The Burns Lake farmer’s market, known as the Burns Lake Community Market, will be starting in July this year while welcoming all sorts of vendors, confirmed the Burns Lake Chamber of Commerce.
Each year, B.C. sees several community markets and farmers markets pop up all over the province, in order to provide fresh vegetables, fruits, give a platform to local artisans and to bring the community together. However, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, it had started to look difficult for this year’s markets. In fact, earlier in the pandemic, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced in her public health order that the community markets and farmers markets would be allowed to have food vendors only.
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”Until end of May, the rule was that we were only allowed food vendors and now they have changed that and lifted that restriction, so now we are allowed all vendors, so we are accepting all vendors,” said the Burns Lake & District Chamber of Commerce executive director Randi Amendt.
The first community market is set to be held on July 3. The market will then run all the way through August on each Friday, between 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Amendt also added that the market will be held at the College of New Caledonia (CNC) parking lot. “We have moved to a bigger space now so we can accept more vendors.”
Despite the restrictions being lifted up, the community market will still follow all the hygiene and social distancing rules. Amendt confirmed that a number of measures would be taken to ensure minimal contact among people. “Each vendor has a tent which is about 10 feet and we are going to make sure that each tent is 6 feet apart, so there will be huge space between vendors,” she said adding that they would be placing a hand sanitizing station at the entrance and each vendor will also have to keep a hand sanitizer at their stall. The organizers will also be ensuring that the traffic flows in one direction and that people not in a family are maintaining appropriate distance from each other. Amendt also said that each vendor would be responsible to man his or her own tent and to ensure that proper measures are being followed.
The chamber has just now started accepting vendors and they already have a couple of vendors signed up. If you wish to sign up as a vendor for this year’s community market, send an email to media@burnslakechamber.com or call the Burns Lake Chamber of Commerce on 250.692.3773.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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