Editorial: Take a trip to Saturday’s farmers market

Typically, these pages don’t include a lot of farming coverage in January and February. But over the past four weeks, with a little can-do attitude from some hard-working individuals, a winter farmers market was organized to touch down on East Main Street this winter.

The weekly market kicks off this Saturday, Feb. 1, and we’d like to urge our readers to check it out.

From poultry to dairy, baked goods to raw oysters, soap to hand-knit sweaters and root beer to beer and wine, the Riverhead Farmers Market is sure to offer an interesting variety that many in Riverhead and beyond could easily support.

It originated, perhaps not surprisingly, in the town’s community development department and gained traction through the downtown Business Improvement District. When community development director Christine Kempner bumped into a former neighbor, Holly Browder — proprietor of Browder’s Birds — she learned the poultry farmer was looking for a place to sell during the winter months after the Sag Harbor market closed this season. The rest, as they say, is history. And a brief one at that, as the chance encounter led to real results in a matter of only weeks.

So now, there’s renewed activity at yet another vacant downtown Riverhead storefront. It’s no Trader Joe’s, pessimists may say, but it sure beats looking at an empty store every weekend.

And we hope our readers will support these local vendors — not to mention the existing businesses that operate downtown every day — lest the market fly the coop to the South Fork next winter.