photo by: Mike Yoder

Vera Long, left, Lawrence, looks over a vendor's holiday gift items, as her daughter Olive, then 5, hugs her grandfather, Tom Ackerly, Lawrence, in this 2010 photo taken at the Holiday Farmers Market.

It all started with a pig. A pig (probably) named Dollar.

The name of the prize-winning porker that launched the Flory family’s 80-acre hog farm more than 30 years ago may have been lost to time — all Roger Flory remembers is a white pig with a black spot on its forehead — but the legacy of “Dollar,” as he was most likely called, can still be felt at Flory Family Farms all these years later.

“They didn’t want to get rid of the pig,” Flory says of “Dollar,” the hog that won his sons reserve champion market hog at the Douglas County Fair and later became the first of many swine to be raised and sold as pork products by the Flory Family.

Business has grown over the years, and these days, Roger and his wife, Teresa — along with their three sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren — sell everything from bacon, sausage and ham to pork chops, roasts and bratwursts, or, as Roger says, “everything but the oink.”

They’ll have all that and more at Saturday’s Holiday Farmers Market at the Holiday Inn Lawrence, 200 McDonald Drive. Slated for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the annual event will host more than 50 vendors from the outdoor Lawrence Farmers Market, which closed for the season last month.

Lawrence Farmers Market regular Karen Pendleton — who co-owns Pendleton’s Kaw Valley Country Market with her husband, John — is a longtime veteran of both the summer and holiday farmers markets.

“It’s where I do all my Christmas shopping, because I know there are things there that I won’t find anywhere else,” Karen Pendleton says.

This year, she’s selling winter squash by the boxful, poinsettias, evergreen wreaths, and dried and preserved flowers. But that’s just the start of it — Pendleton’s fellow vendors range from produce, of course, to baked goods, yard art, crocheted accessories, hand-painted silk scarves, pottery and more. (Farmers have hobbies, too, she points out.)

Prices start at $1 and go upward of $100, though SNAP participants through the county’s Market Match program will find their market points tripled at this year’s event, Pendleton says. The initiative matches dollars spent with SNAP (food stamps) at farmers markets.

As for Flory, he’s recommending his thermal gift bags of meat — “take it home, drop it in the freezer and on Christmas day, it’s an all-in-one-thing,” he says.

Folks can customize theirs according to the gift recipient’s tastes, or just follow Flory’s advice: “Nobody doesn’t like bacon.”

The downtown Lawrence Farmers Market is a bit like “going to bridge club” for its vendors, who form a tight-knit community of friends and neighbors with common interests, Flory says.

So when he and approximately 50 of his Farmers Market buddies reunite to set up shop at the Holiday Inn on Saturday morning, it’ll be a “pretty amazing” thing to witness.

“Most of us do it because we like it — it’s not a ‘job,’ and so consequently, we take a lot of pride in what we do,” Flory says. “If you can’t come to that market and find something for somebody as a gift, then you’re extremely unusual.”