When I first moved to Redding almost 8 years ago, The Redding Farmers Market was just a handful of vendors, craft coffee, and a quick walk around the parking lot before you’d seen it all.

In more recents years the Redding Farmers Market has grown into a burgeoning marketplace with a large variety of ready-to-eat food, organic fruits and veggies, live music, craft coffee, traditional medicine and more. It has actually become a staple of my Saturday mornings in the sunnier months. The vendors now wrap around the parking lot, and it will take you more than 15 minutes to see it all.

The market is held behind City Hall off of Athens Avenue, just a block or two away from the Redding Public Library. When you get there, you’ll usually be welcome d by the sound of a local musician strumming a 6-string, the smell of crepes, and smiling faces of local farmers working hard to feed their families.

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Perhaps you’re not convinced yet? It’s also a great date idea. Here’s what you do. Walk around the market and only pick specific foods you’d like to incorporate into a meal. For example, you and your hot date want to make some Pho together. Stop at one of the Thai/Lao stands and get some Thai Basil (the one with purple flowers), Thai onions, and any other greens you might be into incorporating. Grab some mushrooms from the organic mushroom guy. Keep walking, and find yourself at one of the local free range pig-farmer stands. There are a few different options for free-range, all organic beef/poultry/pork options. grab some pork belly or some chicken and keep moving. Don’t forget cilantro (that is if you don’t think it tastes like soap.) The world is your oyster at that point, go home and show that date of yours how good of a cook you are.

We’re huge believers and supporters of small business in our city. We believe it is the glue that holds a local economy together! If you live here and you haven’t spent a sunny spring morning at the Redding Farmers Market, you’re a doing a disservice to yourself! The market opens for the first time in 2019 on April 7.

It’s the question that has collectively plagued minds since the Mt. Shasta Mall began it’s new construction months ago: Will Chick-Fil-A actually be inhabiting the corner lot on Hilltop and Dana Drive?

*shakes Magic 8-ball furiously* Answer: Outlook good.

A lot have heard the collective rumbling that the deal was possibly on the the fritz. The City of Redding, while heading in the right direction, hasn’t always been a shining beacon of freedom for new businesses. Personally, we think that the City is headed in a very business friendly direction, with many new faces in leadership. Many were disappointed when Buffalo Wild Wings was promised and then clawed back after the deal fell apart. Although people tend to blame the city for that it was actually a result of construction being stopped after it was revealed that Sports Authority had a clause in its lease that stated a restaurant can't be closer than 300 feet from its front door… and then Sports Authority closed. Whomp whomp.