From your fill of fresh produce to sweet-tooth satisfaction (including for your dog), the Gorham Farmers Market likely has what you need to lift off your weekends. The outdoor event takes place every Saturday morning from early May until the end of October from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Gorham Municipal Center at 65 South St. The early bird gets the Roll Call Lobster roll — many of the businesses run out of their most popular products by 10:30 a.m.

Without further ado, here’s an introduction to five of the several vendors that have something special to offer.

BETTER BAKES

This is Cassie Brown’s first year running her business and selling at the market, but she is not new to baking. Before she moved to Gorham two years ago, she started making sourdough from scratch that she sold to friends and family, and began her business, Better Bakes, this spring. She still bakes her flavored muffins, sourdough, cookies, hamburger buns and other goods from home, but now with an official food processing license and a goal to perfect her gluten-free products. They’re not on her menu list yet, but she’s been bringing samples and loaves to the market and sells them at Windy Hill Farm in Windham.

“Good gluten-free bread is hard to find, and so I think that will be a really good accomplishment if I can produce one that I’m proud of,” Brown said.

Last Saturday, she and some of her family chatted with customers and offered samples. She was pleasantly surprised that most of what she’d brought that morning sold within a few hours.

GROUNDED CONFECTIONS

“I have a whole Willy Wonka factory,” said Jessica Ingraham, referring to the second bedroom in her Standish home. She transformed it into an industrial kitchen to make her own vegan, gluten-free chocolates in the fall of 2024 and started Grounded Confections.

Her seven flavors range from dark orange chocolate to cookie dough to crunch, a texture that is especially difficult to make gluten free because of its puffed rice component. She said she loves seeing the reactions of people with dietary restrictions when they realize they can eat any of her chocolates.

“Their eyes light up,” she said. “I’m like, this is exactly why I do this.'”

Ingraham travels out of state to sell her chocolate, and said that selling at the Gorham market feels like coming home. Vendors help each other set up and break down their tents, and, at the end of the day, often gift each other goods that didn’t sell.

“It’s genuinely a community feeling,” she said.

LICKITY PAWS

Four-legged creatures deserve something to look forward to at farmers markets, too. Stacey Stolman is a Culinary Institute of America graduate, a culinary consultant and has worked as a food stylist for over 25 years. Based in South Portland, she heard the Gorham market is especially pet friendly and started selling her ice cream for dogs for the first time there this year.

Stolman formed the idea to start Lickity Paws because her dog, Henry, a labradoodle, has an especially sensitive stomach that rejected the whipped cream “pup cups” sold at Starbucks. Stolman decided to concoct recipes of her own design that Henry could enjoy.

One of her four flavors, “Hippy Harry,” is named after him. It’s made with a frozen banana base and is pretty much dog-allergy proof.

“(Harry) has the personality of a surfer dude,” she said. “He’s 95 pounds, and he’s like a big Muppet, and every dog out there loves him. He’s like the kid in high school that was out back smoking a joint.”

The namesake of another of her flavors, “Really Rosie,” is her other labradoodle, Rosie. It’s yogurt based and full of peanut butter, fruits including Maine-grown blueberries and vegetables, and has a dog biscuit inside.

Lickity Paws is the only business in Maine to carry a lobster-flavored pet ice cream. She said cats like that one, too.

NOISY ACRES FARM

Sollie Leavitt and her family got their first goat on their farm in Buxton 10 years ago. Now, they have 12 of them. She started selling her homemade goat milk soaps at the Gorham market in 2019, and now also sells her yogurt and her creamy chevre cheese, a favorite that won the Maine Cheese Awards in 2023. She makes it plain, marinated in garlic and herb olive oil and in seasonal flavors, such as blueberry in July.

People at the market often approached her table and thought that the colorful bars of scented soap were edible fudge, so Leavitt started making and selling that, too.

After eight years selling at the market, she’s seen the same people year after year, watching some of the kids who attend with their parents grow up.

“I love when (customers) ask questions about the goats, and I can talk about what I love most, which is the goats,” Leavitt said.

414 WOOD WORKS

The small wooden boats and cars, cheese cutter and cribbage boards Peter Blunda makes and brings to the market started with him trying to get rid of wood scraps from his daily shop work for his Gorham-based business, 414 Wood Works. He is slowing down a long career in carpentry, commission projects and in lumberyards and mill shops, but is not ready to stop completely.

“You have all this equipment, and it’s kind of a gut punch after a lifetime of using it to see it sold,” he said.

This is his fifth year as a vendor at the market. He was full time last year and will be part time this year, bringing an array of wall racks, cutting boards and other miscellaneous items that evoke toys from the 1990s, including a 3D game of tic-tac-toe.

“I love to be creative,” Blunda said. “I can’t tell you how many ideas I have, either things that I’ve made in the past, things that I want to make that I just don’t have time to do.”

He has come to call many of the fellow vendors at the market his friends, he said.