KING — Dejah Pasay told her husband to let her know if he saw any farmers’ markets on his way home, and on the last Thursday in June, she got the call.
The King Farmers’ Market was open in its newly added location at King Moravian Church on Thursdays from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
“We’re just interested in anything that is grown locally,” said Pasay, at the market with her daughters Clarke and Logan.
The market is still open at its regular time and location on Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Stokes Family YMCA.
The Thursday market started June 20.
“We wanted to give people an option,” said Christina Brunner, of Dragonfly Farms, who is a market board member. “Since Wednesday’s during the day, not everybody can make it,” she said.
The church’s location at 228 W. Dalton Road, close to downtown King, also adds an option.
“It’s nice that people can walk, because so many people live down the street,” Brunner said. “We’ve had a lot of people walk.”
The new hours are working out well so far, according to Harvey Moser, of Moser Manor Farm, who is board president.
“It’s doing good, we’ve had a good day,” he said. “It seems to be picking up, we see more people stopping.”
The additional day is one of several changes Susan and Harvey Moser, who started with the market in 1998, have seen over the years.
The King Farmers’ Market was at that time located at the American Legion on Main Street. It has operated at the Stokes Family YMCA location for about 13 years.
An afternoon market had been tried before and didn’t work, Moser said.
“They didn’t want to stop and do their shopping on the way home,” he said. “Now, things have changed and people are getting interested again in local grown produce and vegetables, and they see the difference in it.”
The midday market lets people come by when they’re out at lunch time. It also avoids summer storms, which tend to happen later in the afternoon.
Since the pandemic, the number of younger farmers at King and Winston-Salem markets has increased, Harvey Moser said.
“People started to get interested again in agriculture,” he said. “It woke a lot of people up.”
Regardless of what day or where folks visit a farmers’ market, there’s just no substitute for the fresh produce.
“It tastes different,” Moser said, adding that sometimes folks will ask him what he puts on the vegetables such as potatoes to make them taste so good.
“Nothing,” is the answer, it’s just that grocery store potatoes, for example, may sit in a cooler for month or more and be sprayed to prevent sprouting.
“All the flavor’s gone out of it,” he said. “These taters I’ve got here on the table, a lot of them were dug yesterday evening, and all the nutrient value and all that’s in there.”
The King Farmers’ Market will not operate on Thursday, July 4, but will run through September.
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