Lee’s Summit Farmers Market will help vendors, patrons connect with community

Lindsey Bennett says her life this past year in a pandemic had its high and low points. But now Bennett is eager for a spring filled with happy moments, as she shares her farm’s bounty.

“I’m hoping that everyone is ready to get outside, connect with their community and enjoy some great seasonal vegetables,” Bennett said.

She will be among the farmers at the Lee’s Summit Farmers Market, which will operate from 8 a.m. to noon on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The Wednesday market will open April 7 at Second and Douglas streets. It will include baked goods, honey and produce, and will operate weekly until Nov. 17.

The Saturday market will open on April 10 at the parking lot of the Abundant Life Church, at 304 S.W. Persels Road. It will include fresh produce, locally raised meats, honey, juices and baked goods. The Saturday market will operate weekly through Nov. 20.

Market manager Ashley Nowell said Abundant Life’s large parking lot offers safe access. Hand sanitizer stations will be provided throughout the market and customers are encouraged to wear masks and maintain a social distance of 6 feet. On Saturdays, 36 vendor will sell products; on Wednesdays, 10 will offer their goods. This year, visitors will see several first-time vendors, Nowell said.

Nowell said the market has an 80/20 rule stating that 80% of the vendors must be farmers that sell items such as produce, local honey and locally raised meats.

“This formula is recommended by the Missouri Department of Agriculture for Missouri Farmers Markets,” Nowell said. ”It ensures that our market stays focused on local foods and does not become a craft market.”

This will be the 14th season Karin Velez will sell at the Lee’s Summit market.

“We are always excited to get back to the market each spring,” said Velez, who owns Wolf Creek Family Farm in Peculiar. “We have many customers we miss seeing over the winter and have close relationships with many of our fellow vendors. Our market family works together to promote the market and each other, which is nice.”

Velez said in some ways her life has been undisturbed by the pandemic.

“I know farming takes a lot of work and dedication, yet farmers do a lot of work on their own,” she said. “In a strange way, you consider yourself a bit fortunate in that your work day looked a lot like other years.

“We work the same place we live, we don’t leave for 8-to-5 jobs, we don’t have a habit of going for drinks after work; all those things that most people have had to make adjustments for, we just didn’t have to.”

“Distancing from family and friends has been the only difficult part for us. The rest has been near normal. We’re lucky in that regard because we’ve felt less of the emotional toll that others have.”

That’s not to say things haven’t changed.

“We pivoted to online sales for home delivery last year and that has changed our dynamic quite a bit,” Velez said. “We’re keeping that as an option for customers going forward, pandemic or not, and have reduced the number of markets we attend each week as a result.”

Bennett said last year was a whirlwind. It was the first year for Bene Terre Farms in Eastern Jackson County, the farm she owns with her husband, Cliff.

“On the one hand, it was the perfect time for our family to make this transition,” said Bennett said, who moved with her family from Longmont, Colo.

They had purchased their farm in November 2019, remodeled a studio to live in, and moved to the farm in late February 2020.

“Then Covid hit, and we had to lock down but we also had so much work to do here it forced us to focus,” Bennett said. But lack of connection with the community, she said, was wearing on them. “It was hard to discern if this was due to Covid or the shift from a small urban setting to a rural setting.”

She’s hoping getting out to the market will solve the isolation problem shared by so many across the nation.