Reprinted with permission
Barry Adams | Wisconsin State Journal

There are no counterclockwise plods or shoulder-to-shoulder crowds here.

Parking is free, abundant and convenient, but you can still also buy spicy cheese bread, ears of sweet corn, fresh-cut flowers and cheese curds.

Just more than 5 miles to the west of the Dane County Farmers’ Market, the shade is plentiful and the vibe is chill as the Market Ramblers happily play fiddles, guitars, recorders and washboards that add more ambience to a farmers market many may have overlooked or even forgotten. And if that’s not enough homeyness, one of the fiddle players is Madelyn Leopold, the granddaughter of Aldo Leopold, the late UW-Madison professor considered the father of wildlife ecology.

The Westside Community Market, while smaller and not as famous as its older Capitol Square sister, has for 20 years provided a beloved Saturday morning shopping option. Now in its third location, organizers believe the market has found a long-term home with room for expansion in an idyllic setting a block off Mineral Point Road.

Set among the islands of wildflowers, asphalt and buildings that are home to some of the city’s most cutting-edge companies, the market features up to 60 vendors who set up their tents and tables in a parking lot in UW Research Park for a loyal following of customers, serving as a convenient alternative to the Dane County Farmers’ Market, the largest producer-only market in the country and one of the city’s major tourist draws.

“There’s an incredible, dedicated following there, but everyone knows that if you’re shopping after 10 a.m., good luck,” said Kirsten Kordet, who for 19 seasons has been selling vegetables harvested from her 6-acre Blue Moon Farm near Stoughton.

“What I love about this market is that it is a shoppers’ market. This is not a tourist attraction. It’s where people come to do their weekly shopping. And they are like a dedicated, a dedicated clientele. They come here rain or shine. It’s a very reliable market for us as producers because of that.”

This is where you can buy farmers market staples that, at this time of the year, include tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, basil, honey and pots of mums. There are freshly picked St. Croix and Edelweiss grapes grown by Giovanna and Tom Jeffries in Albany, raspberries from the garden plots of Shoua Vang and Vang Chong near DeForest, and flowers grown in Cottage Grove by the Lor family.

The locally made cheese options include bags of curd from Murphy Farms in Gays Mills, bricks of sheep’s milk cheese from Landmark Creamery in Paoli and fresh goat cheese from Dreamfarm in Cross Plains, where Diana Murphy makes goat cheese and harvests honey and chicken and duck eggs. She’s been selling at the Westside market since 2006, and it’s the only market at which she sells her products.

“This, for us, has turned out to be a really good move,” Murphy said. “It’s hard to find a location that has what we need to have a market.”

Stella’s Bakery is here with its popular cheese bread and also fresh pastries and morning buns covered with sugar. So, too, is Atoms to Apples, which sells 30 varieties of apples grown in Mount Horeb, while Scott Alsum has mounds of sweet corn, bins of squash and a table full of pumpkins grown near Randolph. All three vendors do double duty on Saturday with spots at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, too.

In August, Alsum sold about 800 dozen ears of corn on Capitol Square each Saturday and another 350 dozen at the Westside market. This past Saturday, he was on pace to sell about 550 dozen Downtown and 275 dozen at the Westside market. Alsum has been selling on Capitol Square since 1981 and for the past 10 years at the Westside market, which moved to the UW Research Park in 2023 after six seasons in the parking lot of the UW Health Digestive Health Center near the corner of University Avenue and Whitney Way.

“I was mad when they moved us because I thought we were established and doing so well, but we didn’t skip a beat,” Alsum said. “This is a nice little market. (Customers) love the ease of it. People don’t like the crowds Downtown.”

The Westside Community Market was founded in 2005 when the Hilldale Farmers Market moved from the front of the mall to the backside of the property.

Barry Orton, who was vice president of the market’s board at the time, said the new location was too small, created accessibility issues and lacked adequate parking, which led vendors to vote 44-9 to move the market to the parking lot of the nearby Hill Farms State Office Building at the corner of Segoe Road and Sheboygan Avenue. But when the state announced plans to redevelop the site, the market pulled stakes in 2017 for the Digestive Health Center. However, the market was forced to move again after the 2022 season when UW Health announced plans to redevelop the site.

Hilldale still has a small farmers market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but it’s dwarfed by the Westside market, which uses the parking lot for the MGE Innovation Center at 505 S. Rosa Road.

“Hopefully we’ll stay here,” said Orton, who is still on the board and was at Saturday’s market. “West Siders, particularly if they don’t have guests from out of town, they really want to come, buy their stuff and leave. They don’t want to fight the tourists on the square.”

The Madison area is blessed with an abundance of riches when it comes to farmers markets, which can be found every day of the week. Some, like the Northside, Monroe Street and Monona markets, are held on Sundays, with a Monday market at the Novation Campus on Rimrock Road and Tuesday markets in Oregon, at McPike Park and the Labor Temple on South Park Street. Wednesday markets are in Waunakee, at Hilldale and on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between the Madison Municipal and City County buildings. Fitchburg, McFarland and Mount Horeb have markets on Thursdays and Stoughton on Fridays.

For Ben Zimmerman, manager of the Westside market, the move from the Digestive Health Center to the UW Research Park has resulted in more foot traffic, thanks to a location in the heart of the West Side, home to about 60,000 residents.

“We’re just at this great crossroads in Madison,” Zimmerman said. “We’ve picked up all of these new folks who had heard about the market for years but had never taken the time to swing by, and now we’re seeing them every week.”

Growth is possible

But another market could be added in the next few years as Zimmerman, who has been the Westside market manager since 2012, is working on plans for a weekday market in the UW Research Park. The market would not only serve West Side residents but could draw on the thousands of employees who work in the research park, home to companies such as Exact Sciences, InvivoSciences, Stemina Biomarker Discovery and Affiliated Engineers. Zimmerman also wants to grow the number of vendors that sell on Saturdays because the parking lot has room for more.

“As we get more established here, we’ll kind of pursue some of those other options,” he said. “It’d be a smaller market, but it would be a nice thing to come out of work on a Wednesday or Tuesday afternoon and pick up your fresh produce and your meat and cheese and stuff and take it home.”

The Saturday Westside market also allows smaller vendors to sell their products. The market tries to balance the types of goods that are sold so that there is not an overabundance of one type of product. That philosophy provides more variety for customers and allows for higher sales for those selling at the market, Zimmerman said.

Sandra Morris, who works full-time as an administrative consultant, said the Westside market allows her the opportunity to market her Ernie’s African Kick Sauce. A native of Togo in West Africa, Morris makes the sauce at the FEED Kitchen on Madison’s North Side and spends Saturdays at the market, where she dabs a few drops of her sauce on her homemade couscous on a tortilla chip to hand out as samples. Morris started selling her sauce in 2019 at the Hilldale Farmers Market on Saturdays and the Northside Market on Sundays but dropped those markets in 2021 so she could have a day off and sell to a larger crowd at Westside on Saturdays.

“Look at how big it is,” Morris said, as she surveyed the market from behind her small table. “We get a lot of people here, and I do well. Even people who don’t like hot sauce like my sauce. It’s not just heat — you’re getting flavor.”