Since its inception on February 12, 2012, Launceston has embraced and supported the market.

It swiftly became a Saturday ritual for many locals. 

Harvest Market manager Kim Hewitt has been with the market since it was founded by Jenny Edis and Mary Mulvaney. 

Ms Hewitt recalled a story which she felt signified the importance of the market within the community. 

“There was a gentlemen who used to come to the market called Dennis, and Dennis wandered into the market early on,” Ms Hewitt said.

“(Market co-founder) Jenny Edis stopped to chat to Dennis and discovered his wife had recently died and he didn’t know how to cook his own food, so she took him around and introduced him to all the stallholders,” she said. 

“Every week we would provide him with a vegetable and instructions on how to go home and cook it.”

Dennis quickly became a regular. 

He brought members from his church community and his children to meet his new friends at Harvest.

“Last year he died, but for the first three years of the market’s life he was there,” Ms Hewitt said.

“He just made the market in so many ways, he sort of signifies what was so important about the market in so many ways.

“It not only connected people with the food but it connected people with each other, and I think that is a pretty cool thing to have achieved.”

Volunteers have always been the backbone to Harvest. 

Ms Hewitt recalled many Saturdays setting and packing up all the public infrastructure needed on site.

“We’d pack things onto somebody’s trailer, park it in a local garage then bring it all out again the next Saturday. It was really hands on to start with” she said. 

Each week, the market needs about 24 volunteers across various stages of the morning. 

“Slowly, over the years we have built up this phenomenal group of community volunteers who assist with setting the market up and taking it down,” Ms Hewitt said. 

Friends of Harvest has connected a variety of groups and organisations with Harvest by enabling them to promote their event or business in return for volunteers. 

Harvest Market manager Curly Haslam-Coates and Ms Hewitt agreed the volunteers were one of the core elements to the markets continued success.  

Staying true to the traditional values of a farmer’s market was another one of those elements.

Bringing the concept of paddock-to-plate to Launcestonians was attributed to the continual success of the market. 

“We are really about buying your onions, carrots, apples and your mince. It is not a gourmet experience in any way, it is where you buy real food for real people,” Ms Hewitt said.

“The other thing we work really hard at is trying to break down that perception that farmers markets are trendy and expensive, we really don’t think we are.”

Harvest connected consumers with producers, encouraging people to eat more seasonal. 

“Because people are buying direct from the producer I think the biggest thing with that is...if stuff is weird you can say ‘what is that, what do you do with it?’, and the people who actually grew it would know because otherwise they wouldn’t put it in the ground,” Ms Haslam-Coates said. 

A fairly recent addition to the stallholder lineup was Three Fermented Queens. 

Best friends Sonya Hiscox and Leanne Stellmaker, and Leannes daughter Faith Stellmaker turned their passion for raw, vegan, fermented products into a small business venture at Harvest.

“It started as my best friend and I and my teenage daughter doing some home fermenting for a number of years and then we decided let's just take the plunge and try to get into Harvest Market,” Leanne said. 

Since launching their stall about 12 months ago, the trio said the support from fellow stallholders and interacting with their customers has been the highlight of the experience. 

“A number of stallholders came up to us right from the beginning and offered us advice and assistance,” Leanne said. 

The welcoming nature of the market community has seen the trio create “bonds and friendships” with fellow stallholders. 

Beyond the vibrant and helpful community also lies an amazing business opportunity. 

“It has just given us exposure from not just the local Launceston community, we have had visitors from hobart and it has given us the opportunity to get into some retail stores in the South of the state as well as the North,” Leanne said. 

Introducing new businesses was a task invaluable to the market’s reputation. 

“We are there to support our farmers and our community,” Ms Haslam-Coates said. 

Mount Gnomon Farm has had a stall at the market since it launched and, producer and farmer Guy Robertson attributed the market’s success to community support and a good mix of stallholders.

“Because it has been going for so long and you go every week you actually feel like you are now part of the community,” Mr Robertson said. 

“I saw pregnant bellies when I first started at the market and now I’ve seen those children grow up and come and get a sausage sample at the market,” he said. 

‘For me, as a producer/farmer it is not that nice on the farm because it has been wet and muddy and miserable, but you can turn up to the market every Saturday and people are genuinely happy to see you.”

Creating change in the way a generation of young people in Northern Tasmania shop was something Ms Haslam-Coates said the market was proud of. 

“There are these kids who are growing up with this just being the normal,” she said.

“We’ve got this really lovely sort of changing of a generation, you see these kids who are just straight in...screaming for berries, or munching on a carrot as they swing on the wooden rocking horse.”