We are officially an open-air market this
week. We love our sides during inclement weather but with 80-degree days
forecast for the week, we’ve rolled the sides up for the season.
It’s plant time at the market. We have so many
beautiful flowering hanging baskets we feel like we’re in a garden. This
Saturday is our Mother’s Day market and that means we will be buried in
flowers! E & O Produce has all sorts
of flowering bedding plants and beautiful baskets filled with a variety of
flowering plants full of color and texture. Braker’s has baskets loaded with
wave petunias which grow large and hang over the sides making a brilliant
splash of color.
Fairhaven has handcrafted cedar planters
filled with flowering plants. Every year Joe tries to design a new planter and
this year he really hit the mark with his choo-choo train planter – an engine
with three cars. It’s only $50. That’s just $12.50 a car. What a deal and so
charming.
Of course, if trains are not your thing, you
might try a birdhouse planter or the bentwood chair planter or any of the many
other designs that Joe has come up with over the years. Last week a customer
got a one-of-a-kind. It was a basket planter. The handle was made of twined
wisteria from Carrole’s garden.
Saturday is also notable because Pate’s will
be back. But hold your horses! It’s too
early for peaches, though it was good news when John Pate told me the peach
crop is looking good despite the weather. John will have tomatoes and cucumbers
from his tunnel, and Barb’s. Yes, Barb is quick to point out one of those
tunnels is hers.
Fue Yang will also be back. Fue manages the
market’s Year-Round Education Center located on his family’s farm. We hosted a
field day there last Friday for high school horticultural students. It was a
pilot for a full-blown field day we want to do in the early fall and it went
really well.
Our Extension specialists took on various
topics such as pest control, sequential planting, seed starting and tunnel
equipment. The student evaluations of the event were all positive but the most
positive were for Fue’s presentation. He told them how his family came to
become market farmers and how since he was fluent in both English and Hmong he
ended up going to all the farm trainings to translate. Finally, after resisting
a career in farming he decided to embrace it. He is getting his degree in Ag
Business from Crowder in December.
He told them about his father’s initial
uneasiness with having high tunnels on the farm. His parent’s are
traditionalists and new technology was unwelcome – until they saw the benefits
it could bring. Fue’s father was so impressed with the produce raised in the
tunnels that he wanted to expand. So when Hector Troyer said his was for sale, he
snapped it up. You could say the market’s two tunnels have had a baby, though
it sprung forth full-grown being the same size as the first two.
Hector, who is moving to Pennsylvania to be
near his parents, even helped Fue put the tunnel up.
It was wonderful to see Fue speaking to the
students. He was confident, accessible, and well-informed. A year ago he knew almost nothing about high
tunnel management. Though he confided later that he was very nervous, it did
not show. He is ready to not only manage the Education Center but serve as one
of its educators.
I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Thursday the Granny Chicks are
playing. Stewart’s Bakery serves goulash and a hot roll for $5.
Richard Hugh Roberts plays the music of the Great American
Songbook. Stewart’s Bakery will have chicken and noodles with a roll for $5 for
eat-in or take-out.
On Tuesday Scott Eastman plays. Stewart’s Bakery will have two
tasty choices for supper.
It’s our first week as an open-air market and we’re
celebrating!
