U of I-led Tuesday Market helps Latah County vendors thrive

Jolena Owen credits the University of Idaho Extension-run Tuesday Market in Moscow with priming her small business, Third Seed Farms, for success in several ways.

For Owen, the vendors’ fee is reasonable at just $10 per market, and the Tuesday Market staff are available to assess vendors’ operations and suggest tips for improvements. She also appreciates that, when lines at her booth grow too long, the staff often step in and help run the register or take orders from customers. The Tuesday Market even fits nicely into her schedule, as her weekends are usually reserved for her boys’ sporting events.

“I can’t fully time-wise commit to a bigger market,” Owen said.

Finally, she’s capitalized on the addition of a digital Tuesday Market, which started in September 2024, through which she sells her meat products and garlic chains year-round.

The Tuesday Market, which is hosted 4-7 p.m. weekly from June through mid-October at the Latah County Fairgrounds, fills a community niche by providing a laid-back and flexible option for small-scale local food producers to sell directly to customers. The Market has even hired a chef to showcase recipes made from purchasable items.

For some, the Market serves as a training ground for beginning vendors who aspire to eventually graduate to the larger Moscow Farmers Market, hosted on Saturdays.

Many vendors have expanded their businesses thanks to the Tuesday Market’s hands-on approach. Last fall, Owen and her family opened a farm-to-table restaurant, Third Seed Station, 215 S. Main St., featuring their home-raised ingredients. Immediately upon opening the eatery, they had a loyal customer base thanks to the relationships they’d forged at the Tuesday Market. Three other Tuesday Market producers have moved on to sell at the Moscow Farmers Market.

Small steps, big gains

The Tuesday Market was struggling when stakeholders approached UI Extension about running it in 2017. At the time, a small group of vendors were setting up in a sunbaked parking lot, and customers seldom lingered after making their purchases.

Under the direction of Iris Mayes, an Extension educator in Latah County specializing in horticulture and small farms, the Tuesday Market has grown to include about 60 vendors annually, with a weekly average of 15 to 20 vendors and 200 customers. It’s become a popular family social event in a shady, parklike setting, featuring live music, children’s activities, ready-to-eat food, a beer garden and a wide variety of seasonal fruits, vegetables and cottage products.

“The main reason I’m involved is helping fruits and vegetable producers increase their profits,” Mayes said. “It has been a business incubator. People need to start at a smaller market to get an understanding of how things work.”

Mayes initially hosted a monthly market upon taking it over in 2018 and moving it to the fairgrounds. By the following season, she was ready to schedule weekly markets, recruiting musicians who were willing to play for tips.

Her breakthrough came in 2022, when she received a three-year, $250,000 promotional grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service. Extension began marketing both the Tuesday Market and its vendors through social media and newspaper advertising. The grant helped market vendors increase their income by 279% from 2022 to 2023. The funds also covered the hiring of an intern and a chef.

Reaching the next level

The hiring of a chef serving the Tuesday Market, Natalia Valencia, has increased demand for vendors’ products by providing patrons with food preparation ideas and educating them on uses for less common produce. Valencia regularly buys food from vendors — including Owen’s fruits, vegetables and pasture-raised meats — and uses the ingredients to prepare healthy, ready-to-eat meals to sell at the market. The chef also distributes free food samples, along with the recipes she develops.

Valencia, who is also operations manager with the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center, spends about four hours per week reading cookbooks and listening to food blogs for inspiration before experimenting with Tuesday Market products in her home kitchen. One of her recent ready-to-eat meals, for example, combined greens, cherry tomatoes, Romano beans and pork sausage from Third Seed Farms in a salad with honey mustard vinaigrette dressing made with locally sourced honey. During that market, she also made free samples and recipe cards of a dish she concocted with sausage, yellow potatoes and sauerkraut.

“If we’re showcasing what vendors have right now, hopefully people will go and buy it,” Valencia said. “The feedback has been pretty good. People do get excited about taking the recipes home and trying them.”

Beginning in 2023, Mayes implemented a plan to make children more interested in attending the market, using vendors’ fees to offer each child a $2 voucher.

“They get to pick what they want. Usually it’s berries, but I’m always surprised when a kid wants to buy an onion or something like that,” Mayes said.

Also in 2023, Extension launched a related holiday market. When the in-person market is in season, customers may book their orders, including community supported agriculture produce boxes, online and pick up their produce on Tuesday evenings at the fairgrounds. After the season, customers pick up orders made through the digital market from the UI Extension, Latah County office, 200 S. Almon St., Moscow.

Vendors have made about $4,000 in combined digital market sales thus far — mostly from items with a long shelf life, such as canned fish and hand-made body lotions. Mayes expects sales to grow this year as the digital market catches on.

Mayes hopes that community members and vendors will eventually take over leadership of the Tuesday Market.