The Cortez Farmers Market has found a new home – the parking lot of the Children’s Kiva Montessori School at Mildred Avenue and Empire Street.
An agreement between the school and the market was recently finalized.
The kiva’s head of school, Lurleen McCormick, told KSJD she is excited to have the market there. She said, “We love supporting our community and our farmers.”
McCormick said the location is ideal because it’s near the city’s heavily visited parks, which offer additional parking spots.
The location is also convenient for law-enforcement employees, with the Cortez Police Department and Montezuma County Sheriff’s Office nearby.
“They could pop over at lunch or on a break,” she said. “I love being able to help the people that risk their lives for us on a daily basis.”
For at least two decades, the market, which takes place Saturdays, was held in the parking lot of the Montezuma County Courthouse. But on April 27, the county terminated its agreement with the market because of disputes over fees, which products could be sold, and other issues.
This season, which starts June 7, will be the market’s 53rd, making it the longest-running farmers market in the state. It was begun by Bessie White of Pleasant View (pictured in the photo with this story) and her sister, according to Emily Wisner, a member of the market’s standing committee.
“She started it as a way to make more income for her family,” Wisner told KSJD. “Farmers have to hustle – you can’t make it on just one job.
“Here in Montezuma County, we were the very first one [in the state] that was formally founded,” she said.
Bessie White sold goods at the market up until the season before last, Wisner said.
McCormick, who grew up in a small rural town in Georgia, said she appreciates farmers because she learned very early how to work in the fields.
“I was an agriculturalist at the age of 4,” she said. That was when she began working in her family’s pea fields.
“I came in the house as dirty as you could imagine,” she recalled. “In the evening we sat shelling peas. People bought produce off of our front porch.”
Although she didn’t much like the work at the time, McCormick said she looks back on it as a gift because it taught her to be innovative and hard-working.
She said supporting local agricultural producers now by having them at the kiva is “such a privilege.”
