Fire won’t end Fishley’s four decades at farmers market
For 40 years — rain, shine or snow — pea lovers could count on Rose Fishley.
Peas are her best seller at the Regina Farmers Market, though not her only seller.
Onions and radishes usually kick off the season. Beets and carrots are a staple midsummer. She wraps up in fall with pumpkins.
At Wednesday’s bi-weekly market on the City Square Plaza, Fishley’s greens were slim — rhubarb and onions sat alongside baby blankets and hand-knit toddlers’ sweaters.
Fire destroyed her two greenhouses on April 30 and she lost all the bedding plants she’d normally have on offer.
You could wonder whether a blow like that wouldn’t signal time to pack it in — Fishley is 76, after all. But “no, I’m not that kind of person,” she said promptly, matter-offactly. “Just got to keep putting one foot ahead of the other and keep going.”
Since the first farmers market at the exhibition grounds in 1975, Fishley has been a fixture.
There were only six vendors to begin with, including then-market president Ralph Thomson. They all sold produce.
“We were pretty small in that big building,” said Fishley, who started farming near Bethune with her husband Stuart in 1973.
From the exhibition, she followed the market to its various locations — in the 1980s to the 1800 block of Hamilton Street, then to the Via Rail (now Casino Regina) parking lot, then to Scarth Street, City Hall and finally the Plaza.
“I’m hoping we stay here,” she said. This place has drawn the best crowds yet. One market last July counted 17,000 visitors in four hours.
“To me, this is just perfect.”
“She’s got that attitude of ‘let’s support the market and let’s come in as often as we can,’ ” said Ada Bennett, RFM marketing manager.
Stuart, who died in January, and Rose were raised on farms. They started their marriage in Regina, with Rose working at Sears and Stuart working for Regina Transit, but they both missed farm life.
“It’s a different lifestyle than the city,” said Fishley. It provides “freedom.”
Northeast of Bethune, they farmed grain and started a garden.
The latter was “a definite source of income for us,” said Fishley. “Now it’s larger farms, larger machinery. A person with three quarters of land, you’re not really able to compete.
“So you find something else to supplement your income and this is exactly what we did.”
At its peak, their garden was five acres.
“As we got older, we just decided we’d cut back to what we could ourselves handle,” said Fishley.
The farm has always been a family thing. As children, their daughters Sheila and Deb were always at the market. Sheila still helps her mom there, and grandchildren fill in from time to time.
“It was something we could involve the whole family in,” said Fishley.
Over the years, her fellow vendors have become like family, too.
“Twice a week we meet here and we’re all striving for the same thing and I just find it’s just like being part of a family,” she said.
As long as she has her health, Fishley has no plans to stop gardening. “If you like what you’re doing, it’s not work.”
But she might do things differently if she were a little younger.
“I think I would get a place ready to store things, like root cellars and that sort of thing,” to have more to sell at the increasingly popular indoor winter markets.
The RFM takes place this morning on the Plaza, as usual; Fishley will be set up at the Cathedral Village Arts Festival street fair.