Lyme Farmers Market to have last run Saturday
Lyme — Over the years, the Lyme Farmers Market has been a place where farmers, cheese-makers and artisans sold their goods, kids clamored to feed goats, and visitors listened to bands and stopped by the occasional food truck.
Writer Dominick Dunne, dressed in a sports coat and shorts, once read “The Cat in the Hat” to a circle of children at the market on a humid summer day, later disappearing into the market's crowds in search of raspberries.
A pet alpaca would sometimes wander among the visitors, and kale provided fodder for jokes in the market’s irreverent and humorous newsletters.
But the Lyme Farmers Market, held on Saturdays at Ashlawn Farm on Bill Hill Road, is winding down. This Saturday will mark its last day.
Chip Dahlke of Ashlawn Farm, who runs the market, said he simply feels it’s time — and is ready for the next adventure.
“Fourteen years was a good run for the market,” he wrote in a recent newsletter about his decision. Ashlawn Farm Coffee Cafe will continue.
Dahlke, 64, said some vendors have approached him about possibly taking over the market for next year, but it remains up in the air.
“I’m open,” he said in an interview. “I’ll listen.”
The market began one rainy day in June with five vendors and grew into the attraction it is today.
Dahlke said the market gave artisans, farmers, producers and cheese-makers direct access to the consumer — all at the setting of an actual farm.
He quickly found that visitors enjoyed coming to the farm, owned by Dahlke and his wife, Carol, and hanging out there.
“It kept us all entertained for 14 years,” he said about the market.
“You never quite knew what to expect,” he added. “The spontaneity of it was always something you’d look forward to.”
Dahlke said he particularly enjoyed the start-up aspect of the market.
People approached him and said they had never done this before but wanted to try selling something, such as chocolate truffles, they had made.
Some eventually were able to turn their products into a business.
Beyond the market, Dahlke said, he aimed to engage people through newsletters, experimenting with language to stand out from the typical newsletter and provide an authentic voice, rather than being politically correct.
"I wanted people to have a dialogue," he said.
A newsletter that poked fun at kale, a "darling food" for which criticism is rare — and even rarer from a farmers market — was particularly popular.
After the newsletter, many people whispered to Dahlke at the market and grocery store and emailed him to admit that they don't care for kale.
"Somewhere out there somebody needs to say 'no, kale sucks, kale tastes like bug spray, eating more kale is like eating a kitchen sponge' just to point out that kale may be good for you, but let's not overplay it," he said.
He said kale is so "in" that people don't want to say if they don't really like it, because others will ask what is wrong with them.
And while Dahlke says he thinks the fewer rules for farmers markets the better, he said poodle parades have always been off limits.
The caption beneath a photo, posted on the market's Facebook page, of three little girls at the market gathering around an artisan to touch just-spun fiber, states his position:
"Our belief is to keep things simple and keep things real. That's why we don't have any poodle parades. This is about as simple and real as you can get."
The farmers market will be open 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10 at 78 Bill Hill Road.
More information is available at http://farmcoffee.com or the market's Facebook page.
k.drelich@theday.com
Twitter: @KimberlyDrelich
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