The Erin Mills Farmers Market is closing after 11 years!
Please take our closing survey here if you have any memories, experiences, comments or feedback for the market or about markets in Mississauga.
The project included a seasonal market, with community gardens, and was a permaculture-inspired regenerative community project, co-designed with The Daniels Corporation, The Cutting Veg and Hoffmann Hayes. It emerged to be a vibrant and community-led food hub. The market offered carefully sourced and sustainably produced food made by the vendors themselves as well as programs.
The first garden site included a straw bale vegetable garden, compost demonstration, a zero waste outdoor kitchen, natural kids play spaces and a meditative labyrinth. We moved gardeners to a new garden site after a few years and focused on the market. The project was located across from the Erin Mills Town Centre at Eglinton West and Erin Mills.
Regenerative Community In Action
A regenerative community is a group of people working together to renew and grow healthy living systems that meet individual and collective needs.
Check out our Regenerative Community slide show for some amazing pictures (and a few words) about how we grew a more resilient community and local food hub together for over 11 years.
Food Systems Interviews & Stories
We recorded a few interviews and stories of local farmers, producers, consumers, food system activists, and others who are engaged along the food supply chain from “farm to table” in a mini-series we called Mississauga’s Local Food System: Farmers Market Perspectives.
Episode 1: Starting with the Erin Mills Farmers Market (7 min)
Preeti Sangwan, board member, and Jane Hayes, community developer talk about how the Erin Mills Farmers market started and what inspired the launch of this interview series.
Episode 2: Growing the market into the future (15 min)
In this episode, we introduce Gabi Starosta. Her perspectives and work as our market manager to deliver a great market. You’ll hear about her fascinating background, her passion for bees and beekeeping, and her thoughts on the food system and the market in times ahead.
Episode 3: What it takes to run a small farmers market (14 min)
This episode introduces Lee Overton, and her work as a market director and visionary. Lee’s extensive marketing, business and not-for-profit sector experiences ground her observations of developing a diverse farmers market, community, and of helping producers and vendors make it at the market.
Episode 4: Inspired by Mumbai markets and Erin Mills vendors (10 min)
We interview Joyti Metha, a market lover from Mumbai, and the Arc’s Property Manager. We also hear from two market vendors, Stephen Rice of Steve’s Bees and Abe Halagah from Alphonsa’s Gourmet.
Recorded remotely (with very low tech solutions!) by Dave Misener and Preeti Sangwan. Edited by Dave Misener. Produced by Jane Hayes, Dave Misener & Preeti Sangwan. © Garden Jane, 2020.
The Farmers Market
The market was focused on local sustainable food, grown by the farmers who come to market. It ran on Thursdays, 3:30pm-7:30pm from July-Oct.
Volunteers!
We worked with hundreds of volunteers on the project. Projects included swale building and wetland monitoring, community gardening sites and programming, and the Eco-Kitchen program (see more here).