by Mike Campbell - Sept. 2024
Origin
The Tamayo’s enthusiastically agreed and said they had friends -- Barry Benepe and Judith Spektor -- who knew all about farmers markets, and volunteered to ask them if they’d be interested in getting a market started in the village.
The idea spread from there. Rickie and James Tamayo met with Barry Benepe and asked, “Can we have a farmers market here in Saugerties?” With Barry's background starting and managing Greenmarket Farmers Markets in New York City and the Tamayos' success with their restaurant, the effort to begin a farmers market in Saugerties was off to a very promising start.
In the meantime, Nancy had run the idea by then Village Mayor Bob Yerick, who enthusiastically supported the idea. As they say, "it takes a Village" ... and in this case, there were the aforementioned movers and shakers, with the support of the Mayor, the Village Board, as well as local businesses. And of course the farmers and other vendors.
Goal and Impact
The idea was (and continues to be) introducing the community to local products that change seasonally and enabling visitors to take home freshly harvested food grown, picked, and brought to market by local farmers.
Over the years, the market has drawn customers interested in buying from local farmers. The hope is that doing so helps keep farmers farming, saves farmland, and draws people to the Village of Saugerties to buy from the market, and from the many shops, stores and restaurants that Saugerties offers.
First Location - Reis Parking Lot
The most important issue was the selection of a downtown location in the Village. A committee was formed to obtain permission from Reis Insurance to use the parking lot at the corner of Main and Market Streets every Saturday during the months the market was open. They could not have made a better selection. A farmers market depends on high visibility when it is open and high legibility to publicize it, and Reis Parking Lot offered very high visibility on a well-traveled Saugerties Village intersection.
Photo of the Saugerties Farmers Market, held at its original location - Reis Parking Lot (2004 - Joy Moore, photographer)
Summer 2001 Kickoff
So in the Summer of 2001, the Saugerties Farmers Market began mid-season, and visiting customers that year would see corn on the cob, peaches, tomatoes, and lots of oh-so-tasty good food grown locally. Tweaks and improvements have been made ever since, with additions such as live music, café tables for lunch, and special events introduced to draw customers to the Village of Saugerties.
The market remained on the Market/Main Street corner for years. Judith and Barry, along with a team of market directors, managers and organizers, worked to attract more local farmers and customers.
Larger Crowds Lead to a Location Move
When the market outgrew the space, a move was in order -- just down the street to the larger Cahill School parking lot where the market could fit in more farmers, bakers and other makers.
The parking lot is well located, just a few blocks from the business district. It overlooks what is known locally as the "Cowflop", a spacious green meadow with Catskill Mountain views. And it is located next to the Saugerties Historical Society’s Kiersted House. The following photo shows a typical market day at the current Cahill School Parking Lot location.
Photo by Doug Freese (2023)
Improvements Over the Years
A dedicated team began improving the market from its first day to the present day. The idea has been to give visitors more reasons to enjoy this thriving treasure of a fun and healthy community event. One major successful addition was the weekly Kids Art Corner, created by local artist, Anita Barbour, to provide an art project for kids so their parents could walk through the market to buy food to take home.
A live weekly music calendar was created by Steve and Terri Massardo (Saugerties John Street Jam founders) and continued by Danielle DeCicco. Chefs were invited to deliver Chef Demos that teach customers how to use the seasonal market food, get some tastes, and take-home recipes. A popular event every year is the Farm Animal Day, as you can see from the photo below. Another fun addition to the markets is the Mad Hatter Tea Party, a big event drawing people for a lovely tea with good food, kick croquet, a scavenger hunt, and much more fun!
Farm Animal Day Photo by Doug Freese, 2022
Harvest Home Dinners
In 2006, the Saugerties Farmers Market introduced a series of Harvest Home Dinners into the mix. These dinners showcase the diversity of Hudson Valley farm-raised foods and fund the markets. They have also been a way to introduce people to new ways of using products from the market.
These fun, intimate dinner fundraisers, hosted at area homes and prepared by an array of local chefs and talented home cooks, are offered on different evenings from August to October.
The dinners may be booked by one or two people or as many as a party of ten guests. The dinners afford guests an opportunity to meet new people while enjoying a fantastic dinner prepared by an expert in the kitchen. Jamie Fine ran the first 15 Harvest Dinners and Diane Congello-Brandes is the current organizer.
Judith Spektor has hosted one of each season's dinners every year. “It’s like you’re putting on your best party dress. You do your best to please and show off what’s in season and in the market. It’s very festive and celebratory.”
Each of the Harvest Home Dinner’s chefs designs a special one-of-a-kind menu to showcase area farm foods, and the chefs strive to buy most of their ingredients at the market or from the farmers and other vendors who are market regulars. The dinners are prepared at the peak of the late-summer and early-fall harvest season, so there is an abundance of Hudson Valley produce, meats and poultry from which the chefs can choose.
Dinner tickets are $65 a person and each guest is expected to bring their own wine or other dinner beverage with them. Part of the fun of the Harvest Home Dinner concept is that guests choose the dinner by the date only. The identity of the home, the chef, the home cook and the other guests remains a surprise until all the dinners are sold out and seats are finally assigned. Then, well in advance of the evening, each guest learns who their host will be, as well as the chef for the evening and is given driving instructions to the home.
The funds help pay market staff, underwrite Double SNAP (doubling low-income shoppers benefits) and fund Kids’ Art Corner and live music throughout our five-month market season.
Those interested in attending one of this year’s Harvest Home Dinners can call 845-706-6715 for more information or send an email to harvesthomedinners@gmail.com.
A Harvest Home Dinner at the Home of Dick and Joy Moore - 2006 - Photo by Joy Moore
Barry Benepe and Judith Spektor - Brief Bios and Life Lessons
The magic ingredients in all of this have been Barry Benepe with his Greenmarket experience and Judith Spektor. Their tireless energy and enthusiasm drive the committee that is the Saugerties Farmers’ Market engine.
Barry and Judith at Barry's 90th Birthday Bash. Photo by Jim Peppler, July 21, 2018.
Barry and Judith split their time between their Greenwich Village apartment and their delightfully landscaped Saugerties home. In Saugerties, they get their hands dirty with vegetable gardens (Barry's focus) and varied trees, flowers, shrubs and vines (Judith's focus).
Barry and Judith have been described as “Town Treasures” for what they’ve done with this market. Brief biographies about Barry and Judith follow.
Barry Benepe
Barry has a storied and ground-breaking background in farmers market circles.
In 1976, he co-founded the Greenmarket, the largest, most successful open-air farmers' market program in the United States, with markets in 30 neighborhoods across New York City.
As a teenager, Barry worked on his father’s farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, harvesting, packaging and delivering the farm’s food to market, which was usually an auction block … or canneries for tomatoes and freezing plants for food to be frozen. He realized early on that in general, little of the farm’s food wound up fresh on anyone’s table.
He learned 3 life lessons when taking produce from the family farm to auction:
- Food prices. Buyers were colluding to keep the prices down and cheat the farmers.
- The quality and importance of local food. In those days in New York City, you bought your fruits and vegetables in a grocery store— produce that came from across the country on a five-day journey, wrapped in plastic. Yuck!
Barry compared that to the tastes of fresh local food. What a compelling taste difference! And most importantly, a farmers market brings freshly farmed food directly to the customer, cutting out the middleman. Fresh is best!
- Farmland being lost. There has been a trend involving developers buying farmland to develop it into suburban housing. Once farmland is lost, it is lost forever. Barry recognized the need to help farmers keep their land and continue to make their income from it so that it would be preserved as actively used farmland.
Photo of Barry Benepe, by Jon Roemer from a gothambarandgrill.com article titled "GrowNYC and the Greenmarket" (2017)
Later in life, Barry was employed as a planning consultant in NYC. Along with Bob Lewis, a fellow planner, he was able to create a NYC market space that would address both the economic needs of upstate farmers and the need city residents had for fresh-picked produce: the first Greenmarket. They opened a market at 59th Street and Second Avenue which made the upbeat TV good news of the day. And that news coverage helped draw a crowd of customers each Saturday. A City representative called Barry to request a market at Union Square that would draw a crowd and drive out the drug dealers. What a success! An increased volume of sales for farmers that led to additional market days, more farmers, and more locations. Today, there are over 40 markets, managed by GrowNYC (formerly Council on the Environment of NYC). (For more on Barry and the founding of the Greenmarket, please see this YouTube video.)
In a 2016 article interview with Barry, writer Summer Rayne Oakes wrote that Barry “… spearheaded urban revival throughout New York City by helping usher in the creation of New York City’s Greenmarkets, as a way to connect urban dwellers to surrounding farms. So in a way, you can say that Barry is the Father of NYC’s farmers markets.”
Good ideas tend to grow … and so it was with the farmers markets—from Union Square they grew neighborhood by neighborhood in all five boroughs in New York City. Barry met with local community organizations to bring markets to their communities. Those local leaders took on the challenge of introducing Greenmarkets to their neighborhoods.
Picking up on the markets’ success, local media coverage followed. The movement spread to the suburbs and the countryside—bringing fresh and local food directly to customers everywhere across the region and across the United States.
Judith Spektor
Judith Spektor is a University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University graduate. Her background is steeped in not-for-profits, community organizing and working for and with city governments. For example, at one point she was the Director of the Office of Single Room Occupancy Housing for New York City's then Mayor Edward Koch.
Judith's involvement with and leadership of the Saugerties Farmers Market is the backbone of its success. To be sure, many, many people contribute to that success, but everyone involved in the Saugerties Farmers Market recognizes that it all comes together thanks to her. Her outreach and organizing work keep the market moving forward, and ensure people have a fun and healthful market in Saugerties that they can enjoy during the bountiful summer and autumn months.
Recognition
On Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at Tavern on the Green in New York City, Barry Benepe was presented with the Marian Sulzberger Heiskell award from GrowNYC for his life work creating Greenmarket and rebuilding the direct farmer-to-consumer phenomenon that has now spread across America. Named after GrowNYC's founder, this award recognizes individual leadership and dedication to making NYC greener, healthier, and more sustainable for all. Barry's impact on New York City's environmental health and local food economy is truly remarkable, and it's great to see his legacy being recognized in this way.
As GrowNYC said in a LinkedIn post of theirs, recognizing Barry's award,
"Barry's vision has shaped the landscape of sustainable agriculture in our city and beyond, and we're endlessly grateful for his contributions."
Along with others, Barry "revolutionized how New Yorkers access fresh, locally grown food."
Summary
The Saugerties Farmers Market has become a place to buy fresh and local foods and at the same time get together with friends and meet new people in the community. It remains to this day a destination, a shopping event and a Saugerties Village and Town square of sorts.
The Saugerties Farmers Market Committee is a small dedicated group of volunteers who organize and manage the market. John Bassler, the market's treasurer, handles the finances and is at the Market Manager table every market day answering all the questions. Masha Zager writes FRESH!, the weekly e-newsletter, a short, snappy, and visually pleasing information source (link for ConstantContact Saugerties Farmers Market e-newsletter sign-up), and posts on social media. Joe Hernandez helps set up the market each week. Hired staff include Carmen and Maggie Dumont, Market Managers, and Jeffrey Dawson, Operations Manager. Additional volunteers are always needed. (Market Contact link.)
Saugerties is fortunate to be one of a number of growing communities that have recognized the value that a strong, thriving farmers market can bring to a community and are lucky enough to have the people needed to sustain it year after year.
Contributors
Many thanks to the folks who contributed source material and photos that helped this page come together. Those contributors include but are not limited to
- Barry Benepe
- Judith Spektor
- Rickie Tamayo
- James Tamayo
- Joy Moore
- Nancy Campbell
- Doug Freese
- Jim Peppler
- Masha Zager