Laramie’s downtown Farmers Market returns for the summer
Organizers have pushed the market one hour later, and are continuing a SNAP match program through the “Friends of the Market” campaign.
Laramie Main Street’s weekly Farmers Market returned to the downtown area Friday, ushering in another summer of fresh produce stalls, artisan booths and draft beer in the open air.
From now through September, a rotating cadre of 170 vendors will occupy the parking lot next to the Laramie Railroad Depot every Friday from 4-8 p.m.
In previous years, the market has run from 3-7 p.m., but in the annual vendor surveys conducted by Laramie Main Street, vendors repeatedly stated their busiest time was 7 p.m. — right when they had to start packing up their wares.
“And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense,” Main Street Program Coordinator Ana Castro said. “I mean, a family, they get off work at 5:30, then they go home, wrangle the kids, and by the time you get to the market, you have an hour. And as you’re familiar with, you run into everyone you know. So that takes up a lot of time.”
This year’s market also sees the return of Laramie Main Street’s SNAP match program. SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aims to do what its name implies: provide benefits that supplement a family’s grocery budget “so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being.”
Main Street serves as a SNAP vendor through a contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That means beneficiaries of the federal program can turn their benefits into market tokens to be used for fresh produce.
The match program goes beyond this, providing those using SNAP with a little more bang for their buck. That can be crucial for SNAP beneficiaries, who often don’t receive very much from the program itself.
This year, Main Street will double those SNAP benefits. If someone exchanges $50 in SNAP allotments for market tokens, Main Street will give them another $50, giving them $100 for the market.
The program is backed by large donations from Pete Lien & Sons and Ivinson Memorial Hospital, as well as smaller donations Main Street is seeking from Farmers Market attendees.
Those who donate $100 to the program this year — becoming a “Friend of the Market” and receiving a branded Farmers Market tote bag — will help Main Street double the SNAP benefits their neighbors can spend at the market.
“We just ask our community members to either pay $25 the four months of the market — so $25 a month — or a one-time donation of $100,” Castro said. “And all the money raised through Friends of the Market goes directly into [matching] SNAP.”