Farmer's Trading Center | Sale Day 2021

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  The country's biggest retail supermarket and hardware combined, Farmer's Trading Center in the Mennonite colony of Spanish Lookout, will be holding its annual sale event on the 22nd and 23rd of this month (Friday and Saturday). So mark your calendars, save your money, and come check out the incredible deals available on those days. Also make sure to wear a mask, sanitize your hands, and practice social distancing.
  Normally the annual sale day is held on the 3rd Saturday of October, attracts people from all over the country, and for that day only, the store is open from 7:15AM to 8PM while a section of the parking lot is converted into a food mall with various types of meals being sold throughout the day. The employee parking garage is used to hold an auction sale of old items, damaged goods, and odds and ends of inventory. As nighttime falls, families from surrounding communities turn out for a once-in-a-year opportunity to eat, drink, and shop after 5PM at Farmer's Trading Center. This is how it would normally have been...
   But...
  ...due to Covid regulations, things will be quite different this time. For example, instead of a one day affair, it will be a two day event with normal working hours. Last year, for the first and only time that I can remember, Farmer's Trading Center did not hold it's annual sale day due to stringent regulations as the country faced it's second wave of Covid cases and deaths.

   
History
  
Picture of Farmer's Trading Center more than 50
years ago.

  Farmer's Trading Center began as a small grocery store in 1962, four years after the first Kleine Gemeinde Mennonite immigrants from Mexico settled in Spanish Lookout, Belize. Since cash was scarce in those days (it still is, in case you haven't noticed), the place was more of a trading post where people would exchange their farm produce for imported goods. Those local products would be ferried across the Belize River-- a dangerous undertaking during the rainy season-- then taken 50 miles east to Belize City where they would be sold. The little store grew steadily year after year; today the complex covers thousands of square feet, imports scores of containers a year, and serves the whole country of Belize with groceries, dry goods, appliances, building supplies and other miscellaneous goods. The colony's post office and credit union are also part of the building. Although Farmer's Trading Center is owned by the community of Spanish Lookout, the workforce itself is made up mostly of non-Mennonites from the surrounding villages.












                                             A. Mendoza

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