Market Season Starts Next Week!

Our farmers' market set up at a Saturday Market in 2005

Wow, it is almost farmers' market season. Next Tuesday, May 2nd the insanity starts for us at 4pm in the Memorial Park in Uptown Oxford, OH. This will be a very different market season as we have a new farm and will be opening up our farm store soon. I don't know if we will have enough food to harvest for all these markets, time will tell.

If we do not have enough food we will likely opt to stay home on the farm and sell from the store-it will be a lot easier for us not to have to pick, pack and load the van and than drive 30 minutes to Oxford, unload the van, set up the stand and finally get around to selling our wares. This gets harder and harder to do twice a week with each passing year. Especially the Tuesday market where we have to park on the street and unload everything we need, and put it in the park. Early on in the season when we have light items it is not so bad but in the summer when we have about 35 crates holding about 100 pounds each and it is 95˚F out it gets hard and we really start to question our sanity. The Saturday market is much easier because we can sell from the back of the van. We still have to haul the tables, crates of produce, the EZUP shelter, etc., but it is only a couple of feet from the van to where we want things, not across the street

Not to mention with the price of gas it will be cheaper to stay on the farm.

In past years we generally had a lot of items ready to go for the first markets but not this year. We were not able to get our hoophouses up until March because we had no beds ready to go until than (now we have about 85% of them ready for planting and have about 50% filled up). Normally there would be things like spring mix, strawberries, spinach, kale and chard ready to go. We will have all of these things in the near future just not for the first couple of markets. We will have some lovely arugula and heirloom lettuces for the first week along with onion sets, popcorn, garlic powder, some basil plants, chives and a few other items but it will not be the full table I like to have, ah c'est la vie.

But soon enough we will have an abundance of items as we have a lot of items planted and growing such as snow peas, sugar snap peas, spring mix, strawberries, lettuce, spinach, chives, lovage, oregano, tarragon, garlic, onions, zucchinis & cukes in a hoophouse, tomatoes and basil in a another hoophouse, melons soon to go into a yet another hoophouse, radishes, cilantro, etc..

If you are in the Oxford area either Tuesday afternoon or Saturday morning stop by and see us.