“For everything there is a season…” (the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, verses 1–8).

Every Sunday from June through October for almost 30 years, Roy and Carmela Watters have loaded up the Pomo Ridge Farm truck with peaches, apples, cherries, potatoes, tomatoes, and more, and headed from Plattekill to Highland Falls to be a vendor at Vision’s West Point-Town of Highlands Farmers Market. Pomo Ridge Farm is owned by Carmela’s brother, Salvatore Acampora.

That, very long, season of life ends for the Waters next week – Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, will be their last market.

The Watters are the longest-attending vendor at the market, manager Carol Spisso said, and a mainstay of it.

“They actually precede Vision in it,” Spisso said, noting that residents Bobbi Polak and Joanne Devereaux organized the market before Vision existed. “It will be so sad to not see them every Sunday morning – they are so community minded, and have been here through thick and thin. They are the first ones here every Sunday morning … I really will miss them.”

The Pomo Ridge stand is well known for its varieties of apples in the fall, and its early season peaches, plums, berries and cherries in the spring. In between, they fill their tables with crops like tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, various squashes and other fresh vegetables. Through the years they have also sold baked goods, jams and jellies, to the delight of their long-time customers.

“That’s going to be the hardest part,” Carmela said this week. “We’ve watched the families who shop at this market grow up. We’ve watched their children grow, and watched our customers grow older, like we have.”

They are especially grateful for the time they have had with the Scott “children” – now all adults! – who have helped them in their stand. Breanna, Shannon and Kenny Scott, the children of former Highland Falls Police Chief Ken Scott and wife Jeannette, have bagged and sold apples, peaches and everything else with Roy and Carmela for years. (Fun fact: the Scott children were recommended to the Watters by current Highland Falls Village Trustee Jim Ramus, their uncle. He’s one of many local market-attendees who has become good friends with the couple.)

During some of those same years that the Scotts were staples, the Watters great-nephew, Logan D’Anci, provided help in the stand, starting at age 13, for three years.

Back to the early days, Carmela credits Devereaux and Polak for their early support, recalling Polak, who passed away several years ago, convincing her to sell her delicious baked goods and encouraging her to try new recipes. “She’d bring me recipes,” she laughs, adding that some of those recipes were for large batch production that she had to work to figure out how to bring down to farmers market sizing. She also recalls a little girl who came to the market looking for her Pomo Ridge muffin every week. “She was a hoot.”

There are all sorts of good memories like those, they say, but, again, “it’s time.”

It’s because the Watters realize they want to have a little more time to spend doing things they have missed out on for nearly 30 years’ worth of Sundays that they made the difficult decision to stop attending the market. A cancer battle for Carmela several years ago was a bit of a wake-up call and reinforced the decision – it was also at that time that she realized how much they had grown to love this community.

“The support we personally and Pomo Ridge received when I was sick said a lot about this community,” she said, recalling cards she got in the mail, and how the other vendors reached out to the family to see if they needed anything. “That’s when I knew how special and good this little village is.”

So now, all that is left is to say ‘thank you’ to their shoppers.

“How do you say thank you for 30 years?” Roy asked. “I guess you just say thank you. Thank you to everyone for supporting us and the farm.”

Spisso would argue they’ve been saying thank you all these years, with their consistent presence at the market. Standing in front of the Pomo Ridge stand last week she looked around and called that north end of the parking lot “the golden triangle”, with the popular honey and pickle booths right alongside Pomo Ridge.

“They can never be replaced,” Spisso said. “But I will try.”

Carmela believes Spisso will find those new vendors; that as the Watters step away, some new, young vendor will step in to fill their shoes.

“Next Sunday is going to be hard,” Carmela said, looking at the market going on around her last week, and taking a moment to listen to the church bells sounding. “It’s time.”

(As a reminder, Sunday, Nov. 1 is not only the last week for Pomo Ridge Farm, but also the last week of the market for 2026. The hours are 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it’s located across from Sacred Heart Church on Main St. in Highland Falls.)