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The Farmers Market Opens This Weekend and I’m SO PUMPED (Narrative Piece)

Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Hannah Gignoux
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Ithaca chapter.

The Ithaca Farmers Market opens its summer hours this Saturday, April 1st and I cannot be more excited. For many college students, the farmers market is a place to buy fresh veggies and artisan goods directly from their farmer or producer. For me, it’s all of this and more. 

Freshman year, while I was really excited about being in Ithaca making new friends and finding my place here, I inevitably was homesick. This wasn’t originally apparent to me, as the dynamic of being an underclassman kept me busy enough to not process this. It wasn’t until a month into school, when my RA arranged for our dorm to take a trip to the farmer’s market, that it really began to hit me. 

Mid/late September in Maine is the Common Ground Fair – an agricultural fair put on by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener’s Association, or MOFGA as it’s more commonly known. I had never missed one of these fairs in my life. It was so woven into the fabric of my being that I never thought about what life would be like without it. In essence, the Common Ground Fair is like a farmers market on steroids, with the added bonus of animals and demonstrations. 

As freshman me got off the bus in Ithaca, NY with my peers at the Farmers Market, I was instantly overwhelmed. Walking down the alley by all the food stands and artisan booths I felt completely at home. As I got to the end, I heard two fiddle players. While the rest of my dorm ran around taking in everything in a different way – mostly checking out all the individual booths and taking pictures – I stood in front of the performers and started to cry. It was a good cry – bittersweet. I simultaneously wished I was at the fair, while knowing that everything would be alright because Ithaca had a farmers market like no other farmers market I had ever seen. This was the weekend that I knew my four years at Ithaca College were going to be great as I now had a home away from home. 

I do not expect everyone to have the kind of spiritual experience that I had that day. Even so, I encourage everyone to check it out.

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Hi! I'm the Campus Correspondent for Ithaca College's Her Campus chapter and a double major in English and Politics (International Studies). I'm an equestrian, a lover of music and dance, and an aspiring writer and avid reader. While my long term goal is to teach political theory at the college level, I am planning to enter the workforce for a few years hopefully continuing to read, write, and edit. Her Campus has been my home since my freshman year, and it brings me so much joy to continue to write and run our chapter in my last year at school.