“Seven weeks ago, this was just an idea,” says Dave Wagner, one-half of the sibling team who have just got the Hudson Valley Open Market up and running on Libertyville Road, in a green space at the rear of the Ulster County Fairgrounds parking lot. They plan to host it every Saturday through October, with the exception of the week in early August when the County Fair takes over the entire lot. “New Paltz has needed this for 30 years.”
While the town has had a small farmers’ market – currently dubbed the New Paltz Open Air Market – in sporadic operation for a long time now, it has been plagued by the lack of public space and parking downtown and been forced to relocate several times over the years. These days it runs on Sundays on the grassy verge of the Post Office Plaza. It’s a wonderful community asset, but it can’t really get much bigger or more diverse in its offerings, due to space constraints.
Wagner had something more expansive in mind. He runs his business, Black Oak Mushrooms, out of his home just a little way down the road from the Ulster County Fairgrounds. His professional training was in graphic design, and he has spent years as a carpenter, building cabinets and furniture. “I’ve been a painter, a potter, a knifemaker, a tattoo artist. I’ve been a fabricator my entire life,” he says. But as a divorced dad sharing custody of Fable, now 9, he found it a challenge to keep his woodshop child-safe. That’s why he switched over to mushroom-growing, so that “when I do have her, I can be 100 percent attentive.”
His previous occupations had exposed Wagner to the subculture of creative people who spend their winters making things and their summers hawking them at crafts fairs. It was a lifestyle that appealed to him – and also to his sister, Laura Foster, a New Paltz resident. With a degree in marketing, she has spent the last ten years selling real estate, but says, “I decided to transition out this year. I stopped loving it. It’s become ugly in a lot of ways. I wanted to do something more friendly, more gentle.”
Foster gives full credit to her brother for coming up with the brainwave of founding a new local market for farmers, makers and artisans, but she jumped on board as soon as he broached the idea. She’s managing the business and marketing end, while he wrangles the site logistics. Both of them are working on expanding the range of vendors, which they envision as an eclectic mix of both high-end and more affordable crafts — all locally made, sourced from a radius of about 100 miles. At the market held on Saturday, July 20, about two dozen booths were set up, with the most far-flung participants coming from New Jersey (Grayhill Woodworking) and Albany (MunaMoth Jewelry).
While there will be some curation, mainly to avoid overduplication of offerings, Wagner and Foster — both of whom grew up locally and attended Wallkill High School — feel strongly about accessibility, for vendors and their customers alike. There’s no entry or parking fee to attend the market, for one thing, and it only costs $40 to rent a space for four hours. “Sometimes farmers’ markets can be a little hoity-toity, a little elitist, a little bourgie,” Wagner observes. “I think everybody should have a chance. We have room for at least 150 vendors. And we want to create a sense of community. We want people to come together and enjoy the day.”
Foster, who is thinking of opening her own stall to sell fresh sandwiches, emphasizes that the market will be a great place to come for lunch. At present, only one food truck is booked for each week, but they want to expand that to two, and also to have more farms and packaged foods vendors on hand. “People get happy with their bellies,” Wagner says. On July 20, the Molé Molé food truck was dishing out Mexican meals, Loafly Creations of Wallkill was selling microbakery delights, New Paltz’s own Terra Ridge Farm had homegrown pork and chicken and Heeler Farms of Pine Plains brought the fresh veggies. You may have seen Al’s Smokin’ BBQ Sauce of Port Ewen on the shelf at Adams Fairacre Farms, but at the Open Market you could sample all seven flavors for free.
Besides making it a culinary and crafts destination, Foster and Wagner want the market to feature activities and entertainment as well: acoustic music performances, games like cornhole, classic car shows, bicycle rallies, a clothing swap, fundraising events, fire jugglers. They’ve already got a friend lined up who does silk trapeze dancing, and Fable is requesting “a playground with a bouncy house.” Says Foster, “Our mission is to make it fun. It’s been fun so far, and we’ve met so many great people.”
Hudson Valley Open Market is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday through October 26 (except for August 3) at 249 Libertyville Road, at the rear of the parking lot across the street from the Ulster County Fairgrounds, before the entrance to the Field of Dreams. You can get updates at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560869833642 and www.instagram.com/hudsonvalleyopenmarket. Interested in becoming a vendor? E-mail Dave Wagner and Laura Foster at hudsonvalleyopenmarket@gmail.com.
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