A multi-market report: Clark Park, Landsdowne, and Martindales

Saturday, July 05, 2008

While picking up my CSA share earlier today at Clark Park Farmers Market, I was shocked to see that Urban Girls had a basket full of spaghetti squash.  According to the woman at the stand, these little babies are in short supply so I grabbed a few.  I couldn’t believe my luck!  I don’t expect to see spaghetti squash for at least another month or two, but the Urban Girls put in a big supply of spaghetti squash seeds early in the season this year.  That’s great for me - spaghetti squash is a favorite of mine!

Urban Girls also had lots of greens, squash, and a few baskets of nice looking pearl onions.

I got to the market just a few minutes after it opened, so not everyone was there yet and many vendors hadn’t even finished setting up.  However, I saw some pretty heads of cauliflower at one stand, and one of the local high schools was selling some gorgeous carrots and greens.  Blueberries, summer squash, and corn were in wild abundance throughout the market.  And Landisdale Farm were selling some very nice beets and lacinato kale.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been buying a brownie from Better Together on my way out of the park.  In addition to having a booth at Clark Park, the Fair Food Farmstand has also started to sell these little bits of heaven.  You can also get them at the farmers market at City Hall.  B.T. brownies are organic, and many of the ingredients are locally grown.  And did I mention that they are outstanding?  Last week I bought one of the chocolate brownies with chocolate bits.  This week I bought a chocolate brownie topped with chocolate chip cookie topping.  So good.

The stand that normally sells tomatoes was not there yet, so I stopped at Lansdowne Farmers Market on my way home from Clark Park in the hopes I could get some tomatoes there.  Alas, no.  Most of the booths at Lansdowne Farmers Market don’t actually sell produce - many of them are art vendors or flower vendors, or merchants from the town.  Of the three that sell produce, there was nary a tomato to be found.  But there was great looking fruit from Fruitwood Farms (really lovely plums), a small selection from Farm Fresh Express, and corn, zucchini, and a bit of fruit from the vendor whose name I can’t remember.  From that stand I did manage to pick up some early green bell peppers.

And since I still needed tomatoes, I kept driving up Baltimore Pike until I hit Martindale’s.  I didn’t really expect to find locally grown tomatoes there - not all of their produce is sourced locally.  However, I was thrilled to see that they had both large heirloom varieties and yellow cherry tomatoes from Paradise Organics.  Hooray!  I could have spent the day there with my nose buried in the pile of tomatoes - they smelled amazing.