By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Mike Soboleski was growing up in southwest Ohio near Steubenville, Saturday morning was when he’d head out with his father to go to the farmers market.
For the second year, Soboleski, who owns SoBee Honey, is trying to keep that alive in Bowling Green.
This Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. the farmers market will return to the Mid-Wood parking lot at 12818 E Gypsy Lane Road.
Soboleski has brought in about a half dozen vendors.
There’ll be produce from Dirty Feet Gardens and Hutchinson Family Farms, which will also have flour and maple syrup. A weaver will be there. Soboleski will be selling honey and CRB’s will be selling other bee related products.
Other vendors are considering joining.
Soboleski sees a need for a Saturday morning market. Some folks can’t make it to the downtown market, where he also sells honey, because of the timing on a Wednesday afternoon.
For a number of years, a market was held Saturday morning outside of Stimmel’s Market. With Mel Stimmel no longer running the business there, finding someone to approve the event was difficult.
Somebody suggested he try Mid-Wood. So last year Soboleski approached John Krukemyer, the store’s manager. He was amenable as long as Soboleski handled all the details.
Soboleski took it over, starting the market in a summer during a pandemic.
One of the site’s advantages is the ample parking. This allowed some people to pull their cars up to the vendors and pick up their purchases.
Carole Russell of CRB’s said the market turned out to be the only one she was able to do last year with so many fairs, including BG’s Firefly Nights, closed down.
She also felt Bowling Green could support another market to draw a different customer base.
She’s careful about not competing directly with her fellow beekeeper. She does sell flavored honey, but mostly its honey-related products – lip balm, beeswax candles, cookies sweetened with honey. Her husband also makes garden art out of horse and pony shoes.
Soboleski said his interest in honey started back when he did power lifting, and he’d consume honey. As he read more, he realized that locally grown honey had added benefits compared to the product sold in supermarkets.
He started with two hives. He now has 40 that produce about 60 pounds of honey a year, plus what the bees need to winter over.
He also runs a beekeeper club at the Wood County Park District office on Mercer Road, on the third Thursday of the month from 5-7 p.m.
He can be reached about any of his endeavors atSoBeeHoney@gmail.com.
