Friends and business partners Mo Karnage and Marie D’Angelo launched the city’s newest farmers market, the Richmond Growers Market, on Saturday, May 3 in Manchester. Proudly dubbed “the fruitiest market in town,” the market is a celebration of fresh food, queerness and community.

The market offers an array of activities, including story time and crafts for kids, a donation-based yoga class from Tiger House at 8:15 a.m. and free tabling space for nonprofits.

“We really wanted to be a full experience for the community,” says D’Angelo, founder of Richmond Makers Market. “Especially as we’re growing, we have the space to offer to nonprofits for free right now, so we want to share our community resources, education and activities.”

Karnage notes that having nonprofits tabling at the market benefits the organizations, but also market customers and the market itself. “And if we have a bunch of different ones during the season, that hits a bunch of different topics and interests and areas of relevance for folks,” Karnage says.

Karnage names several goals for the market. “One thing is supporting small businesses and farmers. Another is bringing the food to Manchester, creating at least one avenue toward food access in that area, since there are no grocery stores.”

D’Angelo adds, “I think everything we do is based in community development and being there for our neighbors.”

That means addressing a neighborhood’s unmet needs—in Manchester’s case, a lack of access to groceries. D’Angelo, who has lived in Manchester for nine years, says she suspected the district would be classified as a food desert even before looking at any data, “because I have to walk across the river to get to a grocery store.”

Karnage explored the United States Census Bureau’s online mapping system and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food access research atlas and confirmed that Manchester meets the formal definition of a food desert.

“It’s basically a combination of the income level of the population and the distance to a grocery store. If those two things are overlapping to a certain extent, then we’ve got people who don’t have the income level to have ease of transportation, they can’t access their car as much as they want to—if they have one at all—and the bus lines don’t go to places with grocery stores,” Karnage explains.

Karnage has assembled census maps of the areas around Richmond’s established farmers markets, showing their placement relative to areas classified as food deserts (you can find links to more research about food justice and improving food access on the Richmond Growers Market website.)

Making the market an explicitly queer-friendly space is another way D’Angelo and Karnage seek to develop community. “If you create a space that’s explicitly queer, you create space for other people. By being big and loud about it, you discover all of these other people, who maybe weren’t ready to be so big and loud, but are so excited to have a space for them to fit in,” Karnage says.

D’Angelo adds: “Something that we asked in our applications was what, specifically, [vendors] were looking for in this farmers market, and overwhelmingly they wanted inclusivity. They wanted us to be loud and to stand out, and they appreciated that it was a space where they could be fully themselves.”

The market is attracting vendors in areas beyond the standard farmers market offerings of produce, prepared food and crafts, too.

Jessy Woodke, owner of conservation landscaping company Undoing Ruin, sees the market as an opportunity to share knowledge of native plants. “I want to get people interested in native edibles, specifically for the purpose of resilience in the face of food shortages. People have been surviving off this stuff for thousands of years, and there’s no reason we can’t, too,” he says.

Woodke will be selling small boxes planted with a mix of native flowers and herbs, a way for people to begin to get to know native species even if their growing space is limited to a porch or window box.

Karnage and D’Angelo say they have found the local businesses and community organizations of Richmond’s Southside to be highly collaborative. The Manchester Alliance provided a forum to discuss neighborhood interest in a farmers market, and Legend Brewing Company provides the space for it to happen.

Karnage and D’Angelo carry the spirit of mutual support forward, offering mentoring and opportunities for community building to their vendors. Karnage explains, “If the vendors at our farmers market learn from each other, and get better and better at what they do, then they attract more customers and that benefits everyone.”

Among those benefits, D’Angelo hopes for “more tomatoes!” Karnage confirms, “Basically, we want tomatoes. Fresh tomatoes and also bread.”

Check out the Richmond Growers Market in the parking lot at Legend Brewing Company (321 S. 7th St.) Saturdays, 8 a.m. to noon through Oct. 25, 2025.