2025 recap and our final market!

It's been a week since our last market of the season, but the weather makes me feel like we still have more to go. Sadly, I know the cold weather will be here before we know it.

This season was our best one yet! In 2023, when Sammi and I took over organizing, we started our season with roughly 5 vendors. We started this year with over 2 dozen and our last market had about a dozen. We've also seen growth in our community members showing up. It probably helps that this year there was no construction so we were downtown all year, with the exception of the fair market.

The best additions this year were the various businesses and organizations showing up to do kids’ activities! Wildcat PTO, Kiwanis, Humboldt Area Arts Council, Humboldt Public Library, Humboldt LEC, Nokomis Woodworking, Bank Iowa, and The Finch Block for facilitating a lot of it. It takes so much for us to organize, set up as vendors, and host a kids’ craft so anyone willing to help with crafts is greatly appreciated!

Live music is something we really enjoy having! We haven't had a lot of different people, but Joe Hadar joined us many times this season. Cracked Reeds, saxophone quartet, came out for our first market of 2025 and the market at the fair. We hope to have them all back again next year.

We were able to do Touch a Truck and Arts Fest again this year! Those are definitely our biggest events of the season, aside from opening market Mother's Day Saturday when we hand out seedlings and let kids color a card for mom! Amy Nostrom organizes most of the Touch a Truck event. She came to us with the idea in 2023 and it's been one of our favorite markets every year! Arts Fest is one the Humboldt Area Arts Council almost had to let go in 2023, but we couldn't let that yearly event fade away! It's a fun day of letting kids go to multiple craft stations and letting them get a little messy. Humboldt Parks & Recreation hosts a kids’ makers market every year during Arts Fest.

Our sponsors are the best around! Without them our market could not happen. This is the first season the market could run without our personal money or an IOU list. We even had enough to buy some new, heavy duty signs! For advertising we ran some early ads through Humboldt Newspapers and talked on the radio the Thursday before each market. We do have a lot of advertising on Facebook and Instagram, but we haven't paid for any of those. Other funds go towards market hosted crafts and various supplies we need along the way! We put a lot of our own time and energy into the market, but we don't get paid by the market.

Our goal has always been to create a successful market where the community can come together and be offered local goods. If nothing else it's a way to get some fresh air and chit chat with one another. Hopefully every vendor feels the same way, but based on how our sales go we are pleased with how our community supports our vendors!  

Sammi and I created our business, Three Rivers Kringla, at the Humboldt Farmer's Market 10 years ago. We started selling kringla, bars, and cookies. Let me tell you, we did not have the customer base, good looking product, or the nice packaging we do now. Through the market and other events we were able to figure out what works and what doesn't. We still have flops happen. We're constantly learning what to do better and how to present ourselves/our products. 

I say that hoping our vendors are reading this. If you're new to this and are trying to get your business/side hustle off the ground please don't compare yourself to the established vendors. We all started off without a following. We daydreamed of big plans, but always knew we had to work hard at bettering everything in our business. Without showing up and yapping at people (at the market and in our daily lives) about what we want to do we wouldn't have the following we do. We're grateful people liked our idea and our products.

Our last market for this year was a great one! The weather was perfect. Little warm towards the end, but nothing crazy. The Humboldt Area Arts Council set up to do the kids’ craft. This time they were doing a fall bookmark craft. It was definitely a slower start, but once it picked up it was steady.

Even at our last market we were able to bring on a couple new vendors! 

Our vendors:

Thank you to everyone for making our Humboldt Farmer's Market so great! We're lucky (and a little crazy) to be the ones to organize this! We appreciate everyone for showing up, shopping, and yapping with us and the other vendors. Every year gets bigger and better!

So what's next? We'll see everyone in May 2026 for another season! We'll take a break from posting for a while to focus on the holidays. In a few short months we'll be back to planning and start posting again.

In the meantime, come out to Pumpkins and Ponies at SpringVale Farm next weekend! Saturday, October 11th 10am-4pm and Sunday, October 12th 11am-4:30pm There will be a lot of new and familiar vendors to shop from.

There will be plenty of local holiday events coming up soon for you to get your holiday shopping and meal prepping done. It's so important to support our local, small businesses.

We all appreciate it! 

Until then stay safe, be kind and we'll talk soon!

-Kelsey Flot

All photos provided by Kelsey Flot/2View Photo & Design. Downloading is allowed. Any publications must provide credit.