Halifax Farmers' Market is over....or is it?

Soooo...the Farmers' Market here in Halifax, has moved. Or has it? It depends on who you ask, I guess. There's a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly new building that will house *most* of the vendors from the Farmers' Market. This new market will be called the Seaport Market. But not everyone is leaving the old venue. Apparently, there were some personality conflicts between leaders of the different "factions", so some people decided not to move when the time came. So now there'll be two markets.

The "Old" Farmers' Market

• Centrally/conveniently located.
• Building has amazing character, lots of nooks and crannies and all the other charms that come with 1800s architecture.
• Victim of its own success - so popular that the crowds were almost nightmarish, you just couldn't even move around
• Only available from 7am - 1 pm on Saturdays


The New Market

• great new eco-friendly building
• (almost) all of the vendors you know and love
• room to move! and shop!
• wheelchair accessible (a lot of the old building wasn't)
• Open 7 days a week - more convenient for shoppers
• Open 7 days a week - hard for many farmers to maintain a presence there 7 days a week (apparently they were given the option of "Saturdays only" or "7 days/week" in renting space - might have been better if they had a "2 days/week" option)
• Location is completely horrible. (It's called "Marginal Road". Does that say anything to you?) The middle of nowhere on the waterfront, and NO BUSES.

So there it is in a nutshell, there's good and bad for the old and the new. But the move has been made, apparently - this past Saturday was it's last official day in the old space. If it wasn't for the newspaper doing a story on the rift, I'd have had NO IDEA when the changeover was happening. Google searches and official websites have an appalling lack of information - I understand the new market opens next week, but no idea when, or what its hours of operation will be. It's been frustrating for sure, if they want people to go, they've gotta get the word out!

I'll update my farmers' market listing at the top of this page, once I find out the Seaport Market's hours and such.

There's been some good articles on the move as of late: the Chronicle-Herald did a good one on the rift, and a great opinion piece on the benefits of the move in the Coast.

So, I'm not sure in sum total how I feel about the move, but I do look forward to checking out the new location! We'll see how it goes for everyone involved - time will tell!