Farmer's Market Time

Which in Portland, really fires up in earnest about now, almost July. This week's Willamette Week listed some of the most well-known produce and Farmer's Markets, along with hours of operation, type of selection, degree of carnival atmosphere, and how to get there. One that they forgot, is the Asian Produce Farmer's Market out Division and 92nd Ave, a smaller, recent start-up market, with no carnival touches, but vendors happy to talk to you about the vegetables and herbs unfamiliar to you, and what to do with them. Oh Happy Day! Free parking and bring cash. I'm already thinking of the slender eggplants to grill, and the choys---grilled choy is amazing!

The Montavilla Farmer's Market will get underway in a few weeks on westbound Stark just east of Mt Tabor in the gravel lot by the stoplight. Now that the Montavilla blocks are fun to stroll again, I'm hoping for a rejuvenated interest here, with lots of local fruits and herbs as well as the pepper-zucchini-tomato standards. Seeing as cucumbers are going for $1 each at the Fred Meyers around here, please someone deliver us from highway robbery and make their own local fortune selling us local unwaxed cucumbers, please! I know gazpacho has ebbed into passe, but those of us who still make it just wince at prices like that.

One sad note---Uncle Fred's produce market on Hawthorne below the Safeway is closing---what used to be the dependable neighborhood pumpkin into Christmas tree vacant lot and abandoned 1940s gas station, had morphed into the dependable year-round outdoors tarped produce and flower market, featuring local harvest. The market owners' said they had signed a lease knowing full well that the lot owners could shut it down eventually, and the site will become another of the rusted steel, glass and sloped roof condo blocks that are appearing along Hawthorne since 2005.
And screwing up traffic for years at at time, I might add. The one on Hawthorne & SE 33rd took forever to finish, and there are two in various stages of start-up and completion up at 44th & 45th-Hawthorne, another traffic snarl with the big big crane set-up. Damned housing market, because not everyone can pay $450,000 for a 3bdrm bungalow in SE anymore, we need $200K 1 bdrm condos like the Pearl has to make up for it. Belmont maybe next. I may be a renter forever at this rate. We could become like New Yorkers, marrying for real estate location, not love, like getting a residential Green Card. "We've never had sex, don't exchange gifts at holidays, I met her parents once at Passover, but look at our SE44th Ave Dream Bungalow! This is my suite..." "Happy Anniversary...uh, it's Jeff, right?" Air kisses all around.

Speaking of crabby-grass (meaning me), poor Steven's new sod is beginning to do the Summer Thing and browning, so we were kidding with him that it was nice while it lasted, but now we're going to put in the community garden, midnight roto-tilling dirt commandos. He didn't think it was funny too much, so we stopped teasing him, but it boggles my mind to think of the farmer's market we could have here...better stop. I never imagined in all my years in Florida that Portland would have such a Mediterranean climate, zone 7, and even 8 in south facing, protected areas.

My neighbors have 8ft dill plants already, their blossom heads blowsing in the wind like Nile River papyrus plants, and the bronze fennel nearby is going to bolt soon. It hasn't even been hot since the beginning of May, must be ideal conditions for these herbs, but made my early tomato plants kind of stall out and not take off until about 10 days ago. Now they are about 2ft tall and set with lots of blooms and little pea-sized tomatoes. Might have to ditch the short cages and go for the bamboo tri-pods this year...when my inner-Martha takes over full time. I had a lot of hopes for a big basil crop this summer, until I skipped a week of wheatgrass for the cat, and he ate all but two of my basil starts. Lesson to me, that cat knows how to really hurt me.

The latest version of the Market String Bag is now available in grape colored cotton, along with Provencal yellow---so many enterprises, so many digital pics to take. Today I'm putting the photo lighting box together, which I gleaned from the profile photo on a vendor's site on Etsy, so I don't have to wait for a sunny day to take cedar fence shots outside. I should put together a photo pictorial on how to make a photo light box and post that on Craftzine's blog page...instant fame. As the newest shirt in the Groovy Rhubarb line will say---"Where's my staff?" I'm going to make it Tang Orange, and dedicate it to Steven, for enduring my carded button pitch with such grace yesterday after a long drive from Medford. Bless you.