Raffles, SNAP Benefits and more news from the Floyd Farmers Market

The upcoming weekend is a busy one for Floyd! The Floyd Farmers Market will be open with our most committed and some of our longest term vendors in the market as usual. Good Food Good People, Riverstone Organic Farm, Highland Farm, Kester Clark Farm, and the Floyd Market Collective will all be in the vending under the Floyd Community Pavilion. Summer fruit and vegetables are now abundant in the market: squash, beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, eggplant, and salad makings and more are available. We will have live music; Rob and Cliff will be playing. Since our numbers will be few, we will circle the wagons around the front of the market and move the band forward, leaving more room at the back of the market for patrons to hang out and enjoy the music and friends.

The sale of raffle tickets to win a beautiful oak market basket full of product from our Floyd Market Vendors, worth around $250, is still in progress. At $5.00 a chance, that is quite a value for the winner! Tickets will be on sale at the Highland Farms table and at the Information Table in the market. The basket is on display at the Highland Farm table. Sales will end on August 4th and the drawing will take place on August 10th. Proceeds from the raffle will go to installing a new sound system throughout the market.

Upcoming activities in the market will include a raffle for a Floyd Market Flower Bouquet in September. We will start sales of the raffle tickets for that beautiful vase full of flowers from Tree’s Bread and Roses Bouquets on August 10th. On August 17th, we will hold our annual Floyd’s Best Tomato contest. Gardeners and farmers, keep a close eye on your favorite tastiest heirloom tomato and enter it in the market on the 17th between 830 and 1100 am! Market goers will pick only the finest flavor!

The Floyd Farmers Market’s EBT/SNAP benefits services and our Double Your Money matching program continue to bring in beneficiaries new to our program! This is a wonderful program that basically halves the prices of products in our market to make them more accessible to people who find themselves on SNAP benefits. How does it work? Just come to the Information Table, tell us how much of your SNAP benefits you will need. We will swipe your EBT card using our EBT machine and for every $1.00 of SNAP benefits that you have asked for, you will receive both your $1.00 of SNAP benefit and an additional $1.00 of our matching fund benefit in the form of wooden tokens. You can spend those tokens in the market to purchase any eligible food product. This is a great opportunity to enjoy farm fresh products at an affordable price for SNAP beneficiaries. It also is a great benefit to our hardworking farmers!

The Floyd Farmers Market is collaborating with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Virginia Grows! effort to increase consumption of Virginia grown agricultural products by Virginians. VDACS is promoting their buy locally grown project with a Farm Basket raffle of their own. It also is a $250 value! All you have to do is come to the Information Table and fill out contact information on their raffle ticket, leave it with us and go shopping. Come back to the table with receipts and we will punch out the $10 bubbles on the card. Buy $50 and we will punch out 5 of the bubbles. There are 14 bubbles per card. We will keep the card for you and when the card has all of the bubbles punched out, we will mail the card to VDACS to be put into the raffle urn! That simple! No additional cost to you!

The Floyd Farmers Market is working on a promotional campaign which will include advertisements in local papers. Start watching for our ads in the Floyd Press!