Tell someone to meet you at "the farmers market" in Southwest Ranches and you have a real chance of standing in two different parking lots at the same time. One market sits on Flamingo Road and opens six days a week like any other business. The other shows up a handful of times a year at a park three miles east, run by the Town itself. Both call themselves a farmers market. Neither operates like the other, and mixing them up costs you either a wasted trip or a missed event.
That mix-up is worth untangling, because it says something true about how this town actually runs. Southwest Ranches has never been one thing with one calendar. It runs on a parallel track: a handful of private operations that never close, and a civic layer that has, over the past year, gotten noticeably busier.
The one on Flamingo Road is a business, not a market day
The Southwest Ranches Farmer's Market at 5150 S Flamingo Rd is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It closes only on Mondays. This is not a pop-up. It's a standing retail operation with a CSA membership program and route pickup locations as far as North Miami, selling raw milk, butter, and cheese, pasture-raised meat, free-range eggs, wild-caught seafood, and ice cream made from cow, goat, and buffalo milk. Regulars know the prices run higher than a supermarket run, and most say the trade-off is worth it for what's actually in the product.
If you're planning a weekly stock-up, this is the address you want. It behaves like a specialty grocer that happens to source everything from small farms, not like an event.
The one on Griffin Road only shows up when the calendar says so
The Southwest Ranches Community Farmer's Market is a different animal entirely. It's organized by the Town and held at Southwest Meadows Sanctuary Park, 16290 Griffin Road, coordinated through The Cioli Group, which recruits resident and hometown-farm vendors directly. It does not run on a fixed weekly schedule. The Town's own event calendar lists dates scattered through the year, and even the hours shift from one date to the next. This is a civic event with a rotating cast of local vendors, not a retail fixture you can drop into on a whim.
If you're looking for a specific date to walk the market with your kids or meet a neighbor selling honey out of their backyard, this is the one to watch. If you're just out of eggs on a Tuesday, it won't help you.
| Southwest Ranches Farmer's Market | Southwest Ranches Community Farmer's Market | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | 5150 S Flamingo Rd | Southwest Meadows Sanctuary Park, 16290 Griffin Rd |
| Run by | Private business | Town of Southwest Ranches, coordinated by The Cioli Group |
| Schedule | Tuesday through Sunday, fixed hours | Scattered dates through the year, hours vary by event |
| What you'll find | Raw dairy, pasture-raised meat, honey, ice cream, CSA membership | Rotating local and resident vendors, community-focused |
Confusing the two isn't a minor slip. It's the difference between a daily habit and an occasional outing, and knowing which one you're heading to changes how you plan the trip.
The same split shows up across the whole calendar
Once you see the pattern in the markets, you start noticing it everywhere else the town runs something. Southwest Ranches has one long-running institution and a newer wave of Town Hall programming layered on top of it, and 2026 is the year that gap became visible.
The long-running institution is the Country Fair and Carnival, held at Southwest Meadows Sanctuary Park in mid-January. It's produced by the Southwest Ranches Parks Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 2009, with proceeds going toward improvements to the town's seven public parks. The carnival itself comes from Amusements of America, and past years have brought food vendors like Rocked & Loaded serving Southern fusion plates, Wunderbar with a German-leaning menu, and Manka Fully Loaded Empanadas alongside a petting zoo and pony rides. It's volunteer-run, it's been happening for well over a decade, and it's the closest thing the town has to an institution.
What's new is everything sitting around it. In 2026, the Town itself has been the one launching recurring programming rather than leaving it to a single annual nonprofit event:
- A monthly Southwest Ranches Food Festival on the first Tuesday of every month, 4 to 9 p.m., family-friendly and running on a schedule tight enough to plan around.
- The first-ever SoFlo Chili Fest & Car Show, held February 28, 2026 at Rolling Oaks Park in partnership between the Town and SoFlo Chili Fest. It paired a chili cook-off, where a $10 wristband got attendees tastings and a vote, with a car and truck show produced by Cobra Joe Productions, including a Super Car Circle division for higher-end vehicles.
- Wings Over the Ranches, a guided birding tour series the Town describes as a new launch for this season. It's led by Vice Mayor Bob Hartmann, a longtime Audubon birding guide, through parks along the edge of the Everglades, with swallow-tailed kites, great egrets, and blue herons among the regular sightings depending on the time of year.
None of these existed as fixtures a few years ago. The Country Fair carried the town's civic calendar largely on its own for over a decade. Now the Town is running a monthly food event, a debut car and chili festival, and a recurring nature program in the same twelve months, on top of the fair that's always been there.
What a thicker calendar actually changes
None of this turns Southwest Ranches into a place with a packed social schedule. The rural character that drew most residents here in the first place hasn't moved. Sunshine Ranches Equestrian Park is still the place people go to ride, walk a dog, or let a kid loose on the playground between the trails. The horse ranches are still the horse ranches. What's changed is that the gaps between the big annual moments now have something in them, and most of what's filling those gaps is coming from the Town rather than from private vendors or volunteer groups.
That distinction matters for how you actually use the calendar. If you want a standing habit, the Flamingo Road market and the first-Tuesday Food Festival are the two dates worth building a routine around, since both run on a fixed cadence you can put on repeat. If you're after a specific occasion, the Community Farmer's Market, the Country Fair, and the Chili Fest all require checking exact dates on the Town's own event page, since none of them repeat on a schedule you can memorize. And if what you actually want is a reason to get outside on a weekday morning, Wings Over the Ranches is the newest option on the board, guided by someone who's spent decades doing exactly that in Florida's wetlands.
The practical takeaway is simple. Southwest Ranches didn't get busier. It got better organized, with the Town now running the kind of recurring civic programming that used to be left entirely to one nonprofit and two private markets. Knowing which event is which, and who's actually behind it, is the difference between showing up on the right day and standing in the wrong parking lot.
If you're already living the Southwest Ranches routine and thinking about what comes next for your property, whether that's understanding what your home is worth in today's market or figuring out timing around a move, Eric Davis Inc. has spent more than 20 years working this corner of Broward County and knows it block by block, not just by the numbers. Reach out for a straightforward conversation and a free home valuation whenever you're ready.
