25% and 25th of the month

Hard to believe September is already here. How many of you are starting to gear up for the holiday season? It will be here before we know it. We're excited to gear up with this blog as well. If you have any announcements or events you would like to share with the IFM artisan's community, please let Christi Sobel know and we will get you posted.

The artisan's committee had our monthly meeting last week, and have a couple of things to remind you of:

1) Reproductions of your artwork are allowed, but can take a maximum of 25% of your booth space and product line.

2) Any artisan with new products to be juried should alert one of the artisan committee members by the 25th of any month, so we can arrange to jury your items at our next meeting.

Here's a photo of some lovely glass lemons from one of our newer artisan members, Sean Kennedy Glass.

Looking for a few good candidates

Although it is only August, the time is here to start thinking about the IFM Board elections this fall. More specifically, the time if here to begin promoting one or two strong artisan candidates to run for the board.

The current board is comprised of seven agriculture members, one food member, and one artisan. The food and artisan representatives, having completed their terms, may not be rerunning this year. If this is the case, we need to plan early for their replacement. We believe it is important that the board continue to include an artisan voice, and to continue to have representation from all branches of the IFM membership. It is also important to have an artisan liaison on the board to communicate with the committee, and to speak for the artisans on issues that affect us.

Rather than coming up to election time with a whole field of last-minute candidates, we hope to reduce the number of candidates to one or two. This will increase our chances of success in the election, without splitting the vote. If you are interested in running, and think you are a strong candidate, please step forward and and let us know of your interest now.

Welcome

At the early June meeting of the IFM Artisan's committee, we talked a lot about communication amongst our membership. We thought it would be good to open another channel or two so we can all stay abreast of the news from the committee: new members, new products, issues affecting the artisan membership, policy and guideline updates, and maybe a little newsy gossip once in a while to keep it interesting. This is meant to be a positive, transparent sharing of information for everyone: artisans, farmers, food vendors, customers.

Check early, check often. And see you on the weekend!