EDMOND — Under green shade tents dotting the east and west sides of the Farmers Market each week young merchants can be found selling their products.

From bat houses to neck coolies to hair items handmade from old ties and buttons, young entrepreneurs can be found each Wednesday and two Saturdays a month with their items spread out in front of them encouraging passersby to stop and shop.

They are taking advantage of the Junior Market held during the Farmers Market as they pay a $5 booth rental each time they show. These budding businessmen and -women greet Farmers Market goers with big smiles and their handmade items.

Using a laser gun, Corey Hadley, a senior at Memorial High School and Francis Tuttle in the fall, turns slabs of granite into plaques and stepping stones for his customers.

“Corey Hadley is an amazing kid, and asked us last week to come stop by and see what he was selling,” said Debby Stapleton, who lives in his neighborhood. “Coming to the Junior Market is definitely a unique experience. My son laughed because I had to stop and buy something from every kid there. I can’t help it!”

Hadley shares his booth with Oklahoma Christian Academy 11th-grader Kara Drewke and seventh-grader Erin Drewke. The girls sell magnetic, decorated bottle caps that can be attached to a metal circle on a necklace, bracelet or key chain as well as hair pins and metal crosses decorated with colorful beads strung on wire.

Some of the young business owners attend local schools, but many are home-schooled.

Home-schooled seventh-grader Aime Anderson had one-of-a-kind T-shirt necklaces. Small strips of T-shirt fabric are made into a portable air cooler. By running the necklace under a faucet and placing it in a freezer for 10 minutes, it will stay cool for hours.

“A light breeze will make it even cooler,” Anderson said.

One-of-a-kind necklaces, bracelets and earrings made from natural stones are created by ninth-grader Regan Abner and sold separately or in sets with nothing priced more than $35.

Her brother, Grayson Abner mans Grayson’s Grotto with custom-made homes for bats, blue birds and owls. Each home comes with a sheet giving details about the bird or bat who will be taking up residence.

“My dad (Todd Abner) cuts the wood for me. He says I’ve got 10 fingers and he wants me to keep all of them,” Grayson said. “Did you know one bat eats 500 mosquitoes an hour, and each bat house can hold 30 bats?”

He also has walking sticks that are made from limbs he picked up while in Puget Sound in Washington.

Sixth-grader Grayson said he is saving for a tree house, and last summer he made enough money to build the deck.

It is a family affair for ninth-grader Dylan Fleshman and his sister, Alyssa, who is in the third grade and his brother, first-grader Daniel. The three students are home-schooled and live outside of Guthrie where they work their garden that is almost an acre in size.

They grow chemical-free cucumbers, peppers, green beans, squash and three types of tomatoes. They also grow giant zucchini squash. “My mom can make six loaves of zucchini bread with one squash and still have squash left over,” Dylan said.

They also raise chickens and Nubian goats and sell the goats’ milk.

From handmade cards and photographs to hand-sewn items and pine stools, benches, tables and wooden crafts, Elizabeth Engle and her family including her sister, Julia, and her brother, Jonathan, have booths where they show their wares.

Jonathan has gone green by making good use of trees that fell during the ice storm. This is his fifth year to have a booth but his first for woodwork.

“This is the first year I have had a booth of my own,” Elizabeth said. “I love getting to meet new people, and I like to buy the vegetables and peaches available at the other booths.”

What began as a Christmas gift exchange of handmade items for Kamille Dorr’s family turned into a part-time business for this Cimarron Middle School eighth-grader.

“When I wore some of the hair clips I made my friends saw them and wanted some just like them, and the business just grew,” Dorr said. “I started making bib necklaces and decorating them with fabric flowers, antique buttons and feathers.”

Dorr said she is always looking for antique or period buttons, pins, old fabric and neckties to recycle into her much-in-demand hair ornaments.

After a morning of shopping the market in the heat, ninth-grader Shiloh Smith and his brother Isaac will be waiting to serve up Shiloh’s homemade chocolate chip cookies and icy fresh raspberry lemonade and raspberry iced tea.



FOR MORE information about renting a booth, call Summer S. Terrell, special venues coordinator for the City of Edmond, at 359-4630.