Bigger Maricopa Farmers Market hits town Sunday

Farmers markets have come and gone at Stagestop Marketplace, but owner Will Dunn said he’s found just the right dynamo to make weekly markets a real community event.

Or rather, she found him.

Bee Bullock has joined forces with Dunn to offer a Farmers Market on Sunday. She had a soft opening with 13 vendors on Dec. 4, and has nearly 30 vendors signed up for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

Dunn said Bullock approached him and he said, “Come on girl, and she’s just rocking and rolling and doing the whole thing herself.”

Bullock and her husband Christian Buze run Buzznbeez Good Food Truck and offer their cooking at the Gilbert Farmers Market and on city streets throughout the Valley.

“I'm doing this because I used to live in Maricopa, and I always looked for something to do on the weekends without having to drive all the way into Phoenix,” Bullock said. “We come from the same family as Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Café and LoLo’s Chicken and Waffles.”

Bullock said she’s distributed some 10,000 fliers on the Maricopa Farmers Market and envisions a weekly market filled with community members, fun activities and lots of interesting wares and food to buy.

“We want it as a kind of community event where the church choirs can come and sing, or the Boys Scouts can come down,” she said. “We know it’s a wonderful community.”

Dunn said he had an active farmers market about four years ago, but it has since dwindled to four or five vendors on Saturdays. Now, he said, he sees Bullock's efforts helping to develop a market Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Different vendors could come on different days as a place for small businesses to get a jump start, he said.

“It will take some time, some consistency,” he said. “But they do it every week everywhere else, so there’s no reason we can’t do it here.”