Ottawa Farmers' Market to reopen with click and collect system

The Ottawa Farmers' Market is reopening next weekend, but for both shoppers and vendors, the experience will be unlike any season before.

To allow for physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, customers must make their purchases ahead of time directly from producers, then register for a time to pick up their goods. It goes without saying there will be no buskersperforming or food samples handed out.

Lansdowne Park is the first location to reopen. It offers pickups from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. Pickups in the first hour are reserved for seniors 65 years and older and people with compromised immune systems.

"We are trying to get back to as normal as possible a way of operating," Jocelyne Garland, chair of the Ottawa Farmers' Market Association, told CBC's All in a Dayon Monday.

For weeks, the Ottawa Farmers' Market Association has been in discussions with Ottawa Public Health and city officials to figure out how to sell locally produced food safely during the pandemic.

Together, they devised a four-step system that is "as safe as possible" for both vendors and shoppers, Garland said.While Lansdowne will be the first location to get going, the association is planning to reopen other markets soon.

How to buyat the Ottawa Farmers' Market:

1. Go to the market'sEventbrite page and register for a pickup time.
2. Open a confirmation email which includes thelist of available vendors at the market and links to online ordering systems or stores.
3. Purchase the items directly from a vendor's online system. (Shoppers cannot buy anything in person on Sunday.)
4. Arrive at the Ottawa Farmers' Market on time.

The market has about one-fifth the normal number of vendors, said Garland, as many of the farmers struggled to move to online stores to sell their products.

Even anticipating inventories can be hard for farmers, with so much still growing in the fields, she said.

"It is very, very difficult at the moment," Garland said.

On market day, only one person per household should pickup orders, the Ottawa Farmers' Market says.

Ottawa Public Health continues to advise people to remain two metres apart from others who don't live in the same household,and to consider wearing a non-medical or cloth mask in public places where physical distancing is a challenge.