The REAL reason the Cave City Market goes to Glasgow one day a week.
By Pat Switzer - Market Coordinator for the Cave City Regional Farmers' Market
A recent article in the Glasgow Daily Times stated that, "Now the vendors aren’t setting up on Saturdays because of the prosperity of the Tuesday and Friday markets." It had nothing whatsoever to do with "prosperity." It had everything to do with a promise we made, as a market, to help the community.
The Farmers Market Nutrition Program began as a pilot program in 1992 to bring locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables into the homes of WIC and Senior participants and help promote local farmers markets. Kentucky is one of the states that participates in these programs. When I became the market coordinator for the Cave City Regional Market I had to attend a meeting to learn how it worked and how to instruct the members of the market. At one time, there were two programs run by the same office for both the WIC and the Senior programs but they have split up this year. Jessica Hinkle* is still in charge of the Senior and Cynthia Sullivan** is in charge of the WIC.
After this meeting, Peggy Burcham*** who is the coordinator for the Barren River District, came rushing over to me and said she was so glad to see me. She had an idea and wanted to see if our market would be interested. Would we consider bringing our market over to the health department in Glasgow, where they issue the WIC vouchers, to see if we could give the program a boost? We talked about it for a long time, trying to work out the details. I had to talk to the members of the market and they were pretty excited about it, too. We had a lot of hoops to jump through but we jumped through them all. We were finally told that we could take the market to any location as long as we were cleared through both program coordinators ahead of time.
I talked to Peggy after we got this started and she gave me some startling statistics. She was hoping that, with us right there where the vouchers are issued, that the young ladies would come over and buy good, fresh fruits and vegetables. In 2007, Peggy said they only used 30% of the vouchers. When there aren't many used, the state cuts back on the program. Each year for the past three years the program had been cut: 9% in 2005, 9% in 2006 and 10% in 2007. As with every government program, if you don't use it, you will lose it.
These programs are important to this community, therefore they are important to the Farmers' Market because, since we come from the surrounding area, we ARE part of the community. We want to help in any way we can. Neighbors helping neighbors so to speak.
For all the people who wondered why we changed our days from Friday and Saturday at Cave City, this is the real reason. It was to help the people of a larger area to make use of an important program. It would have been hard to do 3 market days a week and since Saturdays were always slow at Cave City, we chose to drop it and "spread ourselves around." It has been working well, the people of Glasgow have welcomed us with open arms and begged us to keep coming. And we will, we still have a commitment to do what we can to help with the programs.
This article was read and approved by Peggy Burcham before being uploaded to the website. Thank you Peggy for all your help!
To find out more about the program Click Here
To contact the people in this article use this information:
*Jessica (Anderson) Hinkle
Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Program
Ky Dept Of Ag
107 Corporate Dr
Frankfort, KY 40601
502-573-0432
JessicaP.Hinkle@ky.gov
**Cindy Sullivan
CynthiaD.Sullivan@ky.gov
502-564-3827 ext 3856
***Peggy Burcham, RN, BSN
Barren River District Health Dept
WIC coordinator
1109 State St PO Box 1157
Bowling Green, KY 42102-1157
270-782-8039 ext161
peggyk.burcham@ky.gov