Best Way to Experience the Free Market Economy
We don’t have to tell you why the Plaza is walking-room-only on weekends, and why the Chamber of Commerce has the funds to award over $100,000 twice a year to local events and endeavors for their important role in driving people to visit.
It’s the shopping. Not just luxe sundresses and imaginative gift items, but practical things like seasonal fruits and vegetables, flowers for display and feed for farm animals. Still, the intersection of Healdsburg’s haute cuisine reputation and its celebrity thrives once a week most weekends of the year, twice a week in summer—nowhere else like the Healdsburg Certified Farmers’ Market.
While some local restaurants have their own organic gardens to complement their menu, the Farmers’ Market is for everybody. It’s one of the county’s original Certified Farmers’ Markets, which doesn’t mean organic but does mean that all the vendors grow their own produce. It’s where you can find our Best Produce winner in this year’s Best of Healdsburg.
“In the case of our market, I take it further,” said Janel Ciel, who has been the market director since 2018. “There is not a vendor there who is buy-and-sell; all of the vendors either make it or grow it.”
Make it? That’s because since 2020 craftsmakers have been able to join te market as well—with batik clothing, woodwork, jewelry, glass “and always ceramics, always,” said Ciel. “The idea is to have more crafts for the holidays. But also because a lot of vendors drop out, it’s a way to keep money coming into the market.”
Thanks to the makers, the market is now approaching 50 vendors on Saturdays. In the spring and summer months, a slightly-smaller Tuesday market of 30 vendors is held on the Plaza instead of the Saturday location in the West Plaza Park parking lot, at North Street and Foss Creek.
The Healdsburg Certified Farmers’ Market will be open every Saturday until Dec. 21, for those late Christmas shoppers, and return to action in mid-April 2025. The Tuesday Farmers’ Market runs from mid-May through September. See healdsburgfarmersmarket.org for more details.
— Christian Kallen
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Best Auto Parts Store
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Best Flowers
Best Gift Boutique
Best Grocery Store
Best Jewelry Store
Best Locally Made Food Product
Organic Peaches, Dry Creek Peach & Produce
