FRAMINGHAM - As the summer draws to a close, planners of the Framingham Farmers Market are also wrapping up a successful 2023 season.

Farmers, bakers, and other vendors have been making their way to the city’s Centre Common on Thursdays over the past several weeks to sell their products to visitors. Market Manager Bill Sell noted how the events have expanded in scale in recent years; it’s grown from featuring six or seven vendors a week in 2021 to nearly 100 vendors and 10 food trucks being present on the first day of the 2023 season.

Sell explained that the Framingham Farmers Market does not charge vendors up front to participate.

“That, in turn, is allowing them to grow their business very, very quickly,” Sell continued.

Karen Clark, owner of the Dorchester-based Clark’s Cakes and Coolies, is one of those vendors who has brought a food truck to the market this year. She highlighted the events’ ability to bring the community together and to boost local commerce.

“If there’s a market available for us as culinary entrepreneurs to go out and present our product to the public, and if it’s a viable product, it’s going to sell,” Clark said.

“It keeps the economy going.”

State officials are taking notice of what’s happening at the Framingham Farmers Market as well. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey recently recognized Farmers Market Week across the Commonwealth, as representatives with the the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) toured multiple farmers markets—including Framingham’s—to see their impacts.

“The food system only works if everyone’s able to afford fresh, healthy, local food,” Winton Pitcoff with the MDAR said.

“Every dollar that you spend at the farmers market is not going through a retailer, and a distributor, and a processor. It’s going directly to those farmers.”