{"id":339943,"date":"2026-03-21T00:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T00:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/339943\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T00:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T00:03:08","slug":"hamilton-farmers-market-celebrates-20th-anniversary-this-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/339943\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton Farmers\u2019 Market celebrates 20th anniversary this Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s a market family really, an established community.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said some of the regular customers had been attending since the market began and some of the businesses selling goods were in the next generation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m passionate about supporting small local businesses,\u201d Wilkinson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing stallholders thriving, their success stories, is really rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there were many success stories, Wilkinson said, including Kaimai Eggs, which started attending as a small operation and had since grown to \u201cquite a successful business\u201d.<\/p>\n

While Wilkinson was reluctant to pick a favourite stallholder, she highlighted Monavale Blueberries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI absolutely love [them] … It\u2019s the story and their organic practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are in their third generation now and quite hands-on. Everybody [in the family] contributes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her five years with the market, Wilkinson said there had been a couple of memorable moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne highlight was in 2023, when we won the Organic NZ Farmers\u2019 Market of the Year. I got to go down to Wellington [to accept the award].<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a huge, huge thing for us. It\u2019s probably my proudest moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another highlight was a surprise jam from Six60 recently, and a visit from the Hawaiian Farmers\u2019 Market Committee, who were in New Zealand for Fieldays.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were really impressed [with the Hamilton Farmers\u2019 Market].<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a different look than other farmers\u2019 markets around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey hadn\u2019t seen a farmers\u2019 market inside before, normally it\u2019s all gazebos outside.<\/p>\n

\"JonoJono runs the farm and butchery and sells his pork products at the Hamilton and Cambridge Farmers’ Markets. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also have the wooden stall tables that we made ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilkinson\u2019s birthday wish for the market was for it to keep it going and growing.<\/p>\n

During the peak season, the market has between 40 and 50 stallholders and on average, 2000 people come through the doors on Sundays.<\/p>\n

Wilkinson said she\u2019d happily see it grow to 60 stallholders and 3000 visitors.<\/p>\n

She said the customer base was quite broad, including a mix of different generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s people that want to shop local.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fresher … the people you are buying from know about their products. Produce is [often] picked on the Friday … You can\u2019t beat that.\u201d<\/p>\n

For their anniversary market, apart from the usual fresh produce on offer, there will be cake, donated by Volare, a special display of photos of the market through the years, and customers can go into the draw to win tickets to a Chiefs home game as well as a Magic netball home game.<\/p>\n

The 20th anniversary market takes place on Sunday, March 22, from 8am to noon at The Barn, Claudelands Event Centre, Hamilton. For more information, visit waikatofarmersmarkets.co.nz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s a market family really, an established community.\u201d She said some of the regular customers had been attending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22641,4624,9632,6928,12967,6288,225,111,43,139,69,10809,1961],"class_list":["post-339943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-20th","tag-anniversary","tag-celebrates","tag-celebrating","tag-farmers","tag-hamilton","tag-market","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sunday","tag-this"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}