PORT ANGELES -- Last year was a leap forward for the Port Angeles Farmers Market, and two organizers are determined to see it grow stronger in 2009.
The duo is Michele d'Hemecourt, the market manager who arrived in Port Angeles from North Carolina just in time for winter, and Jane Vanderhoof, who with her husband, Peter, runs the Westwind Farm near Joyce.
Vanderhoof was elected a week ago to the Washington Farmers Market Association Board of Directors during the association's annual conference in Puyallup.
She's been with the Port Angeles market since it was downtown on Laurel Street; when the City Council discontinued the market's use permit, Vanderhoof and the other vendors moved out to the Clallam County Courthouse parking lot at Fourth and Peabody streets.
That location is less than ideal, Vanderhoof and d'Hemecourt agree, since they feel that few tourists find their way over.
The numbers tell the tale: In 2004 on Laurel Street the market grossed $186,652.
Outside the courthouse in 2006, the vendors brought in $163,825.
Tide turns
But last year, the tide started to turn: Sales reached $228,248.
Still, the Port Angeles market trails its Port Townsend and Sequim counterparts.
Port Townsend's seven-month season last year grossed $802,912, with some 90 vendors drawing about 50,000 shoppers into Port Townsend.
The Open Aire Market, which brings about four dozen vendors into downtown Sequim on Saturdays from mid-May to mid-October, saw gross sales of $249,000 in 2008, up from $174,000 in 2006. (Read More)
The duo is Michele d'Hemecourt, the market manager who arrived in Port Angeles from North Carolina just in time for winter, and Jane Vanderhoof, who with her husband, Peter, runs the Westwind Farm near Joyce.
Vanderhoof was elected a week ago to the Washington Farmers Market Association Board of Directors during the association's annual conference in Puyallup.
She's been with the Port Angeles market since it was downtown on Laurel Street; when the City Council discontinued the market's use permit, Vanderhoof and the other vendors moved out to the Clallam County Courthouse parking lot at Fourth and Peabody streets.
That location is less than ideal, Vanderhoof and d'Hemecourt agree, since they feel that few tourists find their way over.
The numbers tell the tale: In 2004 on Laurel Street the market grossed $186,652.
Outside the courthouse in 2006, the vendors brought in $163,825.
Tide turns
But last year, the tide started to turn: Sales reached $228,248.
Still, the Port Angeles market trails its Port Townsend and Sequim counterparts.
Port Townsend's seven-month season last year grossed $802,912, with some 90 vendors drawing about 50,000 shoppers into Port Townsend.
The Open Aire Market, which brings about four dozen vendors into downtown Sequim on Saturdays from mid-May to mid-October, saw gross sales of $249,000 in 2008, up from $174,000 in 2006. (Read More)
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