Monthly Archives: April 2020

Hello Market Friends:
We continue to be thrilled and amazed by the response to www.dufferingrovemarket.ca!

As I write this, there is still room for a few more people to place orders for pickup or delivery this week before we have to close the shop.

A special welcome to Reza Szhu of Alma Bakery, joining us with the traditional Persian flatbreads he makes with local organic flour!

Lots more apple varieties and sizes from Mimi and Nacho of Reyes Farms are available, Footstep Organics is providing us with a few items nobody else has, and we are tickled to tell you that Helen Mends is back, this time with the hospital-tested masks she and her team have been producing for North York General. If you want to buy an extra to donate, she will get them to where they are needed most!

A reminder as well that cheques payable to Oasis Dufferin Community Centre and donations of non-perishable foods will be gratefully accepted at our pickup depot.

We are starting to get our feet under us in this new venture, though we still made plenty of mistakes last week. Thank you for the abundance of kindness, enthusiasm and understanding! It means a great deal to all of us.

If ever your order is missing an item or there is a problem with a product, please let us know, even if it’s just to tell us you are okay with it. We don’t want anyone to go away mad.

One more thing: please remember the three bears when it comes to pickup times. Coming early throws off our packing rhythm and causes lineups, and coming late makes the day very long. You know the rest; coming on time is j-u-s-t right!

News from a few of the vendors who are not listed on the shop site:

Monforte Dairy’s Door to Door Dairy Delivery will get you the cheese you need! Phone or text (519) 301-0198 with your contact info. and they’ll get back to you.

Heriter Farms accepts orders for delivery in the neighbourhood every week.

Colette of Urban Harvest reports that her online seed orders are up 1500%. She causes a major lineup at her village post office when she arrives to ship out orders each day! GO LOCAL AND ORGANIC!

With gratitude from Anne and the www.dufferingrovemarket.ca team

Photo credit: @hazy.pictrues on instagram

Hello Market Friends:
The past week has been a whirlwind, but we are nicely settled in our new depot at St. Anne’s Anglican Church (270 Gladstone) and gradually expanding our knowledge of how to run an online market! We’ve added more pickup slots, and expanded our delivery zone this week. If you haven’t placed an order yet, you still can!

The usual www.dufferingrovemarket.ca hours will be Saturday noon to Tuesday noon, with pickups and deliveries on Thursday afternoon, and now that we can assemble more orders, you don’t have to rush so much for fear of missing out.

Half a dozen more vendors have joined since last week. We now have fish, apples, shallots, kombucha, other fermented products, and momos on offer as well as many other favourite foods!

We are also re-connecting with some dear friends from other markets and the past, including Anne van der Heyden from Woolerdale Farm. As soon as it is ready to cut, you will be able to order their fresh organic asparagus. Patti from Robinson Bread plans to come on board with her superb sourdough baking in a few weeks, too!

We thank everyone for their patient support as we continue to improve our accuracy. Do let us know if something in your order is missing or unsatisfactory, and we will do our best to assist.

Not all of our market vendors are on www.dufferingrovemarket.ca, but you can support many through their own websites, including Monforte Dairy, Heriter Farms, Forbes Wild Foods, Urban Harvest, Plan B, Windswept Cider, Fressy Bessie, Sosnicki Organic Produce, and Island Oysters.

CORRECTION

Last week we totally failed to link to the Oasis Dufferin Community Centre.  We also misidentified them as part of St Anne’s.  In fact, they’re an independent and highly deserving organization you can make donations to online here. There will be a box to leave non-perishable food donations in at the dropoff depot as well.

Please support local food producers and keep our community strong.
Take good care,
Anne

Hello Market Friends,
the second week of the Dufferin Grove Farmers’ Market Web Store is now open!  From now ’til until midnight Tuesday or the time when we reach our capacity you can place orders to be delivered or picked up.

We’ve got a new, highly organized and safe pickup spot and system.  When checking out you’ll select a ten minute time slot within which to pick up your order.  By arriving during your time slot you’ll help avoid unwieldy crowds of more than 4 people and allow plenty of space for distancing.

You can arrive by foot or by car at the parking lot of St Anne’s church at 270 Gladstone Ave.

Bike deliveries will be handled by a larger team this week. The delivery area is within Roncesvalles-Dupont-Spadina-King. Rare exceptions may be possible to accommodate. Please contact us via email to info@dufferingrovemarket.ca if you really need delivery outside of our zone.

We’re also welcoming several excellent additions to our vendor list:  Marvellous Edibles Farm, All Sorts Acre Farm, Ying Ying Soy Food, Earth + City, and ChocoSol.  The complete list of farms and vendors, along with their products is on www.dufferingrovemarket.ca

Our generous Neighbourhood Depot host, St. Anne’s, is trying to assist record numbers of community members who need support during this crisis.  Please consider making an online donation here to their Oasis Dufferin Community Centre. Your donation helps build a bridge over barriers that people from all walks of life in our community face every day.

A huge thanks to everyone whose enthusiasm, support, and patience made the first week  an overwhelming success.  We’ll keep building and improving bit by bit each week.  Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any feedback.

yours in gratitude and chocolate,
– Peter Wills
Web Developer for Dufferin Grove Farmers’ Market
& Farm Husband at Knuckle Down Farm

Hello Market Friends:
We were blown away (almost literally) last week. Packing orders outside in the wind is not ideal, to say the minimum. However, we were buoyed up by the outpouring of supportive messages from many of you. Thank you all for your patience, enthusiasm and understanding. The move to an online market is a big task, and it has taken a huge leap forward in the past week.

Many of you know the Reverend Gary van der Meer as the friendly, social-justice minded Pastor at St. Anne’s Anglican Church. He’s also a market regular, and with support from the community at St. Anne’s, we have been given free use of their Parish Hall at 270 Gladstone (a few blocks south of the park) as our Neighbourhood Depot beginning this week. WHAT A GIFT!! We are tremendously grateful.

This means farmers and vendors can drop off their pre-orders and go, and our team can safely assemble them for distribution without windburn! We will also be able to manage order pickups more easily, so you won’t be re-directed to delivery, AND we have a new bicycle delivery crew to get orders out quickly for those who need that service!

Our market ‘store’, www.dufferingrovemarket.ca, will re-open Sunday at 5pm (about 24 hours later than we plan to as a rule) so Peter Wills can add features, fixes, and vendors. Ordering soon after we re-open gives you the most product selection AND first choice of pickup times. This week, if your postal code is outside our delivery zone, you won’t be able to select delivery. We will have a ‘drive-through’ set up for people who need to pickup by car.

We have many more vendors on board this week, and more coming soon:

Welcome to our dear friend Ming and Ying Ying Soy’s products, the ChocoSol team and all those good things you’ve been craving, the crew from Earth & City with healthy and delicious treats, and Jennifer & Tim from All Sorts Acre with ‘everything sheep’.

We still have a lot of work to do polishing the rough edges, and we ask for your continued goodwill as we work to do that. We want to do it right, for you and the food producers we love.

Anne and Crew

Hello Market Friends:
It is difficult to keep track of what day it is, isn’t it? If you’ve been a steady market news reader, you may think it’s Wednesday, because that’s when you usually hear what’s coming to market.

Our greatly altered circumstances mean that the market as we have known it remains closed, and we need to communicate earlier so you know what to order for delivery to the neighbourhood.

Last week, three vendors made safe and successful dropoffs of pre-orders near the park on Thursday afternoon, and this week, we are working with others to coordinate another delivery/drop.

Our hope is to offer you a variety of market foods for pre-orders and make it convenient and safe to pick them up. If you need assistance, we also have two capable (and currently underemployed) cyclists who will deliver orders to the broader neighbourhood (roughly Roncesvalles-King-Spadine-Dupont) for $10. If you live farther away, ask the vendor you want to order from what’s possible.

You can use various forms of electronic payment, or put exact change in a sealed envelope if you prefer. There isn’t a strict minimum order because if a good number of us place orders for delivery on the same day, it’s worth it for the vendors to come.

Click on any vendor’s name and you will find yourself on their Vendor Profile page, where there is information about how to order their products. The first four vendors listed below are the ones we hope to see on Thursday afternoon.

UPDATED LIST: (Bees Universe did not receive enough orders to drive in, unfortunately.

ORDERS MUST BE PLACED BY MIDNIGHT TUESDAY for THURSDAY dropoffs.

This week, we are delighted to announce that Blythe from Spade & Spoon is coming! We’ve missed you Blythe!

Another favourite, Krista from deFloured is taking orders for popular items.

It’s time to re-stock supplies of nuts, dried fruits, oils and more from Vasile of Green Florin.

Heriter Farms will be bringing in orders of beef and pork, too! (and they’ll accept orders til midnight Wednesday.)

PLEASE REMEMBER, the market remains closed: there is no shopping on site, and we cannot host any kind of gathering. This is a pickup of pre-orders only.

Vendors will be parked in designated spots, widely spaced, but within easy walking distance. When you order, you may be given a pickup time so we don’t have too many people coming at once. Please come on your own, or send someone for you if you should be in isolation. If you want delivery of orders from more than one vendor, please email me, and I will happily coordinate that.

Some of you have been going farther afield to pick up food from Marvellous Edibles. Jens and Ayse are taking a tiny break this week and going to Montreal to bring their son Cengiz‘s belongings home. We hope to arrange order pickups from them next week, as well as with Cheyenne Sundance, who will have a fresh crop of greens!

You can order from many of our other vendors. Here’s a list of contacts:

All Sorts Acre: sheep milk dairy, gelato, lamb, wool and felting supplies. Order at: www.allsortsacre.ca Delivery in the area is $10 unless orders are over $25