Can we save our local farm market?

As I mentioned last week, our local food market (note: different than a grocery store) is closing down in a few days.  Apparently, there had been an outpouring of concern, sadness, and frustration at the news from a number of people in the community besides us.

There was a gathering there Wednesday evening for a brainstorming session to try to figure out a path forward such that we could continue to have healthy largely-organic food in our area.

There were approximately 60 people there including the mayor of the town and county congresspeople there.  We learned that there were two primary reasons it's closing down.

• The owner is burnt out from trying to keep both the farm in the lower part of the county and the market in the northern part both up, running, stocked and staffed.
• By insisting on paying good wages (read: a good bit over minimum), insisting on only stocking largely-organic food from the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and having reasonably high energy costs (no LED lights) the margin of profit has always been slim.  With sales being less this year than last, he was not digging out from his loans.

The owner wants to help continue to make good food available in the northern part of the county even if he's not running his business here any more.  To that end, he's willing to donate all the fixtures, cash registers, refrigerators and freezers to a successor.  Apparently, he's had some conversations with the landlord who is willing to "work with us" to try to maintain a presence there in that storefront.

After a lot of conversation, it sounds like there's a movement to investigate the feasibility of converting the business into a CO-OP.  Based on some inputs from some seemingly-knowledgeable people in the meeting, converting that store into a non-profit provides a number of advantages that the current owner's for-profit business cannot take advantage of.

It'll be interesting to see how things progress going forward.  At least this gives us some hope.