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For more than five decades, people have powered the Eugene Saturday Market, creating a community gathering spot many feel is needed now more than ever. The April 4 opening of the 2026 season brought hundreds downtown, supporting not only the makers but also the farmers market across the street.
Warm sunshine greeted the opening day of the 57th season of Eugene Saturday Market.
A folk singer’s acoustic guitar carried through the people weaving between rows of makers beneath the downtown tree canopy’s dappled light on Saturday, April 4. The makers included Emily Bellehumeur, who has sold wheel-thrown pottery from her tent for nine seasons.
“It’s our New Year,” said Bellehumeur. “After the long winter break, everybody’s ready to come back here and start making some money, get back into the grove, and get back into our production flow.”
Bellehumeur presses roller stamps and lace doilies into her clay bowls and vases, then glazes each piece with formulas she mixed herself, before firing them.
It’s a lovely process, she said, one she shares nearly every Saturday from April through October in a community she describes as deeply supportive.
“Whether I’ve started out with a bad day, rough morning, or whatever, once I get here, it’s so uplifting [to be with] the community, my fellow craftspeople that I sell with,” she said. “They’re absolutely pillars of strength.”
Bellehumeur is among the 249 vendors that membership coordinator Sonia Ostendorf organized for an exceptional first-day turnout, with hundreds of people roaming with ease, finding a sense of safety in the open that can be hard to come by in divisive times.
The atmosphere reflects the market’s roots and the vision of founder Lotte Streisinger who started it in 1970, inspired by outdoor markets in Mexico that brought makers and the community at large together.
Ostendorf, now in her seventh season, said each year she thinks about the first Saturday Market and what it continues to stand for.
No matter what kind of background you are, you have a place that you can come sell.
Sonia Ostendorf
“A lot of it has to do with how we started, our mission statement [first written by Streisinger] of creating a space for everybody to come and show their wares, no matter what background they have, religous, ethinic, no matter what kind of background you are, you have a place that you can come sell,” Ostendorf said.
Among those first setting up a booth was Wayne Lambert, a potter who makes and sells stoneware.
For decades, he shaped and fired his work at his home near the Goodpasture Bridge near Vida — until 2020, when the Holiday Farm Fire burned through the McKenzie River valley. He lost everything, save for the kiln that he would fire to 2,300 degrees.
The Club Mud Ceramics Cooperative at the Maude Kerns Art Center offered a space for Lambert to continue his work, which has become more than a livelihood.
“It’s like therapy,” he said.
On Saturday, hues of blue and terracotta stood on display before Lambert as he tracked sales in a spiral notebook. His booth now sits across the street from where he first began selling.
In the early days, Lambert sold with other makers along Oak Street, where the Farmers Market Pavilion now stands. Now, that space is home to the Lane County Farmers Market. While separate from Saturday Market — and open nearly year-round — the farmers market and Saturday Market take on a shared rhythm once the season begins.
“There’s definitely an influx of people once the Saturday Market opens up across the street,” said farmers market program and marketing manager Orion Lawrenz.
At the help booth, Lawrenz answered questions and matched up to $20 for shoppers using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. The added support proved critical during last fall’s government shutdown disruption.
“[It’s] a very unique third place,” Lawrenz said.
“Farmer’s markets themselves, the concept is built off of people connecting over food and being able to have face-to-face interaction with the people who are actually growing and producing your food.”
Those are people like second-generation farmer Ben Tilly, whose family has been at the farmers market for 41 years.
Tilly’s Crossroad Farm grows peppers, tomatoes, and other nightshade vegetables about 5 miles north of Coburg. Making the drive down to Eugene is something he has always looked forward to, even more so in the spring and summer weeks ahead.
“It’s hard to keep up with the news every day, and immediately after that intense feeling of dread or whatnot,” said Tilly, who is also the president of Lane County Farmers Market board.
“[At the market] an outside world doesn’t exist, this is just what exists. It’s really nourishing. I’m really glad that we’re here to provide that for the community, but the community does it back to us right here, and we wouldn’t be here without them,” he said. “I can’t wait for Saturdays.”
