By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

ROANOKE, Va. — The Roanoke farmers market is one of the oldest such markets in Virginia. Fourth-generation vendor Mark Woods said he was raised there.

“My mom used to bring me here in a baby buggy when she sold eggs,” Woods said. “When I was 10 years old, I’d come here with my father at four in the morning to wholesale tomatoes.

That made a long day. What we had left over, we’d sell on the table. I’m a fourth-generation farmer selling here. I’ve been doing this full-time since 1994.”

Long before Wood’s time, in 1882, licenses were issued to 25 hucksters. The City of Roanoke’s first charter formally authorized a municipally owned market in 1884.

Currently, downtown office workers are the primary market customers during the week, said Tina Workman, market manager. On the weekend there are tourists and local people who drive to the market. Vendors pay a monthly or a daily fee.

“If they are selling arts and crafts, they have to go through an application process. The items have to be handmade,” Workman said. “Fruits and vegetables have to be homegrown. You apply to be a member, and you may be refused.”

There is a waiting list for primary, full-time vendors. If a vender chooses not to set up their booth on a given day, a secondary vendor gets the option to use that space. If someone wants to set up on a given day, they pay a $10 fee and can sell.

“We may get creative and put them in the alley,” Workman said.
Woods, who is the liaison person between the city and the farmers, has a prime corner location. In early summer he offered some fruits - many were damaged in a late frost - and vegetables.

“We farm about 80-acres,” he said. “We have eight greenhouses and 30 acres of peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, and we’re right at 40 acres of apples. The rest is grassland and some produce.”

The market runs from St. Patrick’s Day through Christmas Eve. Offerings at the market change with the season.

“We start out with bedding plants and geraniums, about 18 varieties of tomato plants, then vegetables; in fall we do pumpkins, apples, winter squash and sweet potatoes,” Woods said. “Then we do Christmas trees and wreaths.

“It’s a good market, one of the oldest ones around. Many families are in the fourth generation of selling here. It’s open Sunday through Saturday but I just come Monday through Saturday - six days are enough for me. We make a livelihood at it, me and my dad.”

Woods’ family used key connections to get a prime location at the market.

“We used to sleep in the doorway to be the first one here,” he said. “It was a wholesale market years ago. My grandparents used to come in at 2 a.m. Kroger’s, A&P, they used to have local buyers. They’d come through here and load their trucks up with local produce and what the farmers had left over they’d retail.”

“My great uncle used to come here; he sold on the corner we’re on,” Woods said. “How he got this spot was, he would bribe the street cleaner. When the street cleaner would pull away, he’d toot his horn. My uncle would start backing his truck in and he’d get this spot.”