Cheesemaker claims the Ligonier Country Market is penalizing it because it's too successful

The owners at Pleasant Lane Farms feel like they’re being penalized by a local food and craft market for being a successful small business.

According to organizers at the nonprofit Ligonier Country Market, the Unity-based dairy farm and cheese-making operation is too big to participate in the seasonal weekly farmers market and craft vendor area, which has become very popular, attracting thousands of shoppers.

Jason Frye, head cheese­maker at Pleasant Lane Farms, argued that the market is in violation of several tenets in the conditional use permit that has been regularly approved by supervisors since the market began operation.

“I don’t want the township to deny the market a permit, but I do think the board should acknowledge, on the record, that they are in violation of the covenants in their permit,” Frye said.

Frye said food vendors at the market are required to submit licenses to manufacture and food safety certifications when they apply for the new season. He said that condition has not been regularly followed over the past two years.

Market organizers did not respond to a request for comment.

Frye and Pleasant Lane Farms were initially denied a spot at the group’s 2024 Holiday Market, with organizers, in an email to Frye, citing a desire to focus on craft vendors.

Early this year, the market’s board of directors voted in January to update its criteria for who can and cannot participate in the market.

“I think the idea was for the market to be for small farms and businesses that aren’t able to get their products sold nationally,” board member Claudine DePaul said.

The new criteria states that vendors whose products are sold at more than 60 retailers, or sold out-of-state, cannot take part in the market.

Pleasant Lane Farms’ cheese is available at between 70 and 90 stores across the region. However, nearly all of those stores carry only two or three of their products, according to Frye.

“That generates less revenue than a single Saturday at the market,” Frye said in an email to TribLive. “After meeting with the market board, we were told that we had ‘graduated’ from the market and were no longer considered a small business.”

In terms of the farm itself, however, nothing has changed, Frye said — it still has 50 milk cows on 185 preserved acres, and its operation is classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a “very small business.”

“This decision appears to have been made with us in mind and may not be applied equally to all vendors,” Frye said.

DePaul said the board’s updated guidelines do apply to more vendors than just Pleasant Lane Farms. She did not identify those other vendors.

Frye said he did not want the market’s permit denied, but wanted organizers held accountable for what he said were violations of the market’s conditional use permit.

“As the township, we care about traffic and safety,” Ligonier Township Manager Michael Strelic said. “We don’t care who the vendors are.”

Strelic said he would review the market’s conditional-use permit to determine if it was meeting all of the conditions. The board of supervisors did not vote on the permit at Tuesday’s meeting, opting to table it until April.

Last year around this time, the township supervisors said they would be keeping a closer eye on the amount of vendors at the market, after the 2024 numbers rose as high as 150 — much more than the 120 vendors allowed under the township’s permit.