An Endless Bounty: 10 Indoor Winter Farmers' Markets and Year-Round Stands We Love

The popular zeitgeist casts the farmers market as a summer creature: bright sun, tomatoes at their peak, a line for the best eggs. A lot of folks might assume that once the leaves are down so are the farm stands. But we know better!

Around here farmers and food producers keep growing and selling through the cold months, in church halls and Elks lodges, schools and converted storefronts, and at farm stores that never close. There is goat cheese in January, smoked fish in February and hydroponic greens in March.

It wasn't always this way. The Hudson Farmers' Market started in 1997 with five vendors in a municipal lot. In 2010, Millerton's holiday market moved indoors for a single day, at Gilmor Glass on Main Street. When Hudson held its first indoor market in March 2011, in the fellowship hall of Christ Church Episcopal, it was packed like a movie premiere (I was there!). This winter, that same market will fill the Elks Lodge on Harry Howard Avenue every Saturday from Dec. 5 through March 27.

Here are some of our favorite spots to shop for local agriculture all year long. 

Berkshire Grown Winter Farmers Market, Great Barrington

Housatonic Community Center (Housy Dome), 1064 Main St., Housatonic

Berkshire Grown's winter market fills the Housy Dome on third Saturdays from 10am to 1pm: Nov. 21, Dec. 19, Jan. 16, Feb. 20, March 20 and April 17. Vendors sell fresh greens, winter squash, root crops, apples, meat, cheese, jam, honey, maple syrup and baked goods, artisan crafters set up alongside them, and live music. SNAP and HIP are accepted, and SNAP shoppers can receive a Market Match of up to 30 dollars per market, funded by Berkshire Agricultural Ventures. Berkshire Grown hosts.

The season is longer than it used to be. When Margaret Moulton became Berkshire Grown's executive director in 2018, the indoor markets were holiday events in November and December. She told Rural Intelligence that fall that she planned to stretch the Great Barrington market into April. "I hope to keep people connected to the whole idea of getting fresh fruits and vegetables locally all through the year," she said. That dream is now a reality and the group also hosts the  North County market, at Williamstown Elementary School, 115 Church St., which meets Sunday, Nov. 22, and Sunday, Dec. 20, from 10am to 1pm.

Pittsfield Farmers Market

The Common Room, Zion Lutheran Church, 74 First St., Pittsfield

The Pittsfield market is run competently and professionally by teenagers. A program of the nonprofit Roots Rising, it is the first teen-run farmers market in the region, and the organization's mission is "to empower youth and build community through food and farming." It began as a year-round market in Pittsfield's Morningside neighborhood and has since won a Berkshire Trendsetter Award for Nonprofit Impact.

After the outdoor season wraps at Pittsfield Common, which ran Saturdays from May 9 through Oct. 10, the market moves into the church's Common Room. Indoor dates are Nov. 14, Dec. 5, Jan. 9, Feb. 13, March 13 and April 10, from 9am to 1pm. New vendors can apply through the site, which also links to a BIPOC Vendor Fund.

Cricket Creek Farm

1255 Oblong Road, Williamstown

Cricket Creek is a small, “grass-based” cow dairy nestled in the hills of Williamstown, and its farm store keeps dairy-farm hours: open seven days a week, 7am to 7pm, on the honor system. shoppers pay by card, check or cash using the checkout instructions posted in the store. 

The shelves hold the farm's raw milk, which is sold only at the farm store, along with pastured beef, veal and pork, the farm's cheese, East Fork Bread from Williamstown, and local foods from several other producers. The farm's mission, in its own words, is to "produce nourishing food that honors our animals, respects the land, and feeds our community."

Hudson Farmers' Market Indoor Winter Market

Elks Lodge 787, 201 Harry Howard Ave., Hudson

The market meets from 10am to 1pm, with 27 regular vendors and 13 guest vendors rotating through. Ardith Mae Farmstead sells fresh and aged goat cheese, Pura Vida Fisheries has fresh and smoked fish and shellfish, and Raven & Boar brings cured pork and sausage. Tivoli Mushroom and Far Out Container Farm, which grows hydroponic greens, are here, while Braised sells English pies and pasties, Sparrowbush Bakery sells wood-fired bread and Via Ravioli offers seasonal pasta and take-and-bake meals. Library Band plays opening day on Dec. 5. The Hudson market is also the winter home of Mei's Dumplings. 

New Lebanon Farmers Market & Grocery

528 U.S. Route 20, New Lebanon

New Lebanon's market is open every day, from 10am to 6pm and until 7pm on Fridays and Saturdays, in a 1850s storefront on the corner of West Street that was once Fisher's Market, the town's last grocery store. Josh Young stepped in when the town's farmers market managers stepped down in May 2020. He started during the pandemic with a virtual market and curbside pickup, and the indoor market opened in August 2021.

The setup is, in the site's words, "an indoor farmers market and a classic grocery store running in parallel, sharing space and other resources." Young says he is trying “to build an institution that can replicate some of the benefits of the traditional grocery store," adding, "The best way to help farmers and food producers is to sell local products and products that save a trip to the grocery store." For Thanksgiving, the market is selling brined turkey roasts and whole fresh turkeys.

The Chatham Berry Farm

2309 State Route 203, Chatham

Joe Gilbert opened the Berry Farm in the summer of 1982 with a small cart of berries pulled behind his tractor. The cart grew into a stand, and in 2000 the stand became a year-round store, since renovated and expanded. It is open every day from 8am to 6pm and closes only on Christmas Day.

Inside are a full-service meat and seafood department, hydroponically grown greens, produce from local farms, prepared foods, and baked goods and preserves from the farm kitchen, plus plants, flowers and, in season, Christmas trees. The garden center and U-pick berries are seasonal, and the Greenhouse Cidery is open May through November. "If you told me in 1982 that I'd be selling meat and fish I'd say, 'you're crazy,'" Gilbert told RI. "People shop differently now. They know how to eat better and they see the value in quality."

Hawthorne Valley Farm Store

327 County Route 21C, Ghent

The Hawthorne Valley Farm Store started as an honor-system farm stand on the Ghent Waldorf school campus more than 50 years ago. It now works with a network of more than 200 farms, growers and makers, and it is open daily from 7:30am to 7pm, with a Daily Menu of prepared food and buying clubs for bulk purchases. 

The farm's reach has been growing. It helped incubate Rolling Grocer 19, the Hudson grocery with a three-tier sliding pricing system, and still supports it through shared bulk purchasing. It has a letter of intent to convert Hudson's former Kaz warehouse at 14 Montgomery Street into a grocery, food hub and community space. This fall it took over Otto's Market in Germantown. "We're growing into Germantown not to replace Otto's legacy," Jeremy Laurange, the store's director of retail, says, "but to carry it forward."

Hearty Roots Farm Market

1822 Route 9, Germantown

Most of the produce here is grown right out back at Hearty Roots Community Farm and the market is open year-round, 7 days a week. The farm's USDA certified organic vegetables, flowers and pastured eggs have become a local staples.

The market fills out its shelves with dairy, cheese, fruit, fiber products, pasta, jam, honey, bread and local grains from nearby Hudson Valley producers. The farm also runs a winter CSA: last winter's share included nine to 10 types of produce at each pickup, mostly from the farm's fields and greenhouses, with Saturday pickups at the farm from 10am to 1pm between December and early April.

Samascott's Garden Market

65 Chatham St., Kinderhook

Samascott's year-round farm store and garden center is open 7 days a week: Monday through Friday from 9am to 7pm and Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 6pm. Along with fresh produce the store offers homemade ice cream, prepared foods, plants and gifts. Samascott Orchard also sells fruit, cider and vegetables at the Hudson winter market.

Farm & Friends Market at Foxtrot Flowers & Farm

6862 Route 82, Stanfordville

Foxtrot Flowers & Farm fills its Big Red Barn for the second annual pre-holiday market this month. Saturday, Nov. 21, is an evening market from 3pm to 7:30pm with a light dinner, drinks and a fire, and Sunday, Nov. 22, is a morning market from 10am to 2:30pm with coffee and baked goods. Admission is 10 dollars a car.

Kate Farrar, who owns the farm, and Katie Cariello, who manages the Millerton Farmers Market and the community center's food pantry, host this year's market. Vendors include Sugarshack Mushrooms, Thistle Pass Farm, Chaseholm Farm, Branchwater Farm and From Below Farm, and there is live music in the greenhouse both days. Raffle proceeds support the Webatuck Valley Farm Collaborative's regional food hub in Millerton.

"Selfishly I want people here so I'm not just doodling around here on my own," Farrar says.

Litchfield Farmers' Market

Litchfield Firehouse, 258 West St., Litchfield

Litchfield's market calls itself a "Year-Round weekly market celebrating local food & community," hosted every Saturday from 10am to 1pm, at the firehouse. It is a program of Partners for Sustainable Healthy Communities, a public charity promoting sustainable agriculture and local food across Northwest Connecticut.

The Nov. 7 roster showed how much is on offer in the cold months: Brookside Farm's maple syrup, Steadfast Farm's quail, chicken, turkey, pheasant, broth and dumplings, and Why Not Farm's beef, pork, eggs, vinegar and tallow. Oracle Mushrooms, New Curds on the Block (regional cheeses), Oliva on Main (dips and sauces) and Vibrant Farm (greens, microgreens and potatoes) were there too.