The McKinney Farmers Market at Chestnut Square runs every Saturday morning, year round, and its own published rules of operation say it is not a grower only market. Both halves of that sentence are worth knowing before you go.
## Hours
The market states its schedule plainly: "The market operates on Saturday's from 8am to 12pm April to December and 9am to 12pm January to March at Chestnut Square. We are closed the Saturday after Thanksgiving and Christmas."
That hour shift is the detail most often wrong on other sites. From January through March the market opens an hour later, so a winter visit planned around an eight o'clock open gets you an empty lot for an hour. The closing time does not move.
## The rule most shoppers get wrong
McKinney is widely described online as a grower market. Its own rules of operation say something more specific, and the numbers are published.
Rule 3.4: "At least 60% of farm raised products sold must be homegrown within a 150 mile radius of McKinney."
Rule 3.6: "Up to 40% of farm raised products may be acquired (purchased, traded, or co-op) from other local farms (within the 150 mile radius of McKinney, TX), as long as the participating farm name and location is disclosed with signage at the booth."
Rule 3.7: "Commercial wholesale produce will not be allowed under any circumstances. Wholesalers or distributors will not be accepted as a vendor."
The accurate one line summary is this. No wholesalers and no distributors, but farm to farm resale is allowed up to 40 percent of what a vendor sells, and the source farm has to be named on a sign at the booth.
That is not a criticism of the market. A rule you can read and check is worth more than a slogan you cannot. Several markets in this directory are widely assumed to be producer only and publish nothing at all about sourcing, which leaves a shopper with no way to know. McKinney wrote its allowance down and attached a disclosure requirement to it.
What it means at the stall is simple. If provenance matters to you, read the signage, and if a booth is selling something the season in North Texas does not obviously support, ask which farm it came from. The market's own rule says the answer should already be posted.
For comparison, the 150 mile figure is the one used by several other markets whose sourcing language we have read, including Coppell, Cowtown, Saginaw and Saint Michael's. Dallas Farmers Market (The Shed) states a 400 mile radius and makes no producer only claim at all, while Cowtown Farmers Market and Denton Community Market state a flat no reselling rule with no published exception. Those are three different markets in one metro area with three genuinely different standards.
## What the market says it sells
The rules define two vendor categories, and both are quoted here from the market's own document.
Farmers and ranchers are "Vendors who grow or cultivate food products, including fruits, vegetables, meats, mushrooms, nuts, seeds or grains, eggs, herbs, and horticultural goods."
Food specialties are "Vendors who produce food products, including baked goods, mixes, candies, jams/jellies, spices, condiments, cheese, beverages, honey, and pastas."
Meat, eggs, cheese and honey are therefore all named by the market itself. That is unusual. Across the markets researched for this directory, only a small handful state all four on their own pages rather than leaving a shopper to infer them from a vendor list.
## What we do not know
Three things, stated as unknowns rather than filled in.
Organic. The word does not appear in the rules of operation or on the market's pages. That is not evidence that no vendor grows organically, only that the market makes no market wide claim and publishes no labeling standard.
Vendor count. No number is published in the rules or on the market pages. Any vendor count you see quoted for this market elsewhere did not come from the market.
SNAP and EBT. Not stated on any page we fetched. Silence is not a no. If it matters to your trip, call before you drive.
## The listing
Address, hours and links are on the McKinney Farmers Market at Chestnut Sq. page. Rules documents get reissued, so treat the quoted rule numbers above as what the market published when we read it, and check the market's own vendor application page if you need the live version.