Plymouth market brings local produce, crafts to public

Stephon Nicholas

The Ply­mouth/Black Rock elec­toral dis­trict is giv­ing en­tre­pre­neurs in the area a plat­form to sell their prod­ucts through a month­ly farm­ers’ mar­ket at Ad­ven­ture Mi­cro Mall, Ply­mouth.

The in­au­gur­al mar­ket was held re­cent­ly, with ven­dors sell­ing veg­eta­bles, craft items, spices, co­conuts and oth­er goods.

Saman­tha Cruick­shank, op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer for the elec­toral dis­trict, said the ini­tia­tive was com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven and aimed at giv­ing lo­cal ven­dors an op­por­tu­ni­ty to reach con­stituents and the wider pub­lic.

“We’ve had high de­mand for per­sons want­i­ng to sell and show­case their lo­cal­ly grown pro­duce, goods and live­stock. There was one in­stance where some­one said they have so many rab­bits, they want to give it away. We said, ‘No, come to the farm­ers’ mar­ket,’” she said.

Cruick­shank said the first mar­ket was not as well at­tend­ed as ex­pect­ed, but she an­tic­i­pat­ed greater par­tic­i­pa­tion as peo­ple be­came fa­mil­iar with the ini­tia­tive.

She said pro­vid­ing a space for lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs was im­por­tant, par­tic­u­lar­ly as To­ba­go seeks to im­prove food se­cu­ri­ty and en­cour­age lo­cal pro­duc­tion.

Among the ven­dors was agripreneur Kay­di East­man-McKen­zie, who sold spices and tra­di­tion­al kitchen uten­sils from her fam­i­ly busi­ness.

“We cre­ate herbs and spice blends from in­dige­nous plants. We cre­at­ed the blends to cater to the palate of the To­bag­o­ni­ans and di­as­po­ra. We al­so pre­serve the tra­di­tions by keep­ing the graters alive and the swiz­zle sticks, and we put them in­to a mod­el spin by cre­at­ing them as ear­rings and keep­sakes,” she said.

Plant ven­dor Levi Blake of­fered me­lo­cac­tus, but­ter­cup plants, hi­bis­cus, bougainvil­lea and oth­er plants.

Cruick­shank en­cour­aged the pub­lic to at­tend the next mar­ket, which is ex­pect­ed to fea­ture more ven­dors.