About the Pecos Farmers Market
A Living Thread From Cicuye to Today
For more than a thousand years, Pecos has been a place of gathering – of growing, trading, and exchange. Long before the modern village existed, Pecos Pueblo — known to its people as Cicuye — stood as a powerful crossroads where Pueblo farmers and Plains tribes met to trade food, goods, stories, and culture. That spirit of connection is woven into the land itself.
Reviving a Tradition of Local Food and Community
By the early 21st century, Pecos faced a familiar rural challenge: limited access to fresh, healthy food and few places for community to gather. In 2021, a small group of neighbors — guided by a shared belief in community wellbeing — revived the Pecos Farmers Market with a single table, four zucchinis, and a hand‑made sign that was barely readable.
Rooted in Whole‑Community Health
The Market’s guiding vision is simple: healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people, healthy community. Market Manager Virginia McNally brings decades of experience in integrative health — mind, body, spirit, and community — to the Market’s mission. Her lifelong commitment to accessible, culturally grounded wellbeing shapes the Market’s welcoming, inclusive atmosphere. It’s a place where nourishment is not just physical but social and emotional too. Her approach reminds the community that food is medicine, and that a farmers’ market can be a place of healing as much as a place of commerce.
Growing Stronger Together
In 2024, longtime grower and regenerative agriculture advocate Linda Hassemer stepped more fully into the Market community, bringing her deep gardening knowledge — and her luscious Greens, Beautiful plants and Flowers — to the Saturday tables. Her leadership helped strengthen the connection between the Market and the Pecos Community Garden. By 2025, Linda brought forward a transformative idea:to unite the Market and Garden under a single nonprofit organization. The result was the creation of the Pecos Farmers Market / Pecos Community Garden 501(c)(3) — a structure that supports both programs, expands food access, and strengthens community resilience. Today, Virginia continues to serve as Market Manager, while Linda leads as President of the nonprofit board. Their teams of dedicated volunteers — in the garden and at the market — work seamlessly together, each contributing to a shared vision of a Healthy Pecos Community.
A Continuum, Not a Beginning
The Pecos Farmers Market is not a new idea.
It is a continuation of something ancient.
From the bustling plazas of Cicuye to the cooperative rows of the Community Garden and the lively Saturday Market, Pecos has always been a place where people come together to share what they grow, what they make, and who they are.
The Market simply picked up the thread, and the community continues to weave it forward.
Whether you come to grow, to share, to learn, or simply to be among neighbors, you are part of this living tradition.
