Three Decades On, The Orleans Farmers' Market Remains At The Vanguard Of Lower Cape Agriculture

ORLEANS – On a pristine summer Saturday in early August, residents and visitors can be found milling around in abundance on Old Colony Way. Tucked just behind the Artist Cottages, local vendors sell produce, cheeses, doughnuts, meats and other wares under tents.

“You can come there and you can get produce,” said Heather Bailey, a member of the board of directors for the Orleans Farmers' Market, where she has been a vendor for the past 16 years. “You can get bagels, you can get baked goods, you can get plant-based goods, you can get seafood. Everything.”

The scene is a familiar one for anyone who’s spent time in Orleans, especially during the summer months. For 30 years, the Orleans Farmers' Market has been a staple for people looking for a local alternative to shopping at supermarkets and big box stores. Beyond that, the market’s organizers and participating vendors have been among the region’s strongest advocates for the benefits of local farming and agriculture.

“It’s a great thing that brings close to 30,000 people a year to the center of Orleans,” said Michael Herman, a member of the town’s select board who also owns and operates his own farm, “Greenhouse By The Sea,” on Tar Kiln Road.

Herman is one of up to 35 local vendors that can regularly be found selling at the Orleans market, which operates on Old Colony Way from April to December and indoors during the winter months. The key word is “local,” said the market’s longtime manager and president, Gretel Norgeot, noting that all participating vendors and produce must be based on the Cape.

“It’s important for our farmers to be able to have that outlet to sell their local produce to keep their families and their systems going,” she said.

A third generation farmer in town, Norgeot owns and operates Checkerberry Farm. She’s been involved with the market as a vendor since 1995 and has managed it on a volunteer basis since 1999.

Norgeot grew up in Orleans at a time where local farms were plentiful. Farming was something that ran in her family, she recalled. Her cousin’s grandparents operated a farm on Barley Neck Road, while her parents and grandparents also grew produce in their backyards. She indulged in her passion further at Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, where she studied agriculture.

As the use of chemicals in growing food became more and more prevalent, Norgeot became part of an effort to promote the benefits of organic agriculture. With that, the Orleans Farmers' Market was started in 1994 in the parking lot of the bowling alley on Route 6A.

“I wasn’t one of the first members, but there were probably 10 or 15 people that were part of that first market,” she recalled.

The market relocated in 1995 to the parking lot outside the former Cape Cod 5 headquarters on West Road. When the market's founder and inaugural president, Tina Vanderwater, decided to step down a few years later, Norgeot volunteered to be her successor.

“I just kind of jumped in with both feet,” she said. “I knew the vendors and the vendors knew me.”

Norgeot worked to relocate the market to its current outdoor home on Old Colony Way in 2000, and she helped incorporate the market as a nonprofit in 2001. In 2015, the market began operating year round, moving indoors from December to April inside Nauset Regional Middle School with help from a grant from the Community Development Partnership. That arrangement held up until 2020, when COVID forced the market back outdoors during the offseason. But the vendors and customers made due, setting up behind Staples in Orleans Marketplace.

“People would come, they’d drive up, jump out of their car, get their vegetables and leave,” Norgeot said.

The winter market moved back indoors at 44 Main St. last year. This winter, Norgeot said the market could share time between Main Street and the Lower Cape TV studio on Namskaket Road. The latter space could be used for educational programming to further promote local agriculture, she said.

For most participating vendors, farmers' markets such as the one in Orleans offer the most direct means of getting their inventory to customers. Most don’t operate brick and mortar shops, and rely on Farmers' markets to sell.

“We provide a place that is consistent every week for people to come and sell their stuff,” said Bailey, who owns and operates the Optimal Kitchen in Chatham. “Which for farmers…that’s all they want.”

Supporting local growers and vendors is also critical in helping address the issue of food insecurity in the region, Norgeot said. In 2010, the market became one of the first in the state to allow vendors to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP] benefits from customers.

As the cost of packaged food through traditional stores and channels continues to rise, Norgeot said it’s critical to provide people with access to locally sourced food. And as COVID showed, even the availability of packaged food can sometimes be scarce.

“So many people get used to opening their food out of a package and eating it that way that they really don’t understand what the impact is going to be when there is a food issue,” she said.

The market also gives visitors an opportunity to familiarize themselves and build relationships with local growers. It’s a place where people can go to ask questions and pick up tips about harvesting. Still others see the market as an easy way to get out into the community.

“I think the biggest thing is really the community building,” Herman said. “People come here just to walk and socialize and see their neighbors.”

“It’s a place where you can meet your friends,” echoed Norgeot. “The local community is gathering there to get their food and talk about what they’re doing. It’s a social event.”

Bailey credited the market’s endurance and success to not only the vendors, but also the many customers that continue to go out of their way to shop there on Saturdays.

“As much as we’re there as the vendors, it’s the customers that show up every week as well,” she said. “And they need to be applauded, because they have a lot of other choices. I know people who come to the market, and that is where they go all week.”

While the market has long become a downtown destination for many, the work put in by Norgeot and the market’s board of directors extends well beyond the market itself. Norgeot has been active in helping others start similar markets in Wellfleet, Turo and Provincetown. More recently, she worked to set up a 150 square foot research garden for students on the campus of Nauset Regional High School.

Organizers also had a strong hand in helping the town create and pass a right-to-farm bylaw, which applied protections for local farmers offered at the state level to farmers in town. The market also was instrumental in helping return Putnam Farm to its agricultural roots. Today there are 20 community gardening plots on the farm, and some plot operators sell their yield at the market.

Norgeot said beyond providing a steady outlet for local growers and vendors to sell their product, she sees the market's goal as being to help promote and foster local agriculture on the Lower and Outer Cape.

“Part of that is because of my childhood and having farms around and seeing the farms disappear,” she said.

“Orleans in and of itself, if you look at it historically, has always been an agricultural town,” Bailey said. “The reason that there’s no town center is because most houses until 40 years ago had acres and acres of land because they were farms that fed people who lived in Chatham and who lived in Wellfleet who fished. I think people have forgotten that piece, but really the history of Orleans is farming.”

Going forward, Norgeot said organizers are working to create space for other community groups and organizations, such as the Orleans Pond Coalition and the Orleans Climate Action Network, to take part in the market to help educate people about other environmental causes important to the Cape.

Norgeot looks at the market’s 30th anniversary as “a huge milestone,” but said she’s hopeful about the market’s ability to live on long into the future. She also sees the potential in the town’s next generation of agricultural stewards to carry the mantle.

“My kids have all grown up,” she said. “They’ve grown up with the farmer’s market. And now my grandchildren are growing up with gardens.”

Email Ryan Bray at ryan@capecodchronicle.com