Sycamore farmers market back in business thanks to Kar-Fre flowers

SYCAMORE – After a yearlong hiatus, Sycamore’s summertime farmers market got back to business Tuesday with a new organizer and location.

Kar-Fre Flowers owner Adrienne Leach, 33, brought the city’s annual market back to life by hosting a variety of food and artisan vendors at her flower shop on Tuesday.

“Last year, when it didn’t happen, I was really bummed out because I actually used to sell at the farmers market before we bought the business,” Leach said.

Leach recently took over Kar-Fre Flowers and has utilized her local market vendor connections to create a weekly market that mimics what was previously held and organized by the Sycamore Chamber of Commerce on the DeKalb County Courthouse lawn.

She said she loves the community that develops out of farmers markets, and believes Sycamore ought to have one.

“We’re an ag [agriculture] town, we should have a resource for our farmers and our makers and bakers,” Leach said.

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Amanda Mathey, from Sycamore, helps a customer at her Stoney Willows booth Tuesday, June 3, 2025, during the the Sycamore Farmers Market, hosted by Kar-Fre Flowers and Gifts. The market will be held Tuesdays from 3-6 p.m. through August 26 at Kar-Fre Flowers. Some of the market was held indoors due to the weather. (Mark Busch)

The new Sycamore farmers market, hosted by Kar-Fre Flowers at 1126 E. State St., will run from 3 to 6 p.m. every Tuesday until Aug. 26.

About a dozen vendors were on hand for the first market of the 2025 season, but Leach said as many as 20 vendors currently plan on participating.

She said vendors such as Half-Acre Market, gluten-free bakery Flourish, One More Salsa and Sun Flour Rising said they were ready for a new Sycamore farmers market.

“People were actually really excited because I knew them from working at the markets before, it wasn’t like I was somebody totally new to them,” Leach said. “They’re excited, too, that I was asking the farmers what they needed, what they prefer, what kind of feedback they were willing to give me.”

Not all vendors at the market on Tuesday were veterans of the former market.

Nikki Rice, 42, the owner of Fancy Work Macrame, just brought her business to DeKalb County consumers. Her first ever market event was the Back Alley Market held in her hometown of DeKalb on May 10. She said she plans on making weekly appearances at the new Sycamore farmers market before switching to the DeKalb farmers market later in the season. DeKalb’s market, in its 30th year, kicks off Thursday.

She said her first experience presenting Fancy Work Macrame to market consumers inspired her to join the Sycamore farmers market.

“It went really great, I was very nervous for it, but I was really excited to share the macrame work with everyone,” Rice said. “I got a lot of interest, especially in plant hangers. That’s what a lot of people know macrame for.”

Rice wasn’t the only rookie vendor at the Sycamore farmers market on Tuesday. Tyler Studebaker, 35, of Sycamore, also brought Maplemore Farms to the market for the first time.

Maplemore Farms, a play on Malta and Sycamore that Studebaker said was drummed up by his wife, raises and sells black angus beef cattle and butchered pork to local consumers.

In 2024, Maplemore Farms was opened for bulk sales, but 2025 is the first year the farm is selling individual cuts of meat.

“We try to do everything as local as possible,” Studebaker said. “All of our featured calves come from my brother-in-law’s farm down in Hinckley, our processing is down at a local processor in Sublette, Illinois. All of our feed comes from a feed mill just down the road, and so our goal is to keep everything as close to where it’s grown, finished, processed and consumed as possible.”

That ethos echoes with what Leach and Kar-Fre Flowers is seeking to accomplish with the farmers market.

“We want to celebrate community, locally grown as much as we can,” Leach said. “We source local artists, we try not to get anything shipped in from overseas if we can help it, so we try to do everything American made or locally made if we can. And really, just focus on our community here, and come out and see who’s making and who’s growing.”