As crates of watermelons and boxes of tomatoes find their home in front of the fountain in Town Center, shoppers brave 100-degree heat for homegrown finds at the first Keller Farmers Market.
“I hope there’s lots of fruit,” said Becky Butler, who with her daughter came out for peaches and tomatoes at about noon on Saturday. Butler was excited to have something similar to the market she lived by before moving from Baton Rouge to Keller three years ago.
The market features local, organic produce, cheese and beef and products like honey, jams and coffee. It also offers live performances by local jazz and folk musicians, as well as local art works for sale and children’s entertainment.
Chefs’ demonstrations, like the samples of longhorn beef and gazpacho soup with cilantro oil served up last weekend, will be a weekly centerpiece.
The market, sponsored by the The Shops and Lofts at Arthouse, was envisioned as a venue to promoting agriculture, entertainment, visual and performing arts, wellness and civic activities and charitable work on a regular basis. It is scheduled 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. each Saturday through November.
It’s designed to be “a home for other things,” established because “it creates gravity,” said Matt Magallanes, business development manager for Southern Land Company, which owns Arthouse. It is among a list of projects he is spearheading to boost energy and attract development to Town Center.
In the first market event, “we’ve had a pretty consistent flow” of vendors and customers, said Chris McPeak, the farmer running the market.
Though about two dozen signed up, only a handful of farmers made it to showcase their crops, which doesn’t discourage McPeak.
It just takes “getting the word out” to grow, he said, relying on his past experiences. McPeak left his corporate job to return to his family’s 40,000-tree peach orchard in East Texas and now lives in Keller, marketing his produce throughout the Metroplex.
Keith Kopps, president of the established Denton Farmers Market, agrees with McPeak’s assessment. Kopps has been farming 30 acres outside of Ponder for 10 years. He started small with roadside stands and now employs about 15 teenagers with summer work to sell his produce.
He compared the start of Keller’s market to that of Frisco’s. Like in the Collin County city, the Keller area is “a good location” with lots of potential, he said.
Homestead Farms, on Keller-Hicks Road, for example, gave out goat cheese samples to taste and sold out of sugar queen cantaloupes, cucumbers and squash before noon.
Magallanes hopes to draw on that potential by filling a niche with the open-air market that organic stores can’t. The result will be a snowball effect, he says.
“People are attracted to people,” he said, projecting the market to become a gathering place around which to build other attractions.
Such an attraction could be as a simple as shade, tables and chairs near the Town Center fountain to be used by chess or exercise groups to meet outdoors. People rarely linger in that area, he said, which gives passers-by a stale impression. Small additions could make it a place with “10 people all the time,” he said.
That idea is in contrast to large events like KellerFest or Holly Days, which “people love” but “come in one or two times a year,” Magallanes said.
He also proposes forming a nonprofit, governed by a board of directors, to oversee the market and organize smaller activities in public spaces.