Local food

First veg at the new farmers’ market!

by

At last! Our first day at the new farmers’ market, with a large sign (we temporarily used our new roadside sign to make a…big entrance :), and a small but superfresh and tasty (and seasonal) selection: all-lettuce mesclun, spinach (Spargo) and radish (Rebel). Lynn was happy to be at market in her home town, and Tara made her new-tiny-farmer market debut! The flow of people was steady, and we sold out by 11 am. Pretty good!

Pricing at this market is quite a bit different from the old market: everything is more expensive! It’s not quite at urban market levels, but a lot closer in this bigger town. Basically, the same harvest as in previous seasons sells for almost twice as much.

This is for sure more realistic and fair. I think about the ridiculously low (though rapidly  rising) cheap food supermarket pricing that sets the baseline for what small growers can charge at the market. I recall that in North America and Europe, we apparently spend less than 10% of income on food, when quality produce just can’t come that cheap. And these aren’t ridiculous, high-end, boutique veggie prices, simply a more realistic price—processed foods are still sooo much more expensive, while possibly (probably) killing you at the same time…

STILL, it kinda feels weird putting less into a bag than I’ve been used to for six market seasons. Oh, well, change is always a little strange, this one is good all around, and I’ll get used to it! :)

Sprouts!

by
Sprouts

Sprouts—the tinier tiny farming! After two Saturdays of buying them by the bag at the farmers’ market, I’m totally hooked! I want to grow sprouts, the nutritional claims are quite amazing, most of all, I really love the taste and crunch of EATING them (mostly, by the handful).

Until our first harvest, we’re dropping by our market to stroll around, chat, and buy food. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I already have a routine with favorite stops, including one to get salad greens (first time in a few years that in-season salads aren’t homegrown), and one for SPROUTS!

I get the megamix, with a little of everything. Can’t even remember the whole list, but there’s something spicy, tastes like mustard, pea, kale, broccoli, I think, lots more.

Sprouts aren’t new to me. As a kid, I remember my mother growing a jar of bean sprouts for a regular Asian-style stir fry-type dish she made, and I’ve bought usually alfalfa sprouts for sandwiches, but I never really NOTICED sprouts till now. They’re great. So, it’s figuring out the simplest way to grow a wide variety for a steady personal supply…

First day at the new farmers’ market

by
Our space at the farmers' market

Here’s our so-far-unoccupied space at the new farmers’ market… This photo was accidental, clicked while checking some camera setting or the other. But when I saw it on the computer, it reminded me of the totally transient nature of farmers’ markets (and tiny farming in general!). Here we are, standing in a rectangle of asphalt marked out by some yellow lines, a PARKING SPACE, that transforms for a few hours into our little veggie emporium. All of the intention and energy of the tiny farm, concentrated…RIGHT HERE?! In a giant parking lot. Kinda weird… Life is what you make it, I guess! And I do love going to market! :)

Showed up at the 7am start of summer market opening day, to make an appearance, check things out (like, our new spot!), meet some of the other vendors, buy some food. Tara will also be here every Saturday, plus others when they can, but for the next couple of weeks at least, we won’t be setting up, and some veggie vendors won’t be here till June.

This market is at least 4-5 times bigger than the one we attended at the old farm. It’ll be a big change, with more small-scale organic growers offering similar veggie selections, and also way more people, but none of the familiar faces I’ve gotten to know, in many cases over 5-6 years. That last part is sad, but overall, it’s exciting.

Our stall is in a central spot—the empty space beside the round, yellow “honey” sign (below)—which seems good. Upfront in the photo is an array of unseasonably available produce—nice sweet peppers for early May!—from one of the several larger vendors who presumably buy at least part of their menu where the supermarkets do: a local food issue that’s concerning, but doesn’t upset or anger me the way it does some—everything tends to shake out…

We’re located beside another tiny farm, and I chatted with neighbor Anna about whether that might be a plus or not, if people have to choose from similar things on both stands. We’ll see, but it sounds to me like more choice, MORE FUN, and from what I’ve heard so far, all the small growers usually sell out by the end of the morning anyway. I bought some wild leek from our neighbors, a bag of great mixed baby greens from another aisle, an excellent bag of mixed sprouts…there’s lots to buy at the market when you’re not tied to your own veggie stand!

So, in its own exploratory way, our new season at the new farmers’ market begins…!!

Fresh at last!

by

It’s a start. Whenever they reach 3-4″ (7.5-10cm), I trim back the onions to about 1″ (2.5cm), and now they’re thick enough to collect and EAT! I don’t have the greenhouse up yet, so didn’t start lettuce REALLY early, so it’s not a whole seedling trimmings salad like last year… But these baby greens are great: tender, with a delicate onion flavor and just a bit of bite. Taste-wise, they’re easily over-powered by stronger, heavier foods. We tried them on burgers and in a salad, but they’re best more on their own. My favorite: quite finely snipped and sprinkled on a boiled (farm) egg, with only salt and pepper. Tastes like the garden!

Apple a day…

by

Biting into the barcode on an apple, dreaming of the first garden meal…  This is one of the many little quiet-before-it-all-goes-crazy times that happen through the season, a few things already going, just waiting for the moment that seems right to start seeding the rest. I’ve been steadily reducing the time indoors for seedlings, and this year, with the greenhouse not yet moved and set up, and the disking of the newly plowed land being hired out—you can’t count in a scheduled date until the machine is in the field!—I have to keep in mind that there may be a bit of an extra delay, beyond the weather. So, I’ve been carefully waiting… With transplant seedlings, give or take a week or two or even three can make a lot of difference, or very little at all—weather, weather, weather!—and there’s nothing concrete to go on, just…instinct(?!)…a FEELING about when it’s right to start… :)

Your veg is in the mail

by

In comparison with just about everything else, tiny farming is so…basic. A friend sent me a link to Graze with the only comment: “Remember our chat about healthy food + convenience?” So I clicked it. I don’t know what to say. After reading through the site, I was kinda, literally, almost speechless—the service is summed up in the home page snapshot above: Graze mails healthy snacks to you at work. The UK business is based on the British National Health Service’s 5-a-day campaign that says you should eat five servings of fruit and veggies daily. Graze aims to help.

This is seamlessly intense green marketing. Every base is covered. Probably my favorite piece on the whole site is their description of how precisely-sized servings are shipped to you: 

Our box is thin, strong & uses the least material possible. What’s more, it’s from a sustainable forest, biodegradable & 100% recyclable. We source our food locally wherever possible, and prepare everything in our own kitchen, keeping food miles to a minimum. We hate waste so we buy all our fresh produce on the day we send it, and any leftovers go to our local farm. And best of all, the postman delivers it, so we don’t need any vans or energy guzzling shops. We are always seeking ways to be even greener.

Fascinating! Puts direct-to-market tiny farming well in perspective! :)

The family that digs together…

by

We’re still digging potatoes! Ryan, Corrie and their youngest, Hannah, came out today to salvage some potatoes. There are still a few 50′ (15m) beds of Chieftan and Kennebec. With all the rainy summer and wet ground, a lot of the potatoes were coming up with rotten spots (I heard this from other growers at the farmers’ market as well). With lots of sorting needed, and quite low yield in some rows, I decided to harvest the post-season balance only as needed. I mowed down the whole potato plot and invited anyone who wanted to dig. It looks pretty scary, in this particular spot, grass and other weeds didn’t take long to start taking over, but in the bright sunlight, it seems a lot worse than it is (a bit of tilling and left to overwinter, and it’d be right as rain). To find the treasure, locate a couple of the dried potato stems—they’re short but easy to ID once you know what you’re looking for—then dig in a line! The haul of crisp, red skin-white flesh Chieftan potatoes was pretty good! The fall harvest continues…


Home

All of 2025

Stories

7 ways to browse