Colorado Springs is about to get a farmers market that doesn't disappear once the leaves fall. Wildcraft Farmers Market Colorado Springs opens on Saturday, Nov. 21, in Briargate, launching what organizers describe as the city's first winter farmers market with 49 confirmed vendors from the Colorado Springs area for its opening season.
The new market will set up every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. inside the Mountain Ridge Middle School cafeteria at 9150 Lexington Drive, according to FOX21 News Colorado. More vendors are expected to join in the coming weeks, the station reports, building on an opening lineup that already spans winter produce, eggs, meat, baked goods, honey, coffee, prepared foods and handmade goods. Food trucks will also be parked outside for shoppers who want something hot to eat on site.
Why Colorado Springs Needed This
Each autumn, the Colorado Springs community loses its weekly connection to local food when the outdoor market season ends, the station's report notes — a gap Wildcraft is aiming to close with an indoor, cold-weather option. The Briargate market is an offshoot of an operation Wildcraft Farmers Market has run in Fort Collins for 20 years, where, per the same account, four local vendors reached out to Wildcraft about bringing a winter market south to Colorado Springs.
Those four vendors are now the founding businesses leading the market locally: Joy and Jon Macinnes of Crazy Pigs BBQ, Beth Glazener of SherBeth's Sweet Shoppe, Jayna DeLazno of Jayna's Artisan Sourdough, and Miguel Galaviz of Celestial Creek Ranch. Glazener said customers wanted to know where to find the vendors during winter, a demand that helped push the project forward.
Behind the Scenes With Wildcraft's Owner
Sari Kimbell, owner of Wildcraft Farmers Market, said local vendors continue growing and making food through the winter months, and that her organization handles the behind-the-scenes logistics so they can keep selling. Wildcraft's own site describes the broader mission simply: giving local growers, ranchers and makers a place to sell, and giving shoppers a place to buy, all the way through winter.
On its website, Wildcraft Farmers Market lists the Colorado Springs market as located in the Briargate neighborhood at Mountain Ridge Middle School, running on Saturdays through April 24, with no market held Dec. 26. Wildcraft's vendor materials add that the organization has provided space for new and seasoned vendors to connect with customers during the cold months since 2006, a run that dates back two decades before this Colorado Springs expansion.
Military Appreciation Marks Opening Day
Opening day doubles as Military Appreciation Day. The first 100 active-duty and retired service members who show a military ID at the market's information table will receive $5 in Market Bucks to spend with any vendor that day, per FOX21's reporting.
Wildcraft's Fort Collins operation offers a glimpse of how dramatically these winter markets can grow. According to Wildcraft's vendor page, that market runs just one Saturday a month through summer but expands to every Saturday from November through April, swelling from more than 50 local farmers, makers and small businesses in summer to more than 100 vendors once winter sets in — though that figure describes Fort Collins, not the vendor count expected in Colorado Springs. Wildcraft also says that in 2026, it expanded the Fort Collins market into the warmer months and now operates there year-round.
That shift has already reshaped the market's home base. The Coloradoan reported in August that the market started as a seasonal winter farmers market in 2006, moved to Fort Collins' Foothills mall in November 2020, and now operates year-round inside that mall at 215 E. Foothills Parkway. Whether Colorado Springs follows a similar path toward a year-round schedule remains to be seen, but for now, Briargate shoppers just have a Saturday morning habit to look forward to again.
