Tag: farmers market

My First Farmers Market Book Sale

by Karen, posted in author, books, local fun, no fear, writing

Today was my first day selling my book, One Brave Thing, at a farmers market. The Saco River Farmers Market, to be exact. I’d been there saco farmers marketbefore, but not for a year or two. I had planned to scope it out ahead of time, but work and family commitments prevented me from doing so. It worked out fine though. It turned out that I picked the one Saturday that there was a big art sale going on down the street, for which they were closing Main Street. You know, the street that the farmers market is on.

DOH!

So, it wasn’t packed. That turned out to be a good thing. There was plenty of room for me to set up my table (thank you, Steve, for helping me get it open!). There was plenty of time for me to arrange my books and flotsam and jetsum on said table. There was plenty of time to talk with some of the other vendors.

I didn’t have time to get any flowers this time, so early this morning I headed out to see what the garden could offer up.

I chose peppermint, spearmint, lavender, lemon thyme, oregano, Nepeta, and rosemary. It looked and smelled amazing. I realized just how much positive energy that the jar of herbs brought to the table when I gave it away…my table was diminished! ‘You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone’.

herb flower jar

I had a fun morning. I sold some books. I made some friends.
I highly recommend it!

 

May planting

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening

We planted the last bed on the last day of May. Tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squashes, peppers, spaghetti squash, various eggplants. I’m bummed out that I couldn’t find a purple and white striped eggplant variety this year, or a purple bell pepper, but what can you do? We did find and plant some blue potatoes, and that is our novelty for 2012.

We try to plant something new that we’ve never grown before every year.

I’m going to try one more time for the purple seedlings at the Portland Farmers Market next week, then give up and go with what I got. After we put the plants in, it rained for days. . . and days. . . and days. Not sure if that will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll keep you posted.

The strawberries in our garden still aren’t red. There are dozens of them, all white. I’m keeping an eye on those too, because if the chipmunks beat me to them, I may not get over it.

The asparagus is just about done, but we got several helpings before it went by, so I’m happy for that. Here’s hoping that we all have a long and prolific growing season!

We also snuck in a few straggler plants: watermelon, pumpkins…things that never do well for us. Maybe if we ignore them, they’ll surprise us this year.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Girls’ Night

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, friends, local fun, restaurants, tweens

On the (rare) days when the male members of the family are off at work, but the females have the day off, we have a Girls’ Night. Today, Girls’ Nights started early, at 7:24AM. The men were out for the day so the females were left to  our own pursuits. This is what my daughter and I did today:

  1. Breakfast: Cream of wheat for Izzy and egg white omelet with spinach, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers for me. OJ and coffee, respectively.
  2. Met up with friends at Cafe Perfecto in Kennebunk. We split a gingerbread muffin. We ate it too quickly to photograph it. It was goooooooooooooooooooooooooood. 🙂
  3. Next, browsing at Kennebooks. We bought some cards, some books, and a really cool mushroom shaped eraser with the sharpener built right in. 

    Coolest mushroom eraser/sharpener ever!
  4. Home for lunch: PB&H on homemade bread for me; grilled cheese and bacon on whole wheat bread for Iz. Then she caught up with a friend on the phone, while I caught up on the laundry, chicken tasks, and dishes. Yay.
  5. Next, North Berwick Farmers Market. My friend Rebecca was there so we got to visit a bit. Lucky for us, it was the day of their Pie Contest, and we got to try a piece of the winning pie, baked by a 9 year old girl; very impressive. Besides pie, we got some fudge, some granola, herbs to mix with oil for bread-dipping, oatmeal coconut cookies…hmmm, seems like something is missing. What is it? Oh! The (token healthy food that was the excuse for going to the farmers market) apple! I ate that at the next stop.
  6. Izzy had a riding lesson and I spent the time in the car catching up on the last 2 days of newspapers that I hadn’t gotten to yet.
  7. At 6Pm, lesson over, we headed to Johnson’s Seafood and Steak. This is our new favorite restaurant, partly because it’s right on the way home after riding, but mostly because of the pumpkin cheesecake. OMG. It’s worth going just for that.
  8. Finally, home for a movie night. We watched The Clique. Izzy had seen it before and wanted to watch it again with me. Great mother-daughter movie.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

That’s it.  She’s gone to bed; I’m getting ready to. We had a great day. 🙂

Garden Update

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, gardening

Things are really doing well this year. I’ve been picking zucchini, yellow squash, string beans, and sugar snap peas for a while now. I thought I’d picked the last strawberry last week, but then the funky pink-flowered strawberry plant that I found at the Portland Farmer’s Market a few months ago produced a couple more!

Pink-flowered strawberry; still producing in July

The blueberries are in full swing and I can’t pick them fast enough. The black raspberries are coming along; only have a few plants this year but they are doing great, for the most part.

I’m eating the sugar snap peas and string beans as fast as I’m picking them. Good thing my family isn’t enamoured of vegetables.

The lettuces and basil is doing great; all of the herbs are kicking butt, actually, as usual. Herbs rock! They know what to do and they do it; they need very little help from us.

The bell peppers all look great. I have one eggplant that unfortunately has a hole drilled straight through the top. The pumpkins, winter squash, and potatoes (Yukon Golds) are doing well. Even the watermelon is still alive. That’s already better results than last year.

But here’s the real news: the first two (cherry) tomatoes have ripened! They are ready to eat! I can’t wait. Now, the bad news: one of the heirloom tomatoes has a disease of some sort. The bottom ends are blackened halfway up on two of the plum style tomatoes. 😦

I will be hitting the books tonight to figure out what to do, but I’m not optimistic. Other than removing the offensive tomatoes and keeping my fingers crossed, I haven’t found much that helps this.

Some of today's garden take (notice the first tomatoes!!!)

Will be consulting these books: Terrific Tomatoes (really old, found used copy at a bookstore years ago) “By the editors of Organic Gardening and Farming”, and Garden Primer (revised edition) by Barbara Damrosch…basically it comes down to a watering problem: too much after too little, or perhaps too little calcium. One book has the nerve to say a solution is to “choose disease-resistant plants”…OY! Are you kidding me?

Okay, note to self: next year, consult crystal ball to rule out plants that will likely develop blossom end rot due to watering problems.

In the meantime, I’ve thrown those two rotted bottomed tomatoes as far away into the woods as I was able. Hopefully the rest will be okay.

Now if i can only figure out what ate the hole through my eggplant…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

8 tips for shopping at the farmers market

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening, raising chickens, shopping

the farmers market is unofficially open in portland, maine (and maybe where you are too). here are some ideas to get you started off on the right foot:

  1. bring a bag! preferably a reusable shopping bag vs those plastic ones (although these are available from the farmers if you do forget your bag. which I typically do).
  2. don’t be afraid to ask, “what the heck is it?” if you don’t recognize it.
  3. don’t be afraid to ask, “how the heck do you cook that thing?” . they’ll tell you. (most likely it will involve frying it in butter, but hey, doesn’t butter improve most things?).
  4. bring small bills and a handful of change. nothing will make you feel more uncomfortable than handing over a $20 to pay for $1 worth of parsnips (reference #3 above) and  nothing takes longer than a farmer counting out your change in those precious one dollar bills that he will desperately need to make change for other ill-prepared shoppers a few hours later.
  5. if you see a pile of something on the ground behind the vendor’s stand, ask for it! they are often happy to give you those carrot tops (or whatever) that their other customers didn’t want but that your chickens will swoon over for just the price of taking it off their hands.
  6. show some restraint! don’t buy up all of those “early girl” tomato seedlings when they first appear. by the time the heirloom varieties (purple brandywine; amish paste, hawaiian pineapple, stupice, thesoliniki) are presented, your garden will be overfull (and your significant other will be saying, “I told you so!” with that smug look as you sob that “there is no more room in the garden! Why didn’t I wait?!”).
  7. shop around; nothing is more annoying than to fork over $4 for that small bunch of cut daffodils and then find the much larger bunch for $3.50 two stalls down.
  8. plan to visit the market as close to when it opens as you can; it is definitely an “early bird catches the worm” kind of shopping experience. they have what they have until it’s gone.

and remember: they hauled all that stuff over here, the least you can do is to go buy a parsnip or something (reference #4 above).

anyone else have any tips for farmers market shopping? …or any good parsnip recipes? 🙂

find a local farmer’s market: http://www.localharvest.org/

learn what to do with what you bought: http://www.farmfresh.org/learn/recipes.php