It’s Farmers Market Week and this is your last chance to vote for Mount Pleasant Farmers’ Market in DC as your favorite market (if it’s NOT, let me know what more or different you want and I’ll fix it!).
Try my very favorite Japanese plum popular in California: Santa Rosa. Gorgeous deep red skin and yellow flesh, a perfect eating plum, tart and juicy sweet. Or grill them and toss them on vanilla ice cream, salad, slaw, or meat.
On the bandstand
- Will McKindley-Ward from 9-11, then an old-timey and Irish music jam session featuring Louise Walisser, Crystal Bailey, and Gabe Popkin. If you love it, be sure to ask Gabe about the show on Saturday night at SOVA and the special contra dance at Glen Echo on Sunday with West Virginia fiddle champ Chance McCoy and SF old-timey guitar play Sabra Guzman (who played at my wedding!).
- Free Range Bike Clinic: Air, Oil, Advice, and More! Learn how to perform your own basic repairs, meet a neighbor to discuss routes with, hash over your last wreck, join WABA and get 10% off at bike shops.
On to the seasonal foods:
Quaker Valley Farm: Lots of sweet corn! White and yellow peaches and nectarines. Blackberries and red raspberries. Melons and ‘lopes. Tomatoes, eggplants, onions and red, white and blue potatoes. Apple and tomato sauce, jam, honey, apple butter, eggs, and popping corn.
Reid Orchard: Yellow and white peaches, nectarines, blackberries, plums of many colors and shapes! Get the Santa Rosa plums while you can. Fresh eating and cooking apples, typical of summer crops - tart and crunchy! A few red raspberries. Reid picks their peaches tree-ripened which means they can be handled and transported without bruising. Taking them home and leaving them on the counter for a day, or in a bowl or paper bag with an apple to speed things along (apples give off ethylene gas, the naturally occurring fruit ripening hormone). Within a day or two the peaches will be soft, fresh, and dripping down your chin ripe!
Tree and Leaf Farm: Sungold and Suncherry cherry tomatoes are sweet enough for kids to snack on like fruit! Heirloom tomatoes are exquisite. Heirloom sweet peppers in a wide variety of flavors. Hot peppers: jalapeno, padron, and poblano. Eight ball zucchini. Fingerling potatoes, Mars red onions, Candy and Torpedo onions. Little Gem romaine lettuce, deer tongue lettuce hearts, Romaine leaves sold by the half-pound. Beet greens and chard. Parsley and rosemary. Beautiful, nutrient dense vegetables are grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides.
Richfield Farm: Heirloom, regular and cherry tomatoes. Multicolored peppers and eggplants. A few more artichokes. Cucumbers and corn and okra. Cantaloupes and Sugar Baby watermelons, and heirloom Charleston
Gray and Yellow Doll watermelons. Green, yellow and cranberry beans. Bouquets. Maybe some basil. Raw honey from bees that feed off the farm’s flowers. If you’re interested in helping out at his stand, contact Ian Seletsky at 443-677-4035.
Truck Patch Farms: Heirloom, cherry and beefsteak tomatoes. Cantaloupes. Cucumbers. Green beans and squash. Red and white Spring onions, curly kale, arugula, spring mix, chard, cut herbs. Black Angus grass fed beef, pastured pork products and eggs. Order in advance at orders@truckpatchfarms.com for chickens.
Atwater Bread: Organic sourdough and yeasted breads: Peasant Wheat, Caraway Rye, Cranberry Pecan, Kalamata Olive, traditional San Francisco Sourdough, Ciabatta, Country White, Chili Cheddar, French Baguette, Spelt, Sunflower Flax, and more. Brownies, cookies, scones, muffins, and granola.
Keswick Creamery: Raw milk cheeses, blue cheese, feta, ricotta, quark and yogurt, and chocolate pudding.
Groff’s Content Farm: 100% grass-fed and -finished lamb and beef, pastured Berkshire pork, beautiful pastured eggs and chickens, and tasty pet treats.
Painted Hand Farm: humanely raised, grass-fed rose veal and goat meat.
Audia Farms: Potatoes, garlic, unpredictable garden goodies: last week it was thin French filet beans, squashes, colorful carrots, sweet little bouquets. Jams, teas, herbs, for you, catnip, sachets. Perennials.
Cherry Glen Goat Cheese Company: Back this week! Creamy, fresh, soft-ripened cheeses handmade in small batches.
See you Saturday! Please bring your own bags for shopping.