Fresh grown produce and other local products are headed to Fairmont this weekend, as the resort town becomes the latest Columbia Valley community to launch a farmers’ market and flea market.

“We are due,” says co-organizer Tracy Connery. “It’s just promoting local stuff — food and otherwise, and making it readily available to the people who visit and live here.”

The Fairmont market kicks off this Sunday at the Fairmont Village Mall, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It will run once a week until August 14.

Connery says there’s already a good variety of sellers signed up for the debut date.

“There’s arts, crafts, we’ll have food vendors, produce of course, baked items,” she says.

“We’ve got skin care, essential oils, Glacier Soap. The first one is looking to have a dozen vendors thus far, and we have room for 20, so we’d love to see more people.”

The market idea has bounced around the community for several years, Connery says, “and it was time. We’ve got great traffic here in the summertime, and while we all love to go to the Invermere market, Fairmont has enough going on and enough people doing interesting things and just enough people who would want to see a market.”

Fairmont’s time share community also helped inspire the move. With most check ins on Saturday, Connery says many tourists don’t have time to make it to Invermere before that market wraps up for the day.

“So between the resort and the time share, it’s been incredibly well-received,” she adds. “People really believe this is a good thing for Fairmont, just in terms of community building as well.”

While vendors hail from Golden, Cranbrook and various parts of the valley, Connery says she’s also hoping more Fairmont artisans will come out over the course of the summer.