A Quad Cities tradition is experiencing some major growing pains.

Volunteers with the Freight House Farmers' Market say the bi-weekly event has grown so big that they need help running it. Leaders are looking to hire two college students as interns to run both the Tuesday and Saturday markets.

Vendors say while it'll cost them some money, it'll make everyone's lives easier.

"I think we see about 5-10,000 during our peak season, which is May-October, but in the winter we're seeing probably 5-600 people," says Market Chairperson Darcy Rostenbach.

All those visitors combined with dozens of vendors has meant a heavy workload for the volunteers who are currently running the farmer's market. Rostenbach estimates she spends about forty hours doing everything from making sure vendors show up to taking out the trash, something she says needed to change, which is why the board decided to hire up to two college students as interns to run the market.

"It's gonna take a lot of the workload off of the board members," she says. "Six of our board members are also long-time vendors and we're doing a lot of the busy work ourselves. It makes it difficult to vend our product at the same time."

Shoppers say part of the appeal are those products. Some shoppers come from miles away to take part.

"Where I live, they don't have a lot of these so it's fun and they've got different items," says Carrie Holzgrafe, who was visiting from Chicago.

Market leaders say they're looking to hire college students in order to give them the experience of running a large scale event. Once the interns are in place, they think vendors and customers will notice a major difference.

"Who's here, who shows up, the placement of vendors, making sure the garbage of taken care of if it gets too full," says vendor Dawn Dykema.

"I think there'll be a lot more customer service because that intern will be in charge of dealing with Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, things like that," Rostenbach adds.

Right now the market is accepting applications. They say they're looking primarily at Augustana students because of the school's strong agriculture program. Rostenbach says they've budgeted about $7,000 for the position, money that comes from vendor fees. She's hoping to have it filled by April. 

The second intern would come from Scott Community College and wouldn't cost vendors a dime. Funding would come through a program offered by the state of Iowa.