A facelift to a derelict local barn is giving the Salisbury Farmers and Artisans Market a new home.

Susan Linkletter, a vendor at and former president of the market, said she and the rest of the vendors hope to be set up in the barn later this month.

“We’re down right now to let the contractors finish up the work on the building,” she tells Huddle.

Linkletter said the original structure at 3134 Main Street was in very poor condition after she purchased it from its original owner in 2019 after the owner went bankrupt.

“We had to fix it right from the ground up to the rafters,” said Linkletter, who sells produce at the market that she grows at Earth Friendly Farm in Salisbury-West.

The work, being carried out by a small army of local contractors, also started in 2019.

“The steel roof was all rusted and leaking in twenty places. It had a concrete foundation, but it was all cracked and broken and uneven.”

When all is said and done will cost about $500,000 to get up to snuff.

The revamp of the market’s new, 8,000-square-foot home was made possible by a $300,000 grant from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and a $250,000 grant from the province.

The market has operated in the town near Moncton and the Trans-Canada Highway for about a decade. Its previous homes include the local United Church and Royal Canadian Legion.

Even during renovations over the last three years, the market has run every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and at least doubled its customer base.

“It would be renovated during the week, and then on Friday night or Saturday morning, we would clean up all the construction and put our market out in the barn – and we had growth,” Linkletter said.

Every time the market has moved, it’s gained a bigger customer base, and at the time of writing Linkletter said the market regularly sees about 25-30 tables with a total vendor count of between 30 and 40.

When the publicly-funded renovations for the barn began, Linkletter transferred her ownership of the property to the market.

“I’m no longer president, just a vendor, and I’m not on the board of directors because it’s a conflict of interest for me,” she said.

Sam Macdonald is a Reporter for Huddle Today, an Acadia Broadcasting content-sharing partner.