PILGER, Neb.— Despite the impending rain, hundreds of people showed up to a little rest stop west of Pilger to come to the Windmill Market.

The market has been run since 2022 by the market coordinator, Burgandy Brown. Now the market is very successful but the first one involved some nerves.

“It was scary I’m not going to lie. My first market I was very scared and just nervous, like ‘what if nobody shows up’, you know, that kind of thing.” Brown said, “But as its went on, it really is an honor to be trusted with such a cool location. I mean the view looking out over the Elkhorn River”

The view is pretty, but what really matters is the locally owned businesses showing off their skills inside. Nearly 70 booths were stationed in the grass, including Jay Crochets from Norfolk.

Jay Crochets is run solely by 28 year old Jayden Hendren who sells hand made plushes and keychains plus.

“Adopt cat and dogs, and adopt a pet which is a fish, spider, axolotl, something like that,” Hendren said.

While adopting the pets have only been around for about a year, Hendren has been selling these plushes for two years.

The small keychains take her an average of 20-30 minutes to finish while the more detailed bigger plushes can take upwards of four hours and that’s…

“All me, yeah, I make everything from start to finish,” Hendren said.

The market gets 85-100 booths sign up on a normal basis. It runs on the last Saturday of June, July August, and September.

“It’s just really cool to see where we’ve come from. You know from the first market, day one, you know I think we we only had like 45 vendors show up that first market.” Brown said, “And now to be double that.”

There’s not just crafts and goods to be found here, multiple food vendors are set up ready to feed people all day long.

So if you find yourself here next month for the last market of the year, you might find something you didn’t know you needed.