The bountiful harvest Thousands of visitors flock to St. Norbert Farmers’ Market every Saturday, drawn by freshly grown produce, friends and the occasional fried treat By: Melissa Martin Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Friday, Jul. 31, 2026

6:40 a.m.

While most of Winnipeg is still sleeping, or perhaps just starting to think about making the morning coffee, a patch of shade and sun just south of the Perimeter Highway is already humming with life.

For almost 40 years, the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market has thrived here, on the side of Highway 75. When it began in 1988, it was just eight farmers coming together to sell their produce in what was then a grassy field.

Today, the market’s co-operative includes more than 200 members; of all the farmers’ markets in Manitoba, it’s the largest.

Each Saturday in the summer, it hosts well over 100 vendors, displaying everything from vegetables and pickles to jewelry and gourmet homemade dog treats.

Since 2015, it’s kept operating straight through the winter, with about 60 tables under the permanent canopy at the market’s core.

It’s July 25, one of the peak Saturdays of the season. In the six hours the market is open, about 4,000 visitors will come to browse the tents.

Many do their weekly grocery shopping here; others come just to browse, savouring a weekend morning in the sun, enjoying live music, street food and discovering all the things Manitobans grow and make.

“We’ve always maintained that aspect,” executive director Danielle Mondor says of cultivating the market as a fun activity destination in itself. “We’re free to come to. Even if you’re not buying anything, come hang out.”

“We’re free to come to. Even if you’re not buying anything, come hang out.”

What those visitors don’t always see is how much work goes on behind the scenes to keep the market running. The vendors are typically up well before dawn, packing trucks full of produce and driving an hour or more to the site.

At their tent along the market’s western edge, Brian and Charlene Penner are hard at work unloading crates of this week’s harvest, freshly pulled from the soil of their FTF Farms near Steinbach.

Alongside a freezer of pasture-raised chickens, the star product changes through the season. Two weeks ago it was potatoes; this week, green beans.

“Those are going to be crazy today,” Brian says, as he arranges bags of the glossy legumes on a stand. “As things come out of the garden, people are excited for what they see.”

The couple are relatively new vendors here: as FTF Farms, this is just their third season at the St. Norbert market. But they have long been a part of its rhythms.

Brian is a second-generation farmer and his mother has been selling here for more than 15 years. She’s setting up her own ET Farms tent just metres away, heaped with vegetables and rows of jarred pickles.

“There’s something very satisfying about helping people provide.”

Already, selling as FTF Farms, the Penners have gotten to know many of the regular customers by name. For Brian, that’s what makes all the work of both farming and getting their produce to market each week worth it: the chance to connect directly with people who may not have the time or space to raise their own food from the earth.

“Honestly, lot of people don’t know how to do this kind of work,” he says. “We all want to make a living. That’s part of it. No one’s going to get rich sitting here, but there’s something very satisfying about helping people provide. We can get it out of the garden. We can bring it to them, and it’s healthy and it’s good and we know they’re going to enjoy it.

“That’s the part that we love.”

It will be a long day. The sun has been up for only two hours, and already the heat hangs thick over the site.

The vendors will have to deal with it, but it could keep some visitors away. They’ll just have to wait and see.

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8:10 a.m.

Just 10 minutes after the market officially opened, business is already bustling.

At several of the larger farm vendors, lines of customers slowly circle colourful stacks of produce, chatting about what’s new, what looks especially good and which vegetables are having their best week of the season.

Under a vendor tent along the market’s eastern edge, Kathy Janzen bends over a table piled with onions, carefully selects a few particularly shapely and unblemished bulbs and gets in line to pay. She tucks the vegetables inside the rolling cart she pulls behind her, alongside bunches of potatoes, radishes and tomatoes she purchased nearby.

Janzen started coming to the market five years ago, and quickly became something of a celebrity with many of the vendors. She arrives each week in a colour-co-ordinated outfit — today, it’s blue — and a jaunty hat. She knows many of the farmers and artisans by name, and greets them with a wave.

Already, Janzen has checked off most of the items on her shopping list. She came here 20 minutes before the market even opened, eager to get first crack at the best produce, having taken three buses from her home in the West End.

For her, it’s worth the trip. Although Janzen has lived in Winnipeg for 48 years, she grew up in a very traditional Mennonite farming community in Mexico, where they got around by horse and buggy.

In those days, most of what she ate came directly from the land. Shopping at the farmers’ market, she says, reminds her of those roots.

“I like the stuff from the garden, more than buying it in the store. And I like the people.”

“I like the quality of what they have,” she says. “I like the stuff from the garden, more than buying it in the store. And I like the people. It’s so nice to go out and meet different people.”

After making a few more purchases, Janzen strolls to a picnic table in the shade, where she settles down to chat with other shoppers.

Every few minutes another visitor does the same — in the grassy heritage park nestled beside the market, “Mind if I join your table?” is the most common refrain.

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10:11 a.m.

It’s just over two hours into the day and now the crowds are reaching their peak.

Vehicles jam the highway near the site, some crawling as they search for scarce parking. Individuals and couples and families pushing baby strollers fill up the sidewalks, a rising tide of customers all streaming towards one place.

One of the biggest logistical challenges market organizers must prepare for is traffic, both human and vehicular. Specifically, the challenge is how those two types of traffic come together.

For a few hours every Saturday, thousands of pedestrians need to cross one of Manitoba’s busiest arterial highways, and a main trucking route.

To help keep everyone safe, they turn to crossing guards, including Adam Affleck.

Right now, Affleck is standing at the edge of the road in a bright neon-toned safety vest. When a young family strolls up to stand politely behind him, he punches the button to activate the crosswalk lights and briskly strides in front of the slowing cars. Once the family is across the road, he returns to the sidewalk and energetically waves the cars along.

This is Affleck’s third season working as a crossing guard at the market, and his efforts are valued: he’s “awesome,” executive director Mondor says. “He’s so reliable.”

He first volunteered for the gig while completing a residential program at the Behavioural Health Foundation, which stands just across a field to the market’s west.

The work isn’t always easy. It can mean spending hours in the rain or unrelenting heat. Some drivers are aggressive, or distracted. Some visitors, eager to get their shopping underway, start to rush across the highway before it’s safe.

“We just try to keep things flowing and try to be as helpful as we can.”

“You get the odd person that comes up and they want to practise their rights right away, but we just try to remind them that we’re here for the community,” Affleck says. “We just try to keep things flowing and try to be as helpful as we can.”

Affleck takes his role seriously. He’s seen a few dangerous drivers careen by without stopping for pedestrians or crosswalk lights. Still, he doesn’t hesitate to step out into the road.

“I’ll put my body on the line,” he says. “I’m not supposed to, but I’d rather it be me who gets hit than somebody else.”

Now, Affleck even thinks about someday becoming a market vendor himself. His sister grows lion’s mane mushrooms and he has some friends who are artists.

Maybe he’d look into selling something like that, he thinks. But for now, he’s happy to keep people moving through safely.

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11:20 a.m.

It’s around the time visitors are getting hungry. They have a global array of options to choose from — there are vendors selling perogies, Jamaican patties, hot dogs, Ethiopian platters, cookies, churros and more.

Then there’s a vast array of beverages: fresh-squeezed lemonade, Laotian iced coffee, hibiscus tea mocktails, cans of ice-cold kombucha.

Under the main market canopy, a small crowd has begun to gather around one table, Los Comoles Morales, where co-owner Eduardo Morales offers samples of their corn tortillas drizzled in flavourful salsa while his wife, Helena Morales, grills fresh quesadillas.

One customer steps forward. She’s interested to try a tortilla, she says, but she can’t have gluten. Eduardo grins.

“You are in the safest, most delicious place you could be right now, amiga,” he says.

“Our tortillas are not only gluten-free, but also preservative- and additive-free. The strongest and softest tortillas. And I know I look Scandinavian, but these are authentic Mexican tortillas.”

At this last bit, one of the bystanders giggles.

“I don’t know why she’s laughing,” he deadpans, with a wink.

By now, three years into running their business and selling at the market, Eduardo is a natural showman. He didn’t start out that way at the beginning, he says with a laugh. The first time they sold at a farmers market, in Wolseley, they had a stack of handmade tortillas, but forgot to plan a way to offer samples.

To be fair, selling tortillas wasn’t originally their life plan. Helena was born in Mexico, but grew up in Manitoba; Eduardo came here 20 years ago, after the couple met and married.

For most of that time, they raised their three kids and worked in high-pressure professional environments, Helena with an architectural firm and Eduardo in corporate operations.

For all that time, the couple found themselves longing for the vibrant flavours of home. Chief among Eduardo’s complaints was that, in Winnipeg, he could never find a proper white-corn tortilla. Not like the ones he’d grown up with, which were so central both to the cuisine and to his most-cherished childhood memories.

He quotes a famous saying in Mexico: sin maíz no hay país. Without corn, there’s no country.

“We feel so far from home, and very few items really reminded us of those flavours and the culture,” Eduardo says. “Finally we said, ‘OK, let’s just do our own thing.’”

That’s how Los Comoles Morales was born.

“You are in the safest, most delicious place you could be right now.”

It took a lot of trial and error, drawing on memory and family knowledge to craft the perfect tortilla, and then an authentic salsa to go with them. Helena estimates her husband has made more than 250,000 tortillas by hand; he was determined to get it right.

The couple even went so far as to tweak the recommended cooking time to fit Winnipeg’s altitude and climate.

“You won’t rest until you can replicate those flavours again,” he says.

Today, their products are sold in a number of Winnipeg grocery stores and boutiques. But the market offers something special, a chance to build that personal relationship with customers, as Eduardo entertains hundreds of curious visitors and up to 50 regulars who come each week.

So important is that connection, they now sell here in the winter as well.

“I would love it if we had more year-round farmers’ markets,” Helena says.

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1:30 p.m.

By now, with just 30 minutes left to go until the market closes, the crowds have thinned to a trickle.

In truth, this comes as a welcome relief to many vendors, who have been working seven hours in the heat and beating sun. Many now lean back in their tents, glad for a few minutes’ rest, as the last straggling guests browse what’s left for sale.

For many farmers, it was a successful day. One farm, which sold heaping boxes of sweet, juicy strawberries, is sold out; at the Fertile Farms tent, co-owner Tom Wang spots a guest looking over their nearly empty tables and flashes a grin.

When the market opened in the morning, the Haywood farm’s tables were piled with produce. Now, all that remains are four bunches of beets, five bags of potatoes, a few cabbages, some garlic, and handfuls of rhubarb, kale, and spinach.

“Very good day,” Wang calls out, cheerfully.

Beside him, his wife, Ming Zhai, agrees. She’s a second-generation farmer; she and her parents came to Canada from China more than 20 years ago hoping to grow a new life from the Prairie soil.

Her father was once a chicken farmer; here, he worked at pork and vegetable operations in Saskatchewan and Ontario before saving enough money to buy their own farm.

Everything the family grows is organic. This year, heavy summer rains slowed the growth of some crops; the tomatoes are late, Zhai says, and the cucumbers too.

But other crops are thriving. She points to the last unsold bulbs of garlic, which are huge. The potatoes seem to be doing great as well.

Fertile Farms has had a tent here since 2012, just their first year in Manitoba. It proved a meaningful link to the diversity of the wider community.

At St. Norbert, Zhai has met customers who are originally from Italy and all over the world; the direct connection invites a close and mutual relationship between the people looking for food and those who grow it.

“Some people, they are looking for some herbs they cannot buy in the store, or some varieties from their country, they are searching for them in the market.”

“Some people, they are looking for some herbs they cannot buy in the store, or some varieties from their country, they are searching for them in the market,” she says.

One customer recently shared a variety of beans they thought would grow well. Zhai plans to try them out next year. For the new Canadian farmers, those types of conversations mean the world.

“I love this market,” Zhai says.

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2:20 p.m.

There’s an old joke around the market. Or maybe it’s not so much a joke as an observation: while it takes vendors an hour to get themselves set up at the start of the day, it can take them just a few minutes at the end to clear out and go home.

All over the site, tents and tables are swiftly taken down and packed away.

At one entrance to the main canopy, executive director Mondor is fussing over an ATM, trying to shut it down for the day.

She pauses briefly as one vendor stops by on their way out to report that the loudspeaker on the live-music stage was too loud. The vendor’s booth was nearby; some of their customers complained.

Mondor listens closely. “I’ll note that for next time,” she says. “You guys had a good day?”

The vendor nods emphatically. “Very good.”

A few minutes later, there’s a brief commotion as one vendor, who’s trying to drive out from under the canopy, finds their route blocked by another vendor’s truck. Mondor dashes off to get everyone moving again.

As she returns, she laughs: it’s always like that at the end of the day, she says. There are always little fires to put out.

“Everyone’s tired,” she says. “They spent all day Friday preparing, all day Saturday here, then they probably still have to work tomorrow. But I really like checking in with vendors to see if their day met their expectations.

“What can we do as a farmers’ market to get better feedback, keep it cleaner, have more activities, make better sales for them?”

Every Saturday, thousands of Winnipeggers come to see the fruits of local farmers’ and makers’ labour.

What they don’t see is that part — all the work it takes to keep it going. It’s always something different.

On the logistical side, organizers have to juggle tents and equipment storage, food-safety regulations and a host of permits.

“I really like checking in with vendors to see if their day met their expectations.”

Then there are a few unique conundrums. For instance, some more traditional Mennonite farmers choose not to use digital payment systems.

While organizers encourage all shoppers to use cash — digital payment providers take a cut of every sale, which eats into the thin margins on which small farms survive — they worked out an option for those who can’t.

Now, customers can use tap payment to buy a coupon from Mondor, and exchange it at vendors that only accept cash.

“That’s the awesome part of organizing,” Mondor says. “It’s meeting our vendors where they’re at.”

By now, the site is almost returned to stillness. It was a very good day at St. Norbert Farmers’ Market; a week from now, they’ll get up and do it all over again.

Connecting customers with food, the people who grow it and with each other; and under each tent, another unique thread in the diverse and intertwined story that is Manitoba.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca