Everything you need to know about the Easton Farmer’s Market this season

In popular demand, America’s Oldest Continuous Running Open-Air Market returns to Center Square tomorrow.

Many Lafayette students are well acquainted with the sunny Saturday stroll downtown, but for those who don’t know, here is a brief guide to just about everything you want to know.

Celebrating its 263rd year on the calendar, the Easton Farmer’s Market abides by a strict “farm to table” philosophy, providing its customers with high quality fresh food products without the middlemen of supermarkets or grocery stores.

The Easton Farmer’s Market strives to support the revival of the Easton community by featuring many local vendors and businesses. The Market offers fresh produce, dairy and meat products, baked goods and confections, restaurant and café specials and botanicals and flowers, as well as art and craft works.

The Open-Air Market is also host to several of downtown Easton’s favorite food festivals, including the Bacon and Garlic Fest. This season, students may look forward to the Hot Pepper Eating Contest and Apple Jam in the fall.

Easton also has a Wednesday night market. Stop by Central Square on Wednesdays from 5p.m. to 8p.m. for Weyerbacher Wednesdays, the second annual weekday night market. Sponsored by Weyerbacher Brewing Company, this late-night foodie goodie is back a month early. Starting May 6, come downtown to enjoy live music, pick up dinner and sample beer every Wednesday evening.

Grown locally right in Center Square, the Easton Farmer’s Market may be a few hundred years old but is only continuing to bloom. Megan McBride, the manager of the Easton Farmer’s Market, said that the market has truly flourished in the last decade, given “in 2002 we only had one vendor left, and since then we’ve built the market back up to 36 vendors on Saturday and we’ve added a Wednesday night market where we have 22 vendors,” Mcbride said.

Also, opening in September, Easton will welcome a new, year round indoor market housed at 325 Northampton St.—the current winter mart location. This new venue, the Easton Public Market will be a kind of “artisan food market, with a butcher, seafood shops, woodfire pizza, craft beer, a noodle bar—a combination of grocery shopping and ready to eat foods too,” McBride said.

The so called “Market District” will be separated between the year round indoor, Wednesday night and Saturday morning market, creating a kind of conglomeration of markets that will offer even greater opportunities to shop and eat local. McBride said she predicts a “20 percent increase in attendance this year.”

The Market operates 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and accepts cash only.