FARMVILLE — Mayor David E. Whitus and town council member Pam Butler visited the Farmville Area Farmers Market at STEPS on Saturday to tell the association’s vendors the Town wants them back at the North Street facility.

The two came away with an invitation to attend the association’s next meeting and optimistic that the situation can and will be resolved, uniting all local producers at the Town’s farmers market building.

“They invited us to attend their next association meeting, Pam and I,” Whitus told The Herald on Monday. “The indication, clearly, was they would like to work it out.”

Butler, who has her own deep roots with the farmers market association that used the Town’s facility until this year, also sees light at the end of the tunnel.

“I, too, am encouraged that the door has been opened for a conversation,” she said via email. “I will be going with David to the association meeting. I am hopeful, because they do have wonderful fresh food and it has been such an asset to the town.”

Mayor Whitus said he believes he and Butler clearly articulated the Town’s intended olive branch to the association. The pair’s visit was a follow-up to town council’s August work session discussion during which, as reported in The Herald on August 13, town manager Gerald Spates and members of town council spoke of their desire to have the association return to North Street building.

“I said to two or three of them,” Whitus said of his Saturday visit with Butler, “’we’d love to have ya’ll back, we’d love for this to work out and I think it can.’ And they all, in their way, sort of agreed.”

Both Whitus and Butler accepted the invitation, there and then, to attend the association’s next meeting.

The mayor said he told one vendor, “Pam and I would be happy to attend your meeting. I said if we can just sort of put the past behind us and move forward and she agreed. She said ‘we’ll have some people who’ll have a hard time doing that’ but she said if we can just put the past behind us and work this out and move on.’

“And I think that’s the answer right there,” Mayor Whitus said.

The mayor said he did not realize until his visit on Saturday that “they are a year-round farmers market and…it would be beneficial to be back under a roof this fall and winter, versus setting up tents.”

Whitus and Butler also put their money where there mouths were, making purchases from vendors during their visit.

“We’re happy to sit down and meet and talk,” the mayor said, “and work this out.”

During town council’s regular August monthly meeting last week, Whitus had pledged to a local resident concerned about the farmers market that “I can assure you there are a number of efforts going on behind the scenes, a number of people that are working to make that happen and bring the Farmers Market (Farmville Area Farmers Market) back to the farmers market (building) and I think you’ll see some progress in the very near future.”

Speaking during the citizen comments portion of the town council meeting, Mary Prevo had said, “we have a really nice facility. We have a sign on Main Street at an alley saying we should go there and the sign says Farmers Market and the sign on the building says Farmers Market but there haven’t been any farmers for a while.

“So I’m here—I know this is already going on behind the scenes—but I’m here officially as a concerned citizen to ask (town council) to be the big man and the big women and step forward and try and get the people who are out at STEPS back into our facility.

“…I think if we have a sign on Main Street we should follow through with what the sign says…and figure out a way to do it so that they’re happy, the town is happy,” Prevo said, “and then I’m going to be real happy.”