The Kids Garden Club is back this Saturday. The
children can make a face on a pot in which they will plant wheat grass seeds. With
a little water and sunshine, their pot will soon have hair growing above the
face! Master Gardener Eric will also
have information for adults about soil sampling and soil tests. If you garden,
soil testing on an annual or bi-annual basis is key to improving your soil and
production. Thanks Brashear family for the photo of last year's pots.
Ghetto Taco will have breakfast burritos and a
breakfast of biscuit and gravy, sausage. eggs and hashbrown casserole. They’ll
also have potato soup for eat-in or take-out. Scott Eastman is on the market stage.
Grandpa (Tami Fredrickson’s grandfather Jim
Oxley) will be at the market with his delightful frilly dresses and simple
sundresses for little girls. That's my granddaughter Madeleine in her favorite dress.
Wiestside Barbecue is back with smoked meats,
Yoder Farm with shrimp and William Lynn with his sharpening systems.
We’ll have an extensive selection of frozen
meat, Madewell Pork with (you guessed it!) pork, Sunny Lane Farm with pork, beef,
lamb and chicken and Garret Family Farm with pork, beef and chicken.
Five farms will have a wide selection of fresh
produce like baby spinach, many kinds of lettuce, kale, boc choy, radishes,
carrots, and storage crops like sweet potatoes and winter squash.
There will also be honey, baked goods,
candy, eggs, kettle corn and goat's milk soap.
We are so spoiled by the abundance of fresh
local produce at the winter market. This became apparent at the state market
association’s annual meeting last Saturday. I was visiting with the manager of
the largest market in the state about the food stamp matching program which
both our markets have. The matching tokens can only be spent on fresh fruits
and vegetables and she told me that during the winter when they didn’t have any
eligible produce she just didn’t give any matching tokens out to customers. I
thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. “There are market days that you don’t
have any fresh produce for sale?” “Oh,
yes.” Oh, my.
We plan to change that situation. Our winter production
conference which has so successfully trained farmers from across the region, including
our own, is going on the road if all goes well. Every three years, both it and
the Tomato Conference will return to Webb City and in the intervening two years
the conferences will travel to other parts of the state. We’ll take advantage of Extension’s statewide
network of professionals, as well as other markets, to help with organization
and implementation.
Another exciting collaboration with MU and LU
Extension is our traveling kits project. The market received funding to create
traveling teaching kits demonstrating various technologies including hand tools
for small spaces like high tunnels to drones to my personal favorite,
caterpillar and low tunnels. These tunnels are low cost season extension tools
that are underused in our area. Our kit includes the equipment to bend the
supports for the tunnels, making them even more affordable. Workshops are being
planned, a rental system will be implemented so farmers can use the equipment
after being trained(surprise, if you are a
We are creating our future and it looks
delicious!
Join us Saturday for what may very well be the
best selection of local winter produce in the state – and lots of other good
things.
