FarmGirl Flea – September 2015 Recap

Wow. I can’t believe we did this. I feel weird saying “I hosted a really big flea market with 5 other ladies” because it may not seem like a big thing or something to as they say “write home about”, but I’m here today to put my heart out there & tell you how proud of us that I am. Planning a lovely curated flea market like the Farmgirl Flea was 6 women coming together with our ideas, experience, & a lot of hard work to bring to life something bigger than we could have ever imagined only by God’s grace. Let me just start out by saying that planning a flea market is no joke. When we first started this I thought cool let’s get some awesome pickers & makers & just do it. No. that’s not the way it goes. Just a start… get amazing vendors, organize & plan where they are going what size booth they want, answer 1,00,000,000 emails daily with questions and potential vendors, get the food vendors, book the location, advertise like crazy, get the bathrooms, organize volunteers, get signs made, get flyers made, rent tents, find a band, buy decorations for an entire fairground, mark all the spots for the booths, organize 150 vendors the day before and day of, plan for parking,  I mean I could go on but this is only a glimpse of what we did & what we paid for. It took a lot of work, a lot of money, a lot of time, & a lot of passion. We did it because we love it & for our first one, it turned out amazing. We had over 8,000 people attend, we had vendors completely sell out of their items, we had beautiful weather, we met some wonderful people, & we learned a lot of valuable lessons on what to change for our next one. All in all I would say it was a HUGE success.

We had two barns filled with 150+ amazing vendors, a camper coral with awesome vintage, an entire grass yard filled with pickers & makers, an event tent with a live band & demonstrations, a beer tent with local hard cider, & everything handmade, vintage & home decor you could imagine. We had a caricature artist, pumpkins, mums, & more. We wanted the entire day to be a fun experience for everyone. These photos in the post are just a tiny tiny glimpse into the flea, it really doesn’t even begin to show how amazing the vendors were…

The biggest problem we had? So many wonderful people showed up to shop. We had no idea that over 8,000 people would actually come & they did. They came from near & far & we were so thankful. Of course when you get at ton of people in one area you are going to have some lines & everything that comes with crowds. Since this was our first one we learned so much & now we know how big it will actually be. Next time we are planning on more gates being opened, more parking with shuttle buses, more bathrooms, more barns, traffic control, larger area, & yah basically anything to do with fitting more people into the fairgrounds. I think it’s the best problem we could have had & the avid flea market people were not complaining at all for sure & were just excited to do some fun picking. The positive comments & the uplifting encouraging words far outweighed the opposite. I had no idea what an undertaking hosting this large of an event was & I will never look at another event I attend the same. Know that when you attend a flea market someone’s heart & soul went into that & it took a lot of hard work.

After all of the costs of hosting this wonderful event, let me tell you hosting a large event isn’t cheap but we wanted to bring something like this to our area & it was so worth it, we also gave a lot of money back to the local 4H groups, local youth groups, & local basketball teams, fairground maintenance, & more. we wanted our event to bless others like we hope it blessed everyone who came that day. We are so so so so thankful for everyone who came to the flea, all of the amazing vendors, all of the awesome volunteers, the fairgrounds, the food trucks, everyone who encouraged & cheered us on, & I could keep going. We are so thankful & excited for the next Farmgirl Flea which will be May 14th at the Hudsonville fairgrounds. Here is the event page for those who want to stay up to date on the next event [here] & see who all the amazing vendors are. Be sure to find me on Facebook & Instagram to get behind the scenes shots of the market, & if you are in Michigan or the surrounding areas you don’t want to miss the next one & remember it’s a bi-annual event. Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today! xx