday opening. Although there were some mornings when he wondered why bother? Moffat said it wouldn’t have been fair to the vendors who showed up to close since they had travel long distances to be there.
When the 49th annual Public Market reopens seven months from now, on the Victoria Day weekend in May — it will be back at its original location in the parking lot of the downtown Servus Arena and Red Deer Curling Club, next to the skateboard park.
The city has now rebuilt the arena and repaved the parking lot, and “they did a beautiful job,” said Moffat, who looks forward to reopening in the more spacious location which holds 200 vendors instead of 150.
He also looks forward to planning “celebrations” for the 50th annual market season in 2020.
In the meantime, he praised the residents of Waskasoo for welcoming the market to their neighbourhood temporarily while downtown construction was ongoing.
“The last three years were a bit of a struggle — a lot of people were waiting for us to go back to the arena,” he said. But sales during the summer of 2017 were “quite good,” so this year’s market fell victim to unpredictable weather.
“It’s Central Alberta… what can you do about it?” said Moffat.
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