I am a big fan of farmers’ markets because they offer unique products for sale and provide an excellent opportunity to support small businesses and engage with the local community. If you happen to be in Estes Park on a Thursday, I highly recommend visiting their weekly farmers market.
Now, let me take you on a quick tour of the farmers’ market and introduce you to a variety of businesses that await your visit. I’ll also provide insights into some of the products we bought and share our impressions of them.
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What is the Estes Park Farmers Market?
The Estes Park Farmers Market is a local market located in Estes Park, Colorado, that showcases a variety of vendors who offer fresh produce, locally sourced foods, handmade crafts, artisanal products, and more.
Visitors can explore the market and purchase items directly from the vendors, supporting local farmers, artisans, and businesses. It’s also an opportunity for the community to connect with local producers and enjoy a vibrant and diverse shopping experience.
When is the Estes Park Farmers Market?
The Estes Park Farmers Market typically begins at the beginning of June and will run until the end of September. It takes place every Thursday and runs from 8 AM to 1 PM, which is great because it allows the market to remain open for a few hours before those summer thunderstorms roll into the mountains.
It’s free to enter, and you can find it right next to the Estes Park visitor center at: 500 Big Thompson Ave, Estes Park, CO 80517. There is parking surrounding the farmers’ market near the beginning of the River Walk, but we chose to park at the large parking garage just on the other side of the river. Parking at this garage or the nearby lot is free, making it very easy to visit this market without having to pay anything out of pocket.
Keep in mind that the opening times and dates may be subject to change in the future. You can always check the website here for more details.
What can you find at the Estes Park Farmers Market?
The Estes Park Farmers Market is a pretty good sized farmers market considering the size of the town. They have a nice diverse mix of vendors, plenty of open space to roam around in, and lots of the vendors also take credit cards making your transactions easy to process.
We showed up to the farmers market around 10 AM and I was immediately surprised to see a tent selling tamales! We weren’t able to check them out but we will certainly be back.
One of the stands that caught my eye was Rinaldo’s Paris bakery, a mobile bakery ran by a European baker with over 30 years of experience. They had cinnamon rolls, sticky buns, cookies, and they also make “speciality breads” such as zucchini bread, banana nut bread, pumpkin bread, etc.
If you have not eaten breakfast yet, this would be a great place to stop at for some delicious pastries that will surely fill you up. Seriously, look how irresistible some of these looked.
Some of the cookies they had also looked delicious which included oatmeal cookies with or without raisins (thankfully), chocolate chunk cookies, and freshly baked meringue. Cross your fingers that this stand will be around when you visit!
Being an avid tea enthusiast, I constantly seek new methods to elevate my tea-drinking experience and experiment with diverse flavors. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by using various types of honey. As we frequently travel, we have made it a practice to exclusively procure honey from local vendors.
This not only adds a touch of adventure to our tea sessions but also hopefully aids in combating unfamiliar allergies that we may encounter along the way.
During our visit, we decided to check out the honey stand, with products from Honeyville, a third-generation beekeeping and bottling family business located in Durango, Colorado, known for its Cinnamon Whipped Honey.
Here, we discovered an array of new honey flavors, including one infused with the essence of whiskey barrel.
Intrigued, we purchased a bottle and I must say, I thoroughly relish the faint whiskey undertones it adds to my tea blends! Worth every penny.
Another stand that really caught my eye was Corey’s Chocolate, which has a mission that I think we can all be happy to support: “Spreading joy through chocolate.” At Corey’s Chocolate, you can indulge in a variety of meticulously handcrafted chocolate treats made in Niwot, CO, utilizing quality French and Belgian chocolate.
They were incredibly generous with their samples, which I truly appreciated. It’s not just because they delighted my taste buds, but it’s always a wonderful gesture when a business offers samples to customers. The particular samples they gave us were there elixirs which were essentially chocolate sauce is that could be great on lots of foods like fruits.
We didn’t really have good food candidates for the chocolate sauce and just downing that by itself didn’t seem like the best use of calories for us, so we ended up purchasing some handcrafted peanut butter cups, which they had available in both milk chocolate and dark chocolate.
And let me tell you, they were absolutely delicious. In fact, I might even go so far as to say they outshine Reese’s peanut butter cups — one of my all-time faves!
If you’re a coffee drinker, look out for a coffee stand which in our case was Redemption Road Coffee.
Certainly, every farmers market needs to have fresh fruits and vegetables, and at this particular market, there was a big booth from Eden Valley, which is located in Loveland, Colorado. Eden Valley has been around since 1962 and their produce, although not officially certified as organic, is grown without the use of pesticides or chemicals.
To deal with pests on their farm, they use various methods including changing the crops they grow in different areas each year, which helps keep pests away. They also practice companion planting, where they grow certain plants together that naturally discourage pests. Additionally, if pests do appear, the farm workers take care of them by hand. So there’s definitely a personal touch to these plants.
I thought this stand with “crushable hats” that supposedly stay on with winds up to 40 mph was pretty interesting. Who would’ve thought you could defy gale-force winds in style!
If you are a fan of bison, a true superfood of a protein, you may find a stand well suited for you.
They also had plenty of dips, salsa, and nuts for you to choose from along with olive oil. Here’s look at some of the other stands that were available.
Other snacks were available such as kettle corn and churros.
And you can’t forget about the aptly named “Coloradough.”
Final word
I’m always down to visit a farmers market, especially when traveling. It’s such a great way to get beyond the tourist scene especially in a place like Estes Park which is geared so heavily towards the throngs of tourists that practically live along Elkhorn Avenue.
We certainly enjoyed our visit to the Estes Park Farmers Market and were also impressed with the variety of options and how friendly everybody was. It was nothing but good vibes and so I would highly recommend you give it a visit if you’re ever in town when it’s going on.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.