Farmers Market growing

On Saturday mornings between mid-April and mid-October, you can find Donna McNicholas of Holton unloading produce, house plants and herbs from the back of her pickup truck on the east side of Holton’s Town Square.

And McNicholas is not alone — a handful of others come to the east side of the Jackson County Courthouse with their own homemade goods to sell, ranging from produce, house plants and canned goods to home-crafted wind chimes and freeze-dried candies as part of the weekly Jackson County Farmers Market, which is in its 37th year this year.

“Everybody tries to be here at around 7 a.m., maybe a little after, to get set up by the time the people actually start coming,” McNicholas said. “But when it gets to green bean time, we’re going to have people sitting out there in their vehicles waiting for us to unload them.”

Jenny Degenhardt of Holton, who got started at the Farmers Market several years ago with her mother, Betsy Zibell, and who had a good variety of canned vegetables, salsas, jellies and sweet breads for sale this past Saturday, can attest to McNicholas’ claims that people sometimes beat them to the Square when produce is in season.

“That’s especially true when it’s time for tomatoes,” Degenhardt said. “People love tomatoes. I can’t tell you how early people get here just to get tomatoes.”

McNicholas, Degenhardt said, has been “doing this forever” — in fact, the Farmers Market got started by McNicholas and her daughters after they arrived in Holton in 1988.

“I did this for 14 years in Wisconsin before we moved here and started the market,” McNicholas said. “During that first year, we were the only ones here. But then we gradually got a few more people coming in.”

The Farmers Market now has “about seven” regular vendors, she said, although the numbers tend to grow when produce is in season.

“When it comes sweet corn time or watermelon time, then we get a few who specifically grow those crops and they come in with their produce for a few weeks,” McNicholas said. “Later on, I’ll have more produce. Right now, I’ve just got lettuce, kohlrabi, cabbage, asparagus and rhubarbs, but I’ll have tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, broccoli and other things from the garden.”

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