HARTLAND — With a heavy rain pounding on the roof of the tent protecting Jacque’s Cakes display, there were just a few vendors and even fewer customers at the weekly Friday afternoon farmers market on the lawn in front of the Hartland Public Library.

But Jacque’s owner Jacqueline Fredette was not discouraged. Instead, she was optimistic about the prospects for sales at the market in the coming months when she hopes more people will sample and buy her cake pops and cupcakes each week.

“We hope to expand, but for now we wanted to get our foot in the door,” said Fredette, who started her home baking business this spring. “A farmers market is an easy way to do that. You don’t have to jump through as many hoops as you do trying to get into a grocery store.”

Fredette said she tried to sell at the Lebanon Farmers Market — she lives in West Lebanon — but they had no openings for food vendors so she plans to try to be an occasional “drop-in vendor” and in the future try to get accepted as a full-time vendor there. A storefront also is a part of her future plans.

Melodie Martinez, who started her home-based baking business Love at First Bite in Grafton in late 2020, is a regular at the Enfield Farmers Market and has found it to be an inexpensive way to reach customers and meet them personally.

“I love the interaction,” Martinez said.

While selling at a farmers market may not result in a large volume of business, it can have its advantages, especially for fledgling businesses without a lot of capital to invest in large scale distribution and marketing efforts.

The startup costs, usually a vendor’s fee, are low and depending on the market, a lot of customers can stop by in just a few hours. The market may also do a little advertising with a vendor list on a website. Additionally, the vendor is paid right away in cash. The vendor fee for the Hartland market, which runs from late May through the end of September is $270. In Enfield, the market takes place on the second and fourth Saturdays from mid-May through mid-October and the vendor fee is $100.

Farmers markets also are seen as an opportunity to develop more personal relationships with customers. That is one advantage that Martinez likes about selling her baked goods at the Enfield market.

“Personally I like it,” said Martinez, who became a vendor at Enfield in May 2023. “I can create relationships with my customers and I get to meet them. It wasn’t like dropping items off at a store and never interacting with people.”

Martinez also enjoys the rapport among vendors which she said builds confidence and has helped her learn.

“The other vendors have been great,” she said, adding that it is easy to back her vehicle into her spot, pop the hatch and set up quickly. “You can learn from them what works and what doesn’t work.”

While Fredette and Martinez are relatively new to the farmers market scene, Becky and Ben Nelson, owners of Beaver Pond Farms in Newport, have been selling their pies at markets in Newport on Friday afternoons and at the Sunapee market on Saturday mornings, along with fresh produce, for several years.

“Exposure,” Ben said when asked why the family-owned farm sells its four varieties of pies at the markets even though sales do much better at the farm store on John Stark Highway. “We are probably not making a lot of money but we get to meet folks, both locals and tourists. It is more about the exposure.”

Ben said occasionally someone may ask for a pie they don’t have at the market and he will direct them to the farm store. Others could order at the farm store and pick the pies up at the farmers market.

The Nelsons’ pies, including a popular raspberry-blueberry, are made using recipes handed down through generations. Originally baked in the kitchen of his mother-in-law in the 1980s, the pies now are made, crust and all, inside a former garage that was converted to a kitchen with large ovens.

Fredette, who has an associate’s degree in pastry arts from Johnson and Wales College, said when she couldn’t find employment, she decided to start her own business at home, where her mother, Christina, helps.

Fredette began her home baking business in April and made her first appearance at the Hartland Farmers Market at the end of May.

“It was a little rough at the start,” Fredette said standing before a display of freshly made cake pops and cupcakes of different flavors and frosting while the heavy rain continued. “We didn’t know how many people would come but the second week was better and we almost sold out of the cupcakes with fewer sales of cake pops.”

Fredette, who uses local milk and butter in her recipes, said word-of-mouth is helping — she has had two, 50 cupcake orders — and she will continue to use the farmers market as a way to introduce more people to her baked goods.

For Martinez, who had two years of culinary arts training in high school, the farmers market was not the first avenue she chose to sell her baked goods. She developed her passion to bake from her grandmother and mother and began making breads, cakes, cookies and other items at home. With encouragement of her husband, family and friends she decided to try to sell them in some small local stores and farm stands, including Primitive Pickings in Lebanon. Martinez reached a total of five locations but when two of them did not continue, she decided to give the farmers market approach a try and is glad she did.

“They welcomed me with open arms,” Martinez said about the experience.

Since selling at Enfield, Martinez has seen the number of followers on her Facebook page more than double to more than 700. She has done other smaller markets in Grafton and she is considering the Canaan market, but said her schedule is so packed between family and the business she is not sure she has the time. So Enfield will do for now.

“It is my sweet spot,” she said.

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.