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When the Coronavirus pandemic hit Canada earlier this year and Nova Scotia declared a state of emergency in March, much of the province closed down. But not the Truro Farmers Market. Our local Farmers Market, under the direction of Margaret Ells Congdon, didn’t miss a beat.

But the beat did up its tempo.

“I worked twice as many hours, per week, as I normally would,” Margaret says with a chuckle, when reflecting on the rapid shift of the Market, in March, to online sales.

As Coronavirus crept into the province, the week of March 21, the Market first saw half a dozen vendors selling outside, under its canopy. This allowed vendors and customers to shop but meet social distance protocol. Early the following week, Margaret was responding to emails and taking phone calls, at a frantic pace, as the Market took its first step towards a complete online sales system.

“Although the Market is considered an essential service, I knew we had to close, but I wanted to have products available,” explained Margaret. “We always had a goal of offering online sales, but we weren’t quite ready.” As always, she had the best interest of her loyal producers and customers at heart – so Margaret forged ahead, taking on the challenge.

With a list of available products posted in a simple form online, Margaret tirelessly accepted orders, manually tracked customers purchases, confirmed orders with totals, sent invoices, accepted e-transfers and shared the totals with vendors, over a three-day sales period. At the end of the week, she and a team of volunteers accepted products from vendors, packed orders and delivered to customers’ vehicles. Meanwhile, thanks to financial support from the Department of Agriculture, she spent what little spare time she had attending webinars and worked at setting up a formal software system.

After three weeks of tedious manual orders, the Market went live on its newly purchased online platform, which calculates orders automatically and takes payment.

“Those first three weeks were crazy,” she admits. “And there was definitely room for human error. But we just did it and our customers were so awesome and understanding!” She is quick to add the support from the community and volunteers was fantastic.

“People would even include kind notes in their e-transfers, it just made me smile,” Margaret adds. “There were a few missed orders and skipped products, but customers were so patient.”

With the Market now operating on the slick software, Margaret can finally slow her tempo (well, slightly). Customers can view all available products online. Weekly ordering opens at 7 a.m. on Monday and closes at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Within that period, customers can add and remove items from their order until the closing period. Payment is collected online. Vendors receive an automated order sheet, so they know exactly what to bring to the Market. Margaret and her assistant manager, Sera, greet the vendors at their scheduled drop-off period on Fridays and organize orders for next day pick-up.

Margaret is quick to admit she couldn’t do it without the support of volunteers.

“On distribution day (Saturday) we have a group of 7-8 core volunteers,” she says. “And not one week goes by where we don’t have customers offering to help in some capacity. This community is amazing!”

Regular Market vendors were equally open, adaptable and patient to the transition.

“We didn’t even have time to provide the vendors with training on the new technology,” Margaret says, adding that they were so hands-on and quick to learn.

And the efforts paid off.

“Some vendors had noticeable increases in their number of sales, early on, which was interesting, considering the time of year (early spring),” Margaret adds that she has also observed average orders are larger than normal.

The online system allows vendors to know exactly how much product they need to harvest, bake or package each week, making their efforts much more efficient and decreases waste.

While sales have increased, so have the requests from new potential vendors.

“We are still working on getting all of our regular vendors online and there’s also new vendors we want to support,” Margaret says. “I want to be able to support as many local vendors as we possibly can. That includes temporary vendors who can’t conduct their usual sales as a result of the pandemic.  We have also offered free online space to not-for-profit groups who have items to sell.”  

Margaret’s massive undertaking has ensured our community has had access to the local goodies we’ve been accustomed to accessing each week. But there’s nothing quite like the Saturday hustle and bustle of visiting the Truro Farmers Market.

“Our traditional Saturday Market is now open under the canopy from 8 - 1 p.m.,"  Margaret adds.  “We are continuing the online system for a Wednesday distribution,” allowing local vendors even more opportunity to sell their wonderful products.

And the tempo continues!