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Weekly Market Notes Library

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Weekly Market Notes for May 10, 2012

EATS SHOOTS and LEAVES

Hello Market Friends:

Any resemblance between the title of this week's news and that joke about the panda who comes into a bar with a gun is purely coincidental. It's about new food choices, new crops, and our new setup under the trees!

While we love all our 'regulars', we've also been looking forward to the arrival of vendors who will be joining us for the first time or returning after a long winter's absence. Now that we can spread out along the lower path as well as beside the rinkhouse we have room for more, and we'll be introducing them to you over the next several weeks.

First, welcome to Earth & City!

"Earth & City is excited to join the Dufferin Grove Farmers' Market! We offer raw vegan prepared foods, both sweet and savoury. Our menu this week features spring roll wraps with sweet walnut sauce, nut and seed burgers with sundried tomato spread, onion flatbreads and sprouted chickpea hummus, as well as some sweet macaroons, frosted brownies, and thumbprints with locally grown red skinned peanut butter." Cassandra

We're also very pleased to be welcoming Primeridge Pure, with cream cheeses made fresh from the milk of Steacy and Scott den Haan's 16 Holsteins at their on-farm cheesemaking operation in Grey County. Primeridge Pure is in transition to organic certification, and is part of a positive trend: dairy farmers getting the chance to add value with small, on-farm processing operations, instead of being required to 'pool' milk from a multitude of cows and then having to buy it back.

Bring over those tired old garden tools and kitchen knives and get them ship-sharp! Denzil of Exact Edge returns this week!

Helga from Pine River Organic Farm hopes to be down with their first asparagus if it is plentiful enough.

"Urban Harvest will be coming with lots of plants. Many new varieties of tomatoes and peppers. All the usual herbs and flowers and some natives too. See you under the trees."

Sosnickis' contribution: Ben and Toshimi will have an abundance of Radish and fresh field Spinach for Dufferin! Along with the weekly dose of storage Cabbage and our frozen Sweet Corn and Sauerkraut! The offerings will be improving shortly as we continue to work very hard to bring an amazing harvest to Dufferin!! We've got full greenhouses, little beets are popping up out in the field, potatoes planted, all our onions have hit the dirt, lettuces are sizing up, visible long rows of peas are up beside the awesome garlic patch! New crops like radicchio, endive are planted alongside the large kale planting. Chard transplants are growing well next to the lettuces. The strawberries are doing well and the first variety is in full bloom now. We have major weed pressure so we will be tackling that and setting up irrigation shortly to ensure some protection from any frost that is certainly capable of happening any time. Ben's busy trying to get the sweet corn field plowed as I busily seed a second timeline of cucumbers today. Our horse is 'Mud Bug', not 'Lady Bug' as she has been going waaayy out in the field and just rolling! She came galloping out to see Ben and I harvesting Spinach! It's hilarious!! And we will do compost again for next year - we simply got too busy to make time to shred it out this year! " Jess & Ben.

(And you thought you were busy....)

If you haven't looked around the website in a while, there's a freshly updated google map showing where our farmers come from on the main market page. Have a look!

See you at the market!

Anne Freeman

P.S. Some park news: This Friday, weather permitting, Friday Night Supper will restart for the season, outside by the big oven and beside the gardens. The menu is always posted on this website by 3 pm at the latest. The cooks are eager to start chopping and cooking the bountiful market produce.

At the market, look for the latest bulletin board display about the "Ward 18 Parks Conservancy" to be followed in late May by a colourful "Prezi" conservancy-themed slideshow. "Spring Story, Chapter 33" will be out too, chronicling the Conservancy as it develops. Jutta Mason

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