NORTHVILLIANS,
This week, we will touch on activities of the Northville Chamber of Commerce award-winning Farmers’ Market and its future. This is the second in a series featuring the activities of our various task forces. These work groups include: Ford Field, the Rouge River Restoration & Riverwalk, Farmers’ Market and the Sustainability Team. In this note, we’ll focus on the Farmers’ Market which, in one form or another, has been around the community from our very beginnings, that being 1827.
A Look Back at the Farmers’ Market…
Let’s talk about our Northville Farmers’ Market activities through the years. Our award-winning market, sponsored & run by our Chamber of Commerce, has teamed up with the Farmers’ Market Task Force to review potential future locations and also attributes their patrons and participants have suggested. Amidst the possible development actions percolating at the Downs site, the task of evaluating alternative locations is an important priority.
Let’s take a look through time on these market activities from Northville Record stories, personal interviews with our old timers and some historic stories caught on library video presentations.
Northville was established as an agricultural area in 1827. So it was nothing new when an article in 1919 highlighted Sam Pickard’s Farmers Market store (156 Center – Corner of Dunlap & Center) housed in the Old Opera House. The market sold & delivered vegetables, poultry, fish, & livestock for much of the first half of the 20th century.
In the library’s video archives, there is a humorous story about how Bruce Turnbull provided Sam Pickard a dozen of his father’s chickens (from their coop on 222 Fairbrook) to accumulate enough resources to buy a tux for his 1937 NHS senior prom.
In 1952, shortly after the Opera House was torn down (closing Pickard’s Farmers Market), the location was leased by the City to alleviate parking pressure in town – some things never change!
Interestingly, Samuel Pickard’s obituary noted that he lived at 330 Eaton Drive, just across from where I live today. The Eaton Farm was highlighted many times in early Northville Record ads, dating back to the 1800’s. With 2,000+ apple trees, 1000 cherry trees, 500 peach trees and much more, the Eaton Farm was a major provider of produce locally and for Detroit’s Eastern Market.
In more recent times (1974), articles again surfaced in The Record about the Thursday morning Farmers’ Market that John Genitti & others led. The Market has been hosted in various locations around town, including City Square, Main & Hutton, at Northville Square and, of course, the Downs property.
Notably, we have quite a history of farms and orchards around Northville. They yielded huge quantities of vegetables, fruits, produce and even maple syrup from the Cass Benton Park area, and cheese from the historic Northville Cheese Company. A 1966 Northville Record ad for local growers featured Spicer Orchards, Foreman Orchards, Erwin’s Farm and Parmenter’s Cider Mill. Later issues mention Prielipp Farms.
NOW you know the rest of the story on the past 100 years of Farmers’ Market activities in our beloved Northville. The Farmers’ Market Task Force is doing an outstanding job gearing up support for our Chamber’s NEXT 100 years of Market activities.
If you would like to learn more on this and other important task force initiatives, click on https://northvillecommunitysupportfund.com/ or call me anytime to share your perspective about the future of this community we love.
Keep that Northville Faith!
Brian Turnbull
Mayor – Northville
BTurnbull@ci.northville.mi.us / 248.505.6849
(Reach out to me anytime or forward this communication to others interested.)
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