Weekly Bigfork market takes fresh approach

Bigfork will have a new reason to love Mondays this summer as the all-new Bigfork Village Market joins the downtown scene beginning in May.

Growers, makers, musicians and speakers will join together each week at the Brookside Yard on Mill Street for a one-of-a-kind of farmers market created with the intent of capturing the spirit of Bigfork.

The market will include both traditional aspects, like locally grown produce and handcrafted wares, as well as a few unique features like a free outdoor yoga class, educational speakers and nonprofit booths.

“We’re excited to support kind of a full range of people,” said Holly Wielkoszewski, one of the event organizers.

Her fellow organizer, Jenny Rogers, agreed.

“There was a large hole in the community for family-friendly events and also for local produce and local vendors to have an outlet in Bigfork,” Rogers said. “It’s nice exposure. Bigfork is a very tight-knit community, but we also think that having nonprofits and speakers and musicians and yoga will bring people in from outside of Bigfork as well and people will kind of get to know our village.”

The idea for the market came up in November at the first official meeting of the Bigfork Innovations Group, where Wielkoszewski, Rogers and two of their other co-organizers, Britt McGillivray and Elizabeth Vandeberg, expressed a desire for a new way to bring the community together while also attracting out-of-towners.

Two weeks later, the women had a committee devoted to bringing their vision to life, and not long after, vendor applications and phone calls from musicians and sponsors came pouring in.

According to Wielkoszewski, the team got far more applications than they had space for and had to create waiting lists for musicians, vendors and even sponsors.

THE MARKET venue will provide accommodations for 23 vendors and two rotating food trucks, an outdoor bar for locally brewed and distilled spirits, a grassy family-friendly picnic and play area, fire pits and a scenic view of the Swan River all within the convenience of downtown.

The space, the women said, is a perfect setting for the new market and will bring an uptick in traffic downtown on Mondays when little else is going on.

Though Bigfork already has one smaller farmer’s market, the group hopes not to compete, but to add to the variety of events and opportunities offered weekly in the village.

“I think that there is a real great driver pushing that sustainable economic development of the village in this group of younger entrepreneurs and younger business owners that are wanting to say, ‘This is where we’ve chosen to live and we love the spirit of Bigfork,’” Wielkoszewski said. “We love it for what it is, but we also just think there are some great ways we can augment that a little bit and bring our energy and our passion for our lifestyle and where we live and make that reflect in what other people see when they come to Bigfork.”

Vandeberg said she also hoped that the market would bring together older and younger generations of Bigfork residents through a common vision and desire to revitalize the village.

“Bigfork was getting a little stale,” she said. “ It’s really refreshing to see that there are so many of us that are getting involved, and I think it’s also revitalizing the people that have been here for many years that have been volunteers for a very long time. I think if they see this young energy coming in, it kind of boosts them up too, so we’re kind of all working together.”

Still, McGillivray said the goal of the market is not to change the essence of Bigfork or its reputation as a small-town community.

“We live here. We love it here. We want to continue to stay here,” McGillivray said. “We don’t want to change anything about Bigfork, that’s the point. We love it here, we just want to add to the community.”

“It’s also part of trying to educate the rest of the Flathead Valley about Bigfork. There’s a stigma, or at least an idea of what Bigfork is,” Vandeberg added. “I hear it in Whitefish all the time. ‘Oh, there’s nothing going on in Bigfork.’ Well, watch out because now there is.”

The market will begin May 21 and will continue every Monday from 3-7 p.m. until Sept. 17.

For a full list of vendors, events, sponsors and more, visit www.bigforkmarket.org, or stay up to date from week to week by following the Bigfork Village Market on Instagram and Facebook.

Reporter Mary Cloud Taylor can be reached at 758-4459 or mtaylor@dailyinterlake.com.