Get To Know the Mill City Farmers Market Team, Part 2

Article by Becky Fillinger, photos provided

Sarah Holle, photo credit Mill City TimesSarah Holle, Program Manager

Pulling the Saturday market together every week is a seven-day-a-week job! Sarah Holle is Program Manager for the Mill City Farmers Market. We talked to her about managing the vendors, assisting with every aspect of market day operations and her early interest in market management. Take her advice – come to the market early – talk to the vendors, and you’ll see Sarah in action, too.

Q:  Please tell our readers about your role as Program Manager for the Mill City Farmers Market (MCFM) – I imagine the responsibilities are varied. 

A:  My role as Program Manager does include quite a variety of responsibilities. The big part of this position is vendor management including reviewing applications, gathering committees to give input on applicants, reviewing vendor sourcing and farming operations, scheduling and ensuring site needs such as electricity are available, and training. I also help connect vendors to resources or contacts they may need, such as connecting makers to farmers to source their ingredients, or new vendors to the proper regulatory agency for licensing. 

While that is the majority of my time, I also hire and train our incredible day staff who help set up and make the market happen on Saturday. Without them setting up our info and programming booths, assisting our chefs with demos, and running our EBT and credit card machine the market would look very different! 

When our day staffers are setting up our equipment in the morning, I am measuring out vendor booth spaces, ushering vehicles on and off, troubleshooting any issues that come up for vendors, while rearranging the map last minute if a vendor cancels.

Above three photos - Beau Thomas of Pure Ginger For You, Pam Benike of Prairie Hollow Farm, and Andrew Hanson-Pierre of Clover Bee Farm prepare their areas for the Saturday morning rush of shoppers. Sarah and her team make sure each vendor has what they need for a smooth day at the Market.

Winter market set up inside the Mill City Museum (November - April).

As the first zero waste farmers market in Minnesota, I also ensure we have the proper supplies, and that vendors serving prepared food are all using compostables. 

The other program I manage is our Greens for Good produce gleaning and purchasing program. This is a partnership with Augsburg and MHealth Fairview. The program has evolved over the years, but currently students from Augsburg come to the market to glean excess produce from farmers. They then pack CSA style bags and bring them to residents at Health Commons in Cedar-Riverside to give away. We pay our farmers a wholesale rate for the produce so that food access is not at the expense of those growing it. 

Q:  You joined the MCFM in January 2020 – in the midst of the COVID shutdowns. Please tell us about the challenges of managing the market in the pandemic and the evolution of operations to the gradual reopening.   

A:  What a question. It was an interesting time to start managing the market - we basically had to toss everything I had just been trained on out the window and start over.

Very early on, Minnesota ag leaders were at the forefront of lobbying to keep farmers markets open and accessible during shutdown as an essential place for people to buy food. We pivoted our plans nearly every week based on the changing situation, but remained open in some capacity throughout the pandemic. We started with pre-order pickup only in March, 2020 so that farmers who had already planted and prepped for the season could continue to have a place to sell, and the community could have a safe place outside to access food. We continued to listen to the health departments guidelines for reopening and developed policies accordingly. I never imagined I would have to take on the role of public health interpreter in this role when I started. But we did everything we could to keep our rural and immunocompromised community members safe while balancing creating a place for people to efficiently and safely grocery shop.

One of the biggest challenges during this time was knowing the weight that every decision we made had on the livelihoods of these small business owners at the market - we did not take that lightly.

Since 2020 we have slowly brought back programming that is important to our mission, reevaluating for what makes sense in this “new normal” and what we no longer have capacity for. This has looked like focusing on food access and education through our Greens for Good, cooking demos and Power of Produce programs.

Sarah (far right) at the vendor appreciation day hospitality table (the banner along the brick wall says "Thank You, Vendors!").

Q:  Building relationships must be crucial to your success – and ultimately, the success of the Farmers Market. What are the key relationships you nurture and maintain?

A:  My role is very vendor focused. I love building relationships with all our vendors, they hold so much knowledge coming from so many perspectives. I try to create a space where we can learn from each other, where we can respectfully give each other feedback to improve systems and operations, as well as to learn how we can better support them.

Sarah and team members at the Mpls Farmers Market 2023 First Taste event in early May at Royal Foundry. This is an annual meet and greet event in which Minneapolis-based farmers market managers and new vendors show members of the press what's on tap for the new season.

Sarah checking in with Nistler Farms.

Other important relationships we work to foster are those with the other farmer market managers in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities, the State and across the country. When we all do better, we all do better. As a new wave of market managers starts, these are vital relationships for sharing institutional knowledge, as well as working together to write grants, find support, and share other information. This continues to help strengthen our local food economy and access.

Q:  You’ve worked in the farmers market field in several prior positions with Urban Ventures in Minneapolis and City Slicker Farms in Oakland, CA. What sparked your interest in farmers markets?

A:  I have always loved attending farmers markets and spending hours trying and learning about new foods or ways to use them.

In 2015 at City Slicker Farms, I was working as an Ally (intern) at the greenhouse and urban farm sites. We grew and harvested high quality culturally appropriate produce and seedlings for the West Oakland community to buy at a small onsite farm stand on a sliding scale. In this position I learned so much about urban agriculture, environmental racism, and food access in the West Oakland community.

During that same time, I started working for a vendor at the Martinez Farmers Market, which was my first experience working at a ‘full’ farmers market. I loved working in that environment, learning so much about what different vendors were doing for food access, market operations, and getting to know regular customers. One of my regular customers was a market manager at a different PCFMA farmers market, and it was from them that I learned that market management is a job.

These experiences sparked my interest in farmers markets and their important role in our local food system. So, when I was in my senior capstone class for Food Systems at the U of M, Mill City Farmers Market was a very intriguing choice to work with! That was how I initially got connected with MCFM.

Q:  What do you want us to know about the MCFM? 

A:  Get to know our vendors and buy from them! Hear their story and their passion; if you come early, you’ll have more time to talk with them. Know that markets don’t just happen. While they are a great third space for the community, and a place to access high quality local foods, there are many people behind this operation and many months of planning! 

If you are interested in being a vendor, our applications open in December for the following summer. We are always looking for new unique vendors!