Growing For Market

Since its opening day on a cold Friday in late May, our Potter County Farmers' Market continues to attract more customers and more vendors.
Now that we're deep into July, more farm-fresh produce is available, transitioning from the cool-loving crops like lettuce, spinach and scallions to the heat-loving crops like peppers, tomatoes, berries and soon-to-ripen sweet corn.
On our farm, we put a lot of emphasis on tomatoes this year after having been seduced by the descriptions and photos in the seed catalogs. We've tried many new varieties this year including Speckled Roman, Green Zebra and Moonglow. I've found it difficult to come away from the high tunnel with any of the Sweetie Cherries in my basket - they all go right in my mouth!

Peas!

When we moved to Potter County back in the spring of 1976, we planted a garden here under the watchful eyes of Arthur's grandfather and grandmother. Grandma Metzger told me her goal was to have peas with new potatoes for the Fourth of July and that meant getting the peas in the ground by Good Friday and the potatoes soon after.
Pictured above are the peas we enjoyed for supper on July 3. Now I have a confession ... they were from the "volunteer" peas that grew where peas were allowed to dry on the vine last summer to be saved for seed. Yes, we missed a few!
This week we begin harvest of the peas planted just a little later than Good Friday. We hope to have them for sale at the Farmers' Market Friday afternoon.