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Weekly Market Notes Library

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Weekly Market Notes for October 15, 2009

Hello Market Friends:

We enjoyed a very successful first day on the rink last week, including the annual round of appreciation from people who particularly like this fall setup. While you're visiting this week we hope you'll relax awhile on our new benches. They were funded through a small grant in support of the market from The Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation, also the providers of those popular market bags! Local handyman extraordinaire Ross Stuart custom built the benches, nice and wide so small children, groups of friends or Friday night suppers can rest comfortably on them.

The leadup to World Food Week (October 16-23--check out U of T's events) has been a remarkable stretch for food and farming reading. Several recent articles are posted here under Food News, and you might want to visit The Star's website if you haven't been following their informative series on agriculture and health.

Here's the vendor news:

Sosnickis' contribution: "Well, this is one of the first years I can ever remember not caring or stressing too much about the first fall frost! Bring it! It'll just make our carrots and other veg out there sweeter!! Ben will bring bunches of our leeks, broccoli, carrots (purple haze too!), celery, celeriac, potatoes, onions, butternut squash, arugula, beets still with great tops, cabbages & the most flavourful bunches of tatsoi, more sweet spinach (IF we have time to harvest) and I think that rounds it off for this week. Our brussel sprouts are looking fantastic out there; ready perhaps next week or the week after...we are harvesting full apple bins (the big ones!) of beets and spuds for storage....LOTS of veg out in the ground still, so lots of work for our seasonal Mexican guys that are not enjoying this cooler weather at all! Lots of our own to offer Dufferin this winter!" Jessie

Sorry to report: "Greenfields will not be at market this week as we are super busy harvesting a bumper crop of sweet Carrots, winter Radishes, Sunchokes, Rutabaga, Lutz Beets and Celeriac for storage. Thursday is also a root day so we will be planting our Garlic. We'll miss you too. See you next week." Mark

Andrew Akiwenzie has had a wild time with the wind up at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, but expects to be down with a fresh catch. Natasha says that their three boys were thrilled by the first snow swirling down as they worked on their nets Thanksgiving weekend, but she's not too excited about the ski season yet.

Dan from Seldom Seen (lamb) will be absent this week.

If you've been a market fan since way back, you may remember a very sweet young couple named Marc and Marie-Nicole who brought us home-ground flours and other products under the name Purple Sprout. They left for "day jobs", dreaming of saving enough money to buy a small farm, and we didn't hear much for a long while. Feeling like some armchair travel?

"Marie-Nicole & I have set up a blog to document & share our adventures in permaculture from our new home in Ecuador. You are invited to check it out:

 www.purplesprout.ca

We will be updating it with photos & videos every week or so. We have just added some videos showing what the land looks like & where the house will be built & where fruit trees will be planted."

See you at the market!

Anne Freeman

P.S. The Ontario Association of Food Banks is preparing a petition to the Ontario Legislature calling for a farm to foodbank donation tax credit. They are urgently seeking additional signatures on this petition. More information and sign-up instructions are available on their website: Ontario Association of Food Banks: oafb.ca

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