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BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – For over 30 years, the Bellingham Farmers Market has made its impact in supporting local agriculture, business and community by working with regional farmers, artisans and creatives alike.
As Market Director Chloe Knox enters her second year of leading the esteemed market, she hopes to bring balance and fairness to the many matters she handles.
A new face to the local produce scene, Knox brings a big city expertise to the Bellingham Farmers Market. She managed farmers selling produce at Pike Place Market in Seattle prior to her tenure as Bellingham’s Market Director. She started in March 2024 in the role and said that a lot of moving parts go into putting on the market week after week, rain or shine.
“A lot of people don’t realize Market Director is a job, first of all,” Knox said. “And second of all, they don’t realize it’s a full-time job.”
Knox told My Bellingham Now that a big part of her job in the lead up to putting on Bellingham’s biggest market is organizing the roughly 130 vendors into locations at Depot Market Square that reflect their seniority and their wares. She also has to coordinate work between the City of Bellingham as a tenant in the Depot Market Square among other things.
“I respond to a lot of emails, as anybody does in any job,” she said. “There’s a lot of back and forth, a lot of making sure that they have all of their documents uploaded on our application software, making sure that they’re sending their stall requests like I mentioned, or submitting their credit card so that they can submit payments at the beginning of the season.”
According to Knox, Bellingham’s market is outsized for the population which reflects the community’s interest in local agriculture as well as connecting with outdoor spaces.
“That’s something I don’t want to take for granted because I really appreciate that our community really shows up for our market and shops from our small businesses and values that over going straight to big box stores,” Knox said.
Knox has to contend with a long history of previous market directors that have ran the farmers market, as a lot of the vendors she works with have memory of the people that came before her.
“There are a lot of strong opinions on things, and it’s important that everyone is heard and that everyone is understood, and even if we’re not pleasing everybody all the time, that they feel like they are a valued member of our community and that they are listened to,” Knox said.
According to the market’s website, the farmers market began unofficially in the late 1970s before the Bellingham Farmers Market Association formed in 1992 and subsequently moved into the Depot Market Square space in 2006.
“We’re lucky to get to create a space where people want to show up and see each other and meet up and shop together and share excitement over vegetables or beautiful crafts or whatever it may be,” Knox said. “There’s kind of this dual purpose of the farmers market that’s makes it a really special place.”
During the colder months, Knox still works in prepping for the next season as well as putting on monthly, smaller markets at the Depot Market Square. Something that comes with the beginning of the official season is the launch of a new brand for the farmers market—an illustrative, more subdued image compared to last year’s hot pink backdrop.
“We’re lucky to get to create a space where people want to show up and see each other and meet up and shop together and share excitement over vegetables or beautiful crafts or whatever it may be. There’s kind of this dual purpose of the farmers market that’s makes it a really special place.” — Chloe Knox
Programs that the Bellingham farmers market is proud to create include a match program for shoppers using EBT: the SNAP Market Match. Carried over from COVID-19 relief work, Market Match doubles the amount of dollars someone using EBT will have to spend when buying fresh produce at a farmers’ market.
As relief funding petered out in 2023, the program was cut down to a maximum of $25 in funds per customer. Knox, with her team and the Farmers Market board, heard the feedback that the program was beneficial to the community and decided to bring it back on their own dollar in 2024.
“We’re not faltering, and that’s what the state has recommended that we do, but we just don’t know what that will look like in the future, which is scary for us, because that program is really important for creating an equitable market space and community at the Bellingham farmers market, and it also has a direct impact on the spending with our farmers,” Knox said. “It creates a huge increase in the money they see coming through their purchasing through them.”
Another concern that Knox voiced about the upcoming season is whether the market can contend with immigrant farm workers under threat of detention and deportation.
“We have not felt the direct impact of what’s going on within the federal government for the market. However, that doesn’t mean we won’t,” Knox said. “We work with a high number of immigrant farmers and immigrant farm workers who work with our farmers. So, I am expecting that we will see impacts in that community.”
The season for the Bellingham Farmers Market will kick off with art and festivities this year. The first 50 customers to come to the market will receive the posters of the new design as well. Knox has other festivities planned such as face painting and a raffle giveaway.
The Bellingham Farmers Market will open at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 5 with a cabbage toss between a city official such as Mayor Lund and a community member (often a child according to Knox). The bell atop Depot Market Square will toll its trademark train bell, and the market will continue to serve the local community, rain or shine.
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