By Mary O’KEEFE

The Harvest Market in Montrose has been many things to many people, from a place for kids of all ages to promote their business during Young Entrepreneurs to the location of a marriage proposal [in 2016] but at its base is its sense of community.

The Harvest Market is one of the events overseen and supported by the Montrose Shopping Park Association. The market is on Sundays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the 2300 block of Honolulu Avenue and offers fresh harvested fruits and vegetables along with healthy packaged foods.

The market was closed during the Stay At Home order from Los Angeles County but opened again last year when outdoor venues were allowed. They are back though some of the family favorites have yet to return, including pony rides and the popular Kids’ Corner.

“The community wants the [Kids’ Corner] back but it is pretty high contact stuff,” said Mark Sheridan, Harvest Market manager.

Prior to the pandemic, the Harvest Market had a section – The Montrose Marketplace – for vendors that sold non-food items, including clothing and arts and crafts but those vendors have not returned as the market continues to exercise caution regarding safety protocols.

The County does not require people to wear face coverings at outdoor events and market management conducted a survey and found that 95% of their farmers and employees have been vaccinated. However, many of the farmers and their workers choose to continue to wear face coverings because they travel from market to market and, with the Delta variant and COVID numbers once again on the rise, they want to stay safe.

The Harvest Market has continued to maintain its numbers of visitors each Sunday despite not having some of the non-food vendors. Part of the growing number of shoppers has been those who use EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer] cards. This is public assistance issued to qualified individuals who are part of programs like CalFresh [federally known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP] or CalWORKs.

Each family/individual is allotted a certain amount of money depending on their income and number of family members. They then get the funds transferred onto their EBT debit card. At the Harvest Market they can come to the information desk and use their debit card to redeem the funds for wooden tokens. Those tokens are a dollar-to-dollar match and can also be used at the food vendors.

“At the [day’s] end of the market, the famers/merchants who have taken in EBT tokens can redeem them [with the Harvest Market],” said Victoria Malone of the marketplace management.

She and Sheridan said they have seen an increase in shoppers who use EBT, in part due to their promotion of the program but also as a sign of the pandemic times.

“We have seen a huge increase of [EBT] users. When I first started [about a year ago] we would redeem about 25 to 30 tokens every Sunday but now we are [averaging] 260 to 270 tokens every Sunday,” Malone said.

She added she thinks this is good for those who use EBT because they can get good, fresh food.

“[Customers] are excited because our farmers are fantastic and [we] are really curating the food purveyors and finding food that is healthy,” Malone added.

Malone added she is really proud of their work in letting people know they can use EBT and can get healthful food at the market.

“The MSPA board is behind us,” she said.

Keeping safety in the forefront, after the tokens are returned, Malone makes certain they are sanitized between usages.