Lakeside Farmers’ Market Celebrates 15th Anniversary 

by Charles McGuigan 06.2022

Hundreds of people, over the course of a couple of hours, visited Lakeside Farmers’ Market on its 15th anniversary, which was celebrated in mid-May. Ron Moody & The Centaurs—a Lakeside icon since the 1960s—provided the musical entertainment. Among those present were Fairfield District Supervisor Frank Thornton (currently serving his seventh term), and his wife, Betty, who, in a way, was the progenitor of the Lakeside Farmers’ Market.

Back in 2005, when the space occupied by the Farmers’ Market was nothing more than a sea of asphalt, the owners, Peter and Sharon Francisco, hosted a Lakeside Business Association picnic there. Betty Thornton accompanied Sharon to the western edge of the parking lot, and through a haze of tall weeds, they could see spires of cornstalks, tangles of tomato vines. Betty, who worked at the time as an extension agent with Henrico County, looked over at Sharon and said this: “You know what? this would be a wonderful place for a farmers’ market.”

“So Betty planted the seed in me,” Sharon recalls. “And Peter said, ‘Once you plant a seed in my wife, there’s no turning back.”

Which turned out to be the case. 

Over the next two years, the Franciscos cleared hurdle after hurdle to create what would become Henrico County’s first farmers’ market. At that time there were just a handful of farmers’ markets in the  entire Richmond metro area, including Byrd House and Goochland Farmers’ Market, but none of them was in Henrico.

“We were the first, and Henrico had to figure out what to do with it,” Sharon remembers. “We had to go through a process and get permits. We had to get a zoning variance and we had to have a plan of development. Everything that was required. And the county was very particular.”

Finally, in 2007, Lakeside Farmers’ Market opened for business. But in those early years the market was just a section of the parking lot with folding tables, and tents, which, under certain conditions, posed a problem. “We operated with tents and then decided that was unsafe,” says Sharon. “They were like box kites when the wind came up. So we wanted to build a more permanent structure, and since we owned the property, we could do that.”

In 2011, at a cost of almost half-a-million dollars, the Franciscos had a massive pavilion erected that would become a landmark on the Northside. It’s an impressive piece of engineering with a truss frame system that supports the massive seamed roof, and ten-by-ten inch vertical beams that support the entire structure.  “We decided in order to be one of the most successful farmers’ markets in the region we needed a sense of permanence,” Peter had told me years ago. “Those posts are twenty feet tall and go down into the ground six feet, with a tube of concrete around them. You don’t get any more permanent than that. This market will be here in a hundred years.”

The same year the pavilion was built, the Francisco’s opened Lakeside Farmers’ Market Too in the building adjacent the outdoor market. “We decided to make this into an indoor pavilion, and use it year round for our market during the wintertime,” says Sharon.

The response to this farmers’ market has been overwhelming, almost since the beginning, and the customer base continues to grow. “We’re seeing a lot of young people coming to the market who have just moved into the area,” Sharon says. “And they’re very interested coming to the market and buying fresh produce. And then we have the older people who are used to eating vegetables and cooking vegetables. We have a great variety of produce here, and we have a mixture of age groups that come here to purchase the produce.”

Some of the vendors at the market have been there since day one.  Sharon mentions Rosa and Lionel Lopez of Lopez Farm over on the Northern Neck, and Britney and Chris Rudolph of Deer Run Farm up in Hanover County.

“We’ve seen their families grow, and their children grow up,” says Sharon. “All of a sudden the children are helping with the set ups, and all those types of things.”

Back on that small parcel of land where Betty Thornton had first seen the potential for a farmers’ market, Carl Vanderberg now operates Lakeside’s Tiny Acre. Just slightly more than seven hundred footsteps to the market, this farm generates no carbon footprint at all. “And this past winter Carl was growing in his greenhouses, so he had fresh produce all winter long,” Sharon tells me. “It’s hard to believe we’re already celebrating our fifteenth anniversary.”

On June 2 the Franciscos celebrated another anniversary. Sharon and Peter, both Northsiders since birth, have been married now for forty-nine years, but had known one another since they were just toddlers.  

“I grew up in Bellevue on Avondale Avenue,” Sharon Francisco says. “Peter lived in a house on Woodrow Avenue in Lakeside, but his family ended up moving over to Seminary Avenue.  We were in the same graduating class at John Marshall. We were high school sweethearts. And the rest is history.”