Cherrydale Farmers Market Kicks Off With Vendors Selling Out

ARLINGTON, VA — Vendors from Pennsylvania to the Northern Neck of Virginia traveled to Arlington Saturday morning to sell their vegetables and other goods at the inaugural Cherrydale Farmers Market in Arlington.

The customer count was larger than organizers expected, especially from the time the market opened at 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. Some vendors sold out of their goods long before the market wrapped up at noon.

The Cherrydale Farmers Market was held in the courtyard on the southeast side of Dorothy Hamm Middle School, the former site of H-B Woodlawn Secondary school.

A dozen vendors showed up for the first week of the farmers market, and organizers expect more to apply to join the market as they learn about its success. The Cherrydale Farmers Market’s permit with Arlington County allows for a total of 20 vendors in the space at the middle school.

Field to Table Inc., a nonprofit organization that operates other farmers’ markets in Arlington, asked county officials for authority to run the new market from 8 a.m. to noon each Saturday from April to November. The county board voted to approve a permit for the new farmers market on June 15.

Robert Swennes, executive director of Field to Table and the person who shepherded the Cherrydale Farmers Market through the approval process, said it was a “gratifying turnout” for Saturday's kickoff market.

“The market will grow, shall I say, organically depending upon the amount of response,” Swennes said. “Judging by today, there is a lot of response.”

In response to noise concerns from the adjacent Donaldson Run Civic Association, the county limited vendor parking to one road. Some residents had to live through years of construction activity at the school and wanted to make sure the new market would not create a new source of noise on Saturday mornings.

The Cherrydale Farmers Market will replace the Marymount University farmers market, which closed in 2020 during the pandemic.

Swennes said the hours of the Marymount farmers market were 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Farm vendors told the organizers of the new Cherrydale Farmers Market that they prefer markets that run from 8 a.m. to noon because customer traffic tends to thin out after 11 a.m.

Local residents appreciated the convenience of the new market. Peter Harnik, who rode his bike to the market from nearby Maywood, said the middle school site “is a lovely location that is very convenient for so many of us. There’s a lot of population that lives around here.”

“It is very nice to be able to keep local farms going so that we’re not eating food from California and other countries,” Harnik said.

Workers from Linda Vista Farm in Montross, in Virginia's Northern Neck, said they got up at 3 a.m. to make the drive to Arlington for the first-ever Cherrydale Farmers Market. They said demand for the farm's produce was strong and that they look forward to coming back to Cherrydale on a weekly basis.

Swennes said the vendors that sold out of products “will definitely bring more next week.”