Dziuba: Old Dundee Farmers Market opens Saturday

After 21 years, coordinators of the Old Dundee Farmers Market in East Dundee can expect a few things when they open for the season in May.

They can expect the weather to be sunny, rainy, cold or warm. Also, they can expect June Boeckh to sell the collectibles she has been selling since it opened in 1990. And they can expect a few vendors to sell flats of annual flowers.

In a month or two, those vendors will bring fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and beans.

Other than that, anything goes, said Sandy Beck, a member of the committee that oversees the Dundee Township Visitors’ Center. The market is on the same North River Street property as the center.

“We have from 30-40 vendors,” she said. “Sometimes it varies.”

Sometimes the vendors number so many their booths and tables reach nearly to Route 72.

In years when the economy has been soft, more people have sold items during the six hours the market is open each week. And in other years, competition from markets in neighboring towns has reduced the number of vendors.

But the regular vendors will still show up, hoping for sunshine and to sell a couple hundred dollars worth of merchandise. And even if it rains, the market will be open its usual hours from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The market opens Saturday, May 7, the day before Mother’s Day, and runs until the last weekend in October. It has been around so long that it has become a rite of spring in Dundee Township.

Vendors from all over northern Illinois travel to the market to sell flowers, antiques, magazines, record albums, glassware, baked goods, fruits and vegetables.

“If they sell food, they have to have their own permit from Kane County,” Beck said. “We allow just about anything except for weapons, alcohol, and drugs.”