Mossyrock Public Market Opens Opportunities

Local residents and summer tourists will soon be able to enjoy an open-air shopping experience every Saturday, from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, in downtown Mossyrock. Vendors will be selling fruits and vegetables, baked goods, processed foods, arts and crafts, plants and nursery items, and other unique products.

Community participants in the Horizons program, in association with the East Lewis Chamber of Commerce, are coordinating the new market, which will be open every Saturday from May 26 to September 1 from 10 AM to 4 PM at the corner of State and Williams Streets in Mossyrock, next to the Auto Value store. More than a dozen community volunteers have been preparing for the market for the past several months, after coming up with the idea at a Horizons Community Action Forum.

“I think this is a great opportunity for the people of the community to network and meet each other and do a variety of fun, volunteer work,” Mossyrock high school teacher Wendy Gardner said of her involvement to help prepare for the Market. Sharon Debuhr of Debuhr Sewing and Design in Cinebar remarked that “It’s a great way for an entrepreneur to launch a new business.”

“I’m looking forward to having the market close to home, so we can sell hot, fresh batches of bread,” remarked Jackie Morris, bread baker at Pan y Pastel Artisan Bakery, who also participates in the Chehalis Farmers Market on Tuesdays. Local berry farmer and nurseryman Glenn Aldrich is also excited about the new business opportunity. “It’s a real nice way to get some new businesses in town,” he said.

Aldrich is one of several in-kind market sponsors and has donated planter boxes and plants to decorate the market entrance. Mossyrock Auto Value is donating the space for the market. A growing list of charter sponsors includes the Mossyrock Grange, Silver Creek Ice, Smith and Sons Grocery, Nick Nichols Enterprises, Debra's Cut and Boutique, Neighborhood Deli, Mossyrock True Value Hardware, and Riffe Lake Campground. Student volunteers at Onalaska High School have been helping to create promotional materials for the market.

The Market is charging vendors only a very minimal fee for each 10 foot by 10 foot booth space and expects to have a wide mix of items for sale including food, produce, and handmade items. All products must be grown or made in Washington and only new items will be sold. The Market is making special outreach efforts to the area’s growing Hispanic community, and has created flyers and vendor application forms in Spanish, available at the Chamber office (118 State St., Mossyrock) or online at the market website, www.mossyrockpublicmarket.com.

The Mossyrock Public Market is a project created by residents from Mossyrock, Salkum, Silver Creek, and Cinebar who are participating in the 18-month Horizons program, a community leadership program to move from poverty to prosperity and create a more thriving community. Horizons is funded by the Northwest Area Foundation, delivered in Washington by WSU Extension, and coordinated locally by the East Lewis County Chamber of Commerce.

For more information visit www.mossyrockpublicmarket.com or call 360-983-3778. If you'd like to be a vendor, call the vendor coordinator, Sharon Debuhr, at 360-985-0907.

Get Involved: Mossyrock Blueberry Blues Fest!

Dear Festival Committee and other interested persons,

Let's get together and organize our work! We've done plenty of brainstorming and such; now it's time to dig in and get the work done! Thanks to the hard work of Ivy and Debbie and the generosity of the business community, we now have some money to work with. We'll need to decide who will manage that money (treasurer). We also need committee heads for all our activities, and people to work on those committees. Click this link to see a tentative organizational plan for us. It's not written in stone. We can change things around and add to it if you think something else might be better. Some of the committee head positions have already been filled.

Please take a look at it and decide where you could fit in. Think about the people you know, and who might want to help us. Bring as many of these people as you can to our meeting. We can recruit others later. The more we spread the work around the better! One of our goals is to get as many people in the community involved as possible. Judging from the response we've had from the business community and others, there is a great deal of interest in this festival. Let's get people going to get it done!

I've reserved the Mossyrock High School library for our next meeting: Tues. May 1st, 6:30 p.m.

The school art teacher said it is a bad time to try to get the kids to make a logo as they have too many other things to do right now. Please let me know what you think of the logo above. Wendy sent me the clip art of the blueberry pie, and I incorporated it into the logo I had already put together. I like it better. What do you think?

We have a little web page which will grow as we go. http://www.mossyrockfestivals.com/ Shelley put it up for us. (thanks Shelley) Notice our sponsorship forms are up there and also our vendor application form.

Several of us attended the Leadership Plenty training on Saturday. It was fun, and useful. However, we need more people to do this with us! This training is good for people in any organization, not just the Horizons group, and is free to all. The Horizons program requires us to have at least 25 people in this training in order to retain their sponsorship and funding. (Remember the up to $10,000 grant we are hoping to get for the community at the end of the program.) We need a few more people to meet the quota. Please join us if you can! There will be a makeup day for those who missed last Saturday, so it's not too late. The training is free and breakfast goodies and lunch are provided free too. More info: http://www.horizonsweb.info/LeadershipPlenty.htm I hope to see you there.

My best,

Jackie Morris, Mossyrock Blueberry Blues Fest coordinator
Email: info@mossyrockfestivals.com