Busboy,
A little background to the new markets. I run the Mount Pleasant Farmers' Market and I have just opened two new markets: 14&U and Bloomingdale Farmers' Markets and I welcome all my eGullet friends to visit my new markets. Mount Pleasant is five years old now and I hope that these new markets will last for years as well! Working on the webpage but there is a slashpage up for 14 & U. Back in the day I was the marketing director of cookbooks for Time Life Books (whole story there about how my father subscribed to Foods of the Worlds when I was 12 years old and I wanted to work for Time-Life because I loved that series so much -- and so I did!), but farmers markets are and have always been a passion. I live at U Street and have for 20 years which is why I started that market and I am very enthusiastic about the Bloomingdale area.
One correction. The brand-new Bloomingdale Market is at First and R Streets NW right next to the brand new Big Bear Cafe.
Sundays 10-2
Joan and Bill will be at market every other week with their local lamb because they are a small producer and Bloomingdale is their only market Truck Patch is, indeed, starting on June 25th with their greens, salads, veggies and wonderful pastured pork. There will be a good funk-jazz band playing during the market as there was last week. And Big Bear has excellent coffee. We do indeed have Reid, Sunnyside Organics, Truck Patch, Dragonfly, New Asbury Farms. Bread and cheese to come. Working on the website.
The 14 & U Farmers' Market is at the NW corner of 14th and U Streets NW, on the sidewalk Plaza outside the Reeves Center.
Saturdays 10-2
It started 3 weeks ago. Producers include: Kuhn Orchards from Cashtown, PA who is new to the DC markets, Mountain View Farms, a biodynamic veggie farm also new to the DC markets -- like a baby Tree and Leaf!, Faucher Meadow, a fabulous flower and raspberry grower, new to the DC markets plus some more familiar faces: Smith Meadow for pastured meat and Nancy's pasta made with their own grass range eggs, Quaker VAlley Orchard, SunnySide Organics, Truck Patch and Tree and Leaf -- and Breadline breads. www.14andUfarmersmarket.com
If anyone wants to be on the weekly market email for Mount Pleasant, 14 & U or Bloomingdale, please send me an email.
And yes, we will be expanding the number and kinds of producers at ALL THREE Markets.
robin
But, big news of the week is surely the opening of a new market on one of those corners where the only marketing going on a few years ago was 40s and illicit substances. The Bloomingdale Market, at 1st and Q Street NW is fairly small -- 6 or 8 stands, but seem to have most of the basics covered, with Reid Orchards, Truck Patch (absent yesterday for Father's Day) Sunnyside and a couple of other familiar faces. It is, however, as far I know, the local site to get lamb fro the New Asbury Farm. I picked up a couple shanks and hope to test them out with white beans or maybe cous-cous in the near future. I think later this summer I'm going to get my Greek on, though, and try to do a whole lamb on a rotisserie.
Cherries galore, although sour cherries were in short supply, and we turned out the first clafouti of the year which, along with some homemade cinnamon ice cream was the hit of the barbecue we attended.
It's finally starting to be worth getting up in the morning to hit the markets again.
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Edited by Robin Shuster, 19 June 2007 - 03:19 PM.
and has swallowed Wheatland Farms whole, under the guise of working Wheatland's fields and holding down Wheatland's coveted space in the Dupont Circle market while the senior Plancks (farmer's market pioneers and parents of Nina Planck, who starts up farmers markets the way most of us buy shoes) build "a hamlet of seven houses to preserve the family farm" and possibly retire to.
