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On a beautiful Saturday morning, dozens of people filled the Winchester Town Common, vendors and shoppers alike. Live music drifted across the green as families spread out on the grass to listen. Shoppers filled their bags with everything from handmade pastries to ripe tomatoes, made just a couple of days ago and from a place just a few minutes away.
The whole scene felt easy and warm. Neighbors stopped to talk, kids ran between the booths and the good weather pulled everyone outside into the same shared space.
“When you buy at the farmers market, you’re not just buying a product,” explained Executive Director Fred Yen. “You are actively investing in local farms, local businesses and the kind of community many people say they want but only exists if people participate in it.”
Yen started the Winchester Farmers Market back in 2008 after an inspiring experience at the vibrant markets in Switzerland. The goal? To support local farmers, the environment and serve as a place where small businesses and entrepreneurs could thrive.
Beyond providing a home for local businesses and farms, the market also offers several food assistance programs, including Anna’s Fund for Food Assistance. The program gives Winchester and Woburn residents experiencing food insecurity or hardship access to fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables.
Yen says the market intentionally doesn’t ask for proof of income.
“The market is a public space. People can see who is receiving assistance, we don’t want that to be a barrier,” clarified Yen. “Occasionally, we’ve heard people ask who is ‘deserving’ of help. Our view is that hardship is not always visible or purely financial. By not asking for people to prove their struggle, we choose to honor their dignity and trust their decision to ask for support.”
Now it is the market’s 18th season, and every Saturday from June to November, the market is open for business at the Winchester Town Common, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The market has grown to more than 50 vendors selling local and handmade products, ranging from baked goods to artisan wines to all-natural soaps.
Deciding which vendors get an opportunity to sell at the market is no easy task.
“Choosing vendors is a lot of trial and error, a mix of intentional design and market response,” said Yen.
This means trying to build a market with a variety of products while trying to avoid duplication. It all depends on the customers. Some creative vendors have done very well at Winchester, but not at other markets. Other unique products haven’t found their footing here.
A surprising result came out of the vendor selection process. Winchester loves bakers! The executive director explains that despite having nine different bakers selling on the same day, they all still did so well.
One of these bakers is Isobel Magee, a Winchester resident and the sole baker of Scones by Isobel.
“We sell around 14 to 20 flavors of homemade, authentic English scones," said Magee. “Each batch takes about two days to prepare, and the scones are baked overnight.”
Scones by Isobel has been selling at the Winchester market for four years. Through that time, her bakery adapted the scones to an American taste.
“English scones don’t have flavors or are much simpler, usually just English butter. I adapted by adding many flavors from lemon blueberry to orange cranberry. Some back home [England] are kind of shocked,” continued Magee.
For consumers, the market is a breath of fresh air.
One buyer explained she tries to buy as much of her groceries from the market because she knows exactly where they are coming from and who made them. Another stated that coming out allowed her to support local businesses.
Yen said for those hesitant about buying at the market, “You don’t have to do all your shopping here. Just come and explore. Talk to farmers. You will discover food that’s fresher and often grown by people you’ll meet face to face.”
To put on an event of this scale, it is obviously a hard lift. Or, as Yen would like to put it, “demanding.”
“People see four hours of a lively Saturday market, but they don’t see the many, many hours behind it all,” he explained. “That’s recruiting vendors and volunteers, coordinating permits and logistics, fundraising, handling communications, managing weather issues, organizing music, and our special events.”
Just as importantly, the market needs to build and maintain relationships with farmers and other businesses. Creating a welcoming and vibrant market takes year-round work, even if each season is only five months.
Part of what lowers the stress, Yen said, is the wonderful group of high school student volunteers.
“They help with everything from setting up the market and distributing Anna’s Fund benefits to fundraising, translating for Chinese-speaking customers, and even filling in when vendors are short-staffed,” he said.
The Winchester High School Farmers Market Club was created during the pandemic. Succession planning has been built into their culture, recruiting and mentoring their own successors to ensure that the help they provide this market will be here to stay.
There have been bumps in the road for the market.
When the Winchester market first began, there were fewer competing markets in the local area. However, as farmers markets became more popular, the increased competition decreased the availability of farmers and vendors as well as shoppers from out of town.
“We responded by increasing our event programming to have other reasons for shoppers to come to Winchester,” replied Yen.
Other issues are the frequently changing customer tastes and climate change, which causes prolonged heat waves or more frequent windstorms. The latter is a major problem for the market and the farmers, impacting seasonal yields.
Xiyue Eric Han is a student at Winchester High School. He has been an intern with Winchester News since summer 2025.
