Robert's Market Report

Headhouse Market Wows

It’s more than nice to see the Headhouse Square Farmers’ Market back for its third Sunday season. It’s reinvigorating. Wow! Now spring is really here.

I counted 28 vendors. Among the produce vendors, you could gather plenty of goodies: all types of spring and over-wintered greens, rhubarb, radishes, mushrooms, scallions (Tom Murtha of Blooming Glen Farm poses with his crop in photo at right), leeks, asparagus and even a few local, though still hothouse, tomatoes. Plenty of seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, herbs of all sorts) were available from just about every produce stand, as well as the plant vendors. Tom Culton of Culton Organics featured fennel and fava beans in addition to greens. Plenty of poultry and meat products (frozen) could be had, as well as local cheeses. (I tasted Birchrun Hills Farm’s Alpine variety; it was billed as Emmenthal-like, but I found it more assertive in taste; where Emmenthal is nutty, this was a squirrel’s hoard concentrated into milkfat. I loved it.)

If you gathered up those spring greens, you couldn't do much better than turn them into a Greek-style pie similar to spanakopita, like cookbook author Aliza Green did, with help from local cooking doyenne Betty Kaplan and, briefly, Mayor Michael Nutter (in photo at right with Aliza). Green, who was on hand to sign copies of her many food guides and cookbooks (including her most recent: Starting with Ingredients: Baking), used sorrel, dandelion, mustard greens, dill and whatever other spring greens she could round up (but not kale or collards: too tough and strong for this delicate dish).

Nicky Uy, Jon Glynn and Kathy Wich of The Food Trust’s Farmers Market program and the rest of the Trust’s staff and volunteers did a great job in making opening day of the Sunday Headhouse Square Farmers’ Market season a success.

Here’s a full list of the vendors for opening day:

• A.T. Buzby Farm
• Barbi-Lu’s Salso
• Betsy’s Tasty Buttons
• Birchrun Hills Farm
• Blooming Glen Farm
• Busy Bee Farm
• Culton Organics
• Dancing Hen Farm
• Griggstown Quail Farm
• Happy Cat Organics
• Hillcrest Prided Cheese
• Hurley’s Nursery
• Joe’s Coffee Bar
• Longview Flowers
• Marcelle’s Bakery (formerly Versailles)
• Mountain View Poultry
• Natural Meadows Farm
• Queen’s Farm
• Puppy Oove Homeade
• Savoie Farm
• Spring Hill Farms Maple Syrup
• Stargazers Wines
• Sweet Lucy’s BBQ
• Three Springs Fruit Farm
• Wild Flower Bakery
• Weaver’s way
• Yoder Heirlooms
• Young’s Garden

Whole Foods, lead sponsor of the market this year, was there, too, handing out free reuseable shopping bags.