Farmers market opens for New season
Maggie Hanson with Clinch River Katahdins assists a cus- tomer with lamb’s-ear dog chews at the Clinton Farmers Market in June 2025. The farmers market will make its return for the 2026 season from noon to 7 p.m. on Fri- day, May 1, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 2. Vendors will be set up in the parking lot across from Hamock’s Restaurant and next to the train tracks on Eagle Bend Road downtown. (photo:Tony Cox )
Vendors will set up in the parking lot across from Hamock’s Restaurant, next to the train tracks on Eagle Bend Road downtown.
This week’s hours will be the same as those of the antique festival – noon to 7 p.m. on Friday (May 1) and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, according to organizer Matthew Garafolo, a Clinton sheep farmer.
After that, the farmers market will operate each week through Halloween, alternating between the new city parking lot across from Knight’s Flowers on Main Street from 4-7 p.m. on Thursdays and at the Anderson County Fairgrounds off Charles G. Seivers Boulevard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.
The first market in the Main Street location will be Thursday, May 7, and the first one at the fairgrounds will be on Saturday, May 16.
There will be artisan goods, baked goods, eggs, beef, lamb, crafts, and some limited produce available at all of the markets. The regular markets, after the antique festival, will also feature some food trucks or trailers.
Garafolo and his wife, Maggie, started the Clinton Farmers Market last year after the previous operators gave it up following the 2024 growing season.
The East Tennessee FARM group had sponsored the Clinton market the previous three years – the first year in the city parking lot on Commerce Street and the next two years in Clinton’s Lakefront Park.
But the group announced in March 2025 that it did not intend to operate the market that year, citing a lack of vendor interest.
The Garafalos operated their Clinch River Katahdins booth at Saturday’s market, selling fresh Katahdin lamb.
Katahdin, the breed of sheep the Garafolos produce on their farm, “work very well in a variety of production situations as a low-maintenance, easy care sheep,” according to the website katahdins.org.
These Katahdin hair sheep “provide a practical option to producers who are primarily interested in raising a meat animal, with great lamb vigor [and] mothering ability, and do not want to shear or are no longer able to find shearers,” the website notes.
Garafolo said he and his now-wife decided to revive the Clinton market last year in part as a way to help market their own lamb products.
Details, including the schedule for 2026, can be found on the website Clintonfarmersmarket.com.
