September 29: Vashon Farmers Market Fresh Sheet
What’s Fresh at Your Vashon Farmers Market tomorrow!
By Rebecca Wittman, Market Manager
|
September 28, 2012
Here’s food for thought from Rebecca, our market Manager.
Dear Mom,
What you’re seeing this week is a postcard from where I’m NOT – which is at the Vashon Farmer’s Market. I’m playing hooky from my gig as manager to see what’s beautiful at an old boatyard in Sweden. But while I’m away, all these hardworking farmers and artisans will be here, holding down the fort as always, celebrating everything that is beautiful and honorable about their work and their art and our wonderful agrarian community. The farms are crazy abundant with the handsomest crops imaginable, and if everything looks like it was just picked this morning, that’s because for the most part it was. No gassing and cold storage for two weeks for anything here. Vine-ripened tomatoes tumbling forth like quarters from a three-cherries-in-a-row slot machine. Perfect stacks of Romano beans warming the cockles of my Germanic compulsive heart; the cabbages voluptuous in ways that would make even you blush. The garlic and shallot braids – holy fashion moment, Robin! They should be used as hair extensions!
What I really have to gush about, though, are the stunning arts and crafts on offer this and every week. Farmers typically get all the glory in this space (which I will say, in Dad’s honor, is probably as it should be – and it is, after all called the FARMERS market…) but I ask you, what would the emperor be without his fancy duds and custom tableware? Naked, and licking his fingers!
Hand painted silk scarves that look like a kinetic art gallery. The absolutely ingenious paper automata – Orcas breaching right there in your hands! The breathtaking woodworking – from exotic hardwood letter openers, to medieval hand carved spoons, to too-pretty-to-cut-on, tic-tac-toe chopping blocks! But if you do decide you want to cut on them, the Michelangelo of knife sharpening artists is right there, too. The stained glass feathers should be in the Sistine Chapel! And there are real feathers of all exotic stripes and tones, taken from their original owners only as a final act of respect. The acid flashback tie-dye clothes – I can relive the 60′s! The beachglass jewelry, that evokes salty air and sand in the toes just looking at it! The pine needle baskets, woven to impossible precision. Too-smart-for-the-room bags and bibs and doggie raincoats, whipped up from discarded feed sacks! Soaps yummy enough to eat, and bubbles that make me giddy for a bath. And for after that bath, the most decadent skin care products, hand made with love and organic ingredients.
If you’re a dog, you can’t come into the Village Green, but one pouty little cock of the head and Rosie Bones is right there at the sidewalk to spoil you with gourmet dog treats! If you’re a kid (age 2-102) you live for the Saturday visit with the empress of caramels. If you’re a serious chocoholic (that vice I inherited from you) you have every delectable thing you need at the chocolatier’s booth. And if you’re trying to eat like a saint, flourless cookies that make me question all my other vices.
Page 1 of 6 | Next page