By Stan Maddux

Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS – An operator of a farmers market in Indiana feels his state recognition has a lot to do with his vendors and customers not being viewed as just another face in the crowd.

Damien Appel said it’s the way he designed his Coffee Creek Farmers Market to be when shopping back in the day was in a more intimate, small-town type of setting.

“People want more and more reasons to connect with other people and that’s what we do,” he said.

His market in Chesterton is this year’s winner of Indiana’s Ultimate Farmers Market Challenge.

It’s the second year for the contest sponsored by Indiana Grown and the Indiana Farmers Market Community of Practice. Indiana Grown is under the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.

The winner was decided by people across the state voting for their favorite hometown farmers market.

“We cannot thank community supporters enough for their votes and for supporting the farmers and food grown in their local communities,” said Christina Ferroli, Indiana Farmer’s Market Community of Practice  program coordinator. 

Appel said he asked for support in emails to the 1,200 customers whose contact information he has in a data base.

He believes the response is a reflection of the sense of friendship and community along with the quality people experience during their visits and appreciate.

“Our customers really came through for us,” he said.

Appel, a local vegetable grower and vendor, said he usually draws a few hundred or more customers and around 25 vendors each time his market, just south Lake Michigan, operates from early April to late October. It’s open every Wednesday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Fresh vegetables and fruit, dairy products, along with freshly cooked meats and other things like baked goods, are offered strictly by food producers usually from a 60 or so mile radius extending into Michigan.

He doesn’t allow vendors who buy most of their produce commercially or providers of non-edible products to keep things in line with what he believes is a true farmers market where more appreciation seems to exist between a solid core of returning vendors and customers.

Appel said he also doesn’t provide live music, cooking demonstrations and other attractions found at other farmers markets drawing much larger crowds, but that’s by design.

He prefers what he has now, a more closely-knit environment where relationships are developed between producers and buyers from seeing each other throughout the season.

Appel said the exchanges ranging from a simple wave of the hand, small talk to more family-like conservations are an added bonus, especially in a more distant retail chain, keyboard-chat dominated world.

“There’s just a better connection for people who value that,” he said.

Enhancing the experience is the 150-acre Coffee Creek Watershed within a very short walk for customers to sit at picnic tables to eat what they just purchased at the market and enjoy the site of the nature preserve’s water fountain.

“Coffee Creek is a wonderful farmers market and this recognition is well deserved,” said Indiana Grown Director Caroline Patrick.                                                                                                                                          Patrick also said farmers markets are an important part of local economies statewide. “It’s great to see consumers supporting them,” she said.

Appel, who started the market in 2016, said the money spent at farmers markets not only benefits the growers but local producers of all kinds as it circulates throughout the area instead of being taken elsewhere.

In 2013, he began growing salad greens consisting primarily of various lettuces at his five acre Native Roots Farm and Nursery in nearby Wanatah.

He grows his produce along with the shrubs and small trees he began raising last year outdoors and in the greenhouses to extend his growing season.

“I’m pretty much a self-taught farmer. First generation,” he said.

Appel said much of his produce is sold at the farmers market where he has paid staff helping to take money from customers when he’s away, periodically, running the operation.

“I could not do it without all of the players. My vendors, my customers. We all matter and we all play a role in it to celebrate local food,” he said.