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By Jim Buice
For the Clemmons Courier

When the Clemmons Farmers Market resumes in 2020, it will be moving to its third home in five years.

Shannon Ford, marketing and communication director for Clemmons, announced at the most recent Clemmons Village Council meeting that the market will be shifting from Village Hall to the Jerry Long Family YMCA next year.

In addition to the new location, Ford said that the market will return to its original Saturday morning time slot, thanks in large part as a result of information received from the first quarterly survey on the village’s website.

The market had been moved to Tuesdays at Village Hall, and Ford said customers and vendors expressed concerns on having it on a weekday in a location on U.S. 158 not far from the intersection at Lewisville-Clemmons Road where access was often difficult.

“One of the biggest takeaways here was market times,” Ford said of the survey, “and it was an overwhelming percentage of people who would be more likely to attend the market on a Saturday morning.”

Ford said that as of last week, there had already been 210 responses to the survey.

“Of the people who were participating in the survey, over half of them had never been to the Farmers Market in 2019, which in a way is promising so at least we’re reaching new people and hopefully we can get them for the 2020 market,” she said.

The first Clemmons Farmers Market, which came about after requests from many local residents and coming alongside the start of the Clemmons Community Garden that was created behind Village Hall, was in May 2014 and held at Tanglewood Park on Thursdays later in the day and Saturday mornings.

Clemmons worked with Tanglewood and Forsyth County in the first three years, along with sponsoring other events there, before county officials stated concerns over limited parking with many people using the nearby dog park and campground. Tanglewood is the property of Forsyth County and not in the village limits.

That, along with the goal of Clemmons to see the market grow larger, prompted Clemmons to move it to the location at Village Hall, where it has been since September 2016. However, the shift to that busy spot, and later changing the market schedule from Saturday mornings to Tuesdays from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., didn’t seem to be as popular with the patrons.

“From talking with our vendors and our customers that we did have this year, people were not exactly thrilled with the location,” Ford said. “As you know, it’s sometimes very difficult to get in and out of our building, especially around 5 p.m. when the market was being held.”

So the return to Saturday morning from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and moving to the new location at the local YMCA, was a win-win, according to Ford.

“We’re really excited about the opportunity of partnering with the Jerry Long Y in allowing us to use space there,” Ford said.

The market runs each year from May through October.