Our smallish community (Mansfield, Texas) has recently started an even smaller Farmer's Market. I have always envisioned participating in a Farmer's Market: Saturday mornings with a cute floral print tablecloth draped over the back of an antique truck, produce spilling out of bushel baskets, garden accessories on the side....Making the vision a reality has been more difficult than I imagined, of course. Because we have to literally 'make our soil as we go' out here on the Hippie Homestead, expanding the size of the garden has taken much longer than planned, and ten times the labor. All that composting!!! Wowza! We DO get good harvests, but haven't learned to space the planting dates yet, so everything is ready all at once. And with two full time jobs each, Eddie and I can't always get everything in the ground that we want to before the full heat of Texas summer is upon us.
Even so, we are participating in the Mansfield Market tomorrow, Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 7 am - come hell or high water. (Interestingly, both are expected as rants and theories of 'the rapture' mingle with the evening forecast)....I am sure there is more money to be made at a larger market; Fort Worth, or even Dallas, but that would not be in keeping with the Spirit of Local Foods, so the young Mansfield Market and I will have to be patient with one another:)
We don't have as much to offer the community as we would like, not by a long shot. It will be garlic and onions (which are so amazing Eddie is trying to hoard them all!), swiss chard, rosemary, cut zinnias in bundles, and some potted herbs: stevia, comfrey, mint, echinacea...maybe a dozen eggs.
I invited friend and fellow home gardener Jennifer Peterson to participate along side. She is overflowing with squash right now...so we can all look forward to her organic offerings as well!!!
Friend Heather is helping organize a compost exchange so we can expand faster. I have six bins left for anyone who would like to take one home each Saturday, and deliver the next week full of kitchen scraps for my composting projects (which are everywhere our here!) ... Clean bins will be available to exchange each week...
No promises on being able to make a showing every Saturday through October, although we certainly will try! If more home gardeners in Mansfield want to join in our informal "gardener's co-op", please do! Establishing such cooperatives is one of the goals of this blog, afterall... Share the wealth, share the health....
See ya at Market!
