“Volunteering is at the very core of being human. No one has made it through life without someone else’s help.”  – Heather French Henry

 

You know the catchy Dunkin Donuts slogan “America Runs on Dunkin?" While most of our volunteers run on Quantum Bean Coffee, the Bridgeport Farmers Market runs on volunteers. With coffee coursing through our veins (and maybe some chai!), the volunteers work tirelessly each Sunday for over 20 weeks in the summer and 6 weeks throughout the winter to bring the market to you, our local community.

 

I’ve written before about the importance of our volunteers, but it bears repeating especially with these exceptionally hot Sundays we’ve been having recently. We arrive Sundays before 8 AM, setting up anywhere from 8-15 tents, tables, and benches. And weights, oh the weights! While we certainly enjoy brunch and cupcakes, we continually work to ensure things run smoothly during the market time. As soon as 2 PM rolls around, the white truck is pulled back into the parking lot and the truck gets reloaded to wait another week.

 

The work doesn’t stop on Sundays. We work through the week to bring you daily social media postings – alerting you to new things at the market, musicians, chef’s demos, and just plain pretty pictures of delicious local produce. We work to bring you this blog weekly. And we continually work to raise funds to keep the market running.

 

Our biggest fundraiser of the year is coming up next month, A Wild and Wonderful Table. Our first event took place in Sutton and moved closer to home for the last two years. This year, the event will happen just steps from the market at a farm just outside of Bridgeport. If you don’t know much about what we lovingly refer to as WWT, here are the recaps from the prior events: 2016, 2017, and 2018.

 

Our chef for this year is Geoff Krause from Thyme Bistro, one of our Sunday morning brunch chefs. If you’ve never had the Bistro Fries, believe me – you need to try them! Geoff has delighted us with his delicious offering  in some of our previous dinners and is sure to delight your taste buds next month.

 

The night will also include carefully selected wines and craft cocktails, as well as music from some of our favorite local musicians. This will all be set in the rolling hills of WV on what has historically been a beautiful fall evening. If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, what are you waiting for? Your support of the market means the world to our volunteers…and our community!