Christensen and junior Ruthie Chinery enjoy the farmers market.
Erik Teder | Collegian
Although the Hillsdale Farmers Market has ended for the season, the community can look forward to the winter market beginning soon.
The winter market will open Nov. 11 at Hillsdale Brewing Company and will run every other Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. until the outdoor market returns in May. Hillsdale residents now have a platform to sell their products and monetize their hobbies year round, something that was more difficult before the inauguration of the winter market.
Lisa Trenary, owner of Trenary Products, will continue operating her venue during the winter market. She started her shop during COVID-19 after reevaluating a career of working in machine shops. She went on to sell her various skincare products and baked goods at the market this year, inspired by a family history of producing skin ointments with her grandma growing up.
“I have the recipe from her book,” Trenary said. “She wrote everything down by hand. It was a fun thing for us to do when I was younger together. We’d spend weeks at a time every day after school when the crops were ready, and we pressed all of our oil by hand with all the flowers from her garden.”
Her family skin salve recipe features all-natural ingredients, including flaxseed oil, vitamin E, and beeswax. She said the tradition has even been passed down to a fourth generation: her children.
“Now my kids helped me with everything,” Trenary said. “The bonding experience is being passed down, the knowledge is being passed down, so that it won’t ever be left to be forgotten.”
The family business not only creates happy memories, Trenary said, but it also heals the rural community.
“As farmers, we end up either with chapped skin in the winter or cuts and scrapes on our hands from baling hay, working with the farm equipment and the animals,” Trenary said. “So that’s definitely been my best seller at the farmers market.”
Ashlyn Neveau ’18 has been running her small business, Hillsdalian Goods, for three years. She has been at the market for five years total, including two years of running another small business as a college student. She says she looks forward to continuing her business at the winter market.
“For the first year of Hillsdalian Goods, I was working full time in the Student Activities Office,” Neveau said. “Now, I stay home full time with my toddler, so my business has really become both my creative outlet and the way I connect with the community.”
Neveau shares her designs on Instagram, where she frequently posts the moniker “It’s the People.”
“It’s been especially fun to see the increase in students attending the market over the past few years,” Neveau said. “I love hearing the way people respond to seeing ‘It’s The People’ on my products. I get a wide range of comments about the slogan and it’s always pretty entertaining.”
Reading resident Tamara Bontrager and her family decided to sell products from their small farm for the first time at the market this year. They sell beef, pork, and eggs. They also bake small batches of goods as The Little Kitchen Co. Bontrager said they enjoyed the experience so much that they are considering joining the winter market this year as well.
“I love good, homemade food, and I love a good challenge,” Bontrager said. “Some of the recipes I use are ones that my family has used for a long time and some are ones that I’ve struggled through and flopped many times before I mastered it. My sourdough is all made from a starter I made two years ago when I decided I needed a new challenge in the lulls of winter.”
The Bontrager Family Farm will continue to sell at the winter market as well as on their property in Reading. Besides operating the farm for a living, Bontrager’s husband is a truck driver.
“With this being our first year at the market, we felt very welcomed,” Bontrager said. “I loved seeing the commitment the community has to shopping small and local.”