This summer, we are visiting as many farmers markets in our region as we can. After living here for nearly two years, it was time to get out and see what the area has to offer. On a lovely summer morning, we drove up to Richmond to visit the South of the James Farmer’s Market to see what was in season. The market is held in Forest Hill Park and while there is parking available, street parking is also easy to find.
When you enter the market from the parking area, you will notice that there is a long and narrow path of vendors lined on both sides as you walk through the market. It starts out with a few food vendors and as you walk in, the offerings run from produce, plants, hand made crafts, wine, seafood, meat, cheese and so much more than I can recall. This is another producer-only market so do not expect to find everything you are looking for-farmers aren’t magicians and they can’t make it happen if it isn’t in season! Another aspect of the producers only rule is that local artisans can also sell their work at the market and if you are looking for something unusual or simply not mass produced, you could quite possibly find it at the market too!
The folks at Drumheller’s get around! They sell in Williamsburg at the market too and I love their apple cider but it’s peach season and they were selling them by the bag.
When in the Chesapeake area, expect to find crab cakes-we have seen them at several markets and they always look so tempting but I am not a big fan of crab cakes for breakfast.
The stems of swiss chard are so beautiful-I know, I take pictures of chard at every market. What’s not to love about peppermint chard? Those stripes…
Local cheeses are abundant in the markets.
Finding Kombucha at the market is pretty easy here, we have seen it at the Charlottesville market too.
Gotta love the trailer, too bad some jerk stole their generator!
Fresh coffee anyone? Another great little trailer that was equipped with an espresso machine for that morning fix.
Summer has arrived; berries anyone???
Or maybe some fresh picked beans?
Although they always taste the same, I always reach for the yellow ones and the purple ones first.
Not sure what variety this cauliflower is but when ours looked fuzzy like this, I thought something was wrong with it. Apparently, this variety is a bit fuzzy.
Also available was everyone’s favorite fractal; Romanesco along with cheddar.
Carrots by the bunch
And goats too! These goats weren’t for sale but they were very friendly and optimistic.
They assumed that any edibles were there for the taking as this little guy found out when the goat reached over and cleaned up his snack tray!
There were plenty of options for food and we had noodles for lunch.
Freshly stir-fried and served with shrimp.
As we walked out of the market, we saw this odd pack on a man’s back.
Apparently, they test products and this was a carrying case for a cat! What a cute cat he was too!
Get out there and explore the markets! Learn about the real offerings of the season and not what the grocery store carries, it’s fresher, it tastes better and it’s a great way to spend a couple hours! My only other suggestion, skip the restrooms up at the top of the hill in the parking area-one of the worst rest room experiences we have had!!!
Darry is on vacation this week and we have been traveling around the area visiting gardens and markets. We got an early start on Saturday and drove to the 
City Market is a producers only market and each week, approximately 100 vendors come to sell produce, meats, cheese, flowers, hand-crafted goods, bakery items and more. We started off with donuts, freshly fried and rolled in cinnamon sugar!
So many tents, so much to see, we will have to go back as the seasons progress to see what is available.
Romanesco cauliflower; I haven’t had much luck with it in the garden but looking at this basket, I must try again.
Our peas pooped out on us a while back but the climate in the Charlottesville area is a little cooler than ours here in Williamsburg and peas were still available at this market.
Our carrots are not as large as these, but they are getting there!
Free range chickens are pretty common but have you ever heard of free swimming ducks? We laughed at that one! Duck eggs are such a pretty blue color.
Spring potatoes! It will be months before we have any to harvest. When I harvested them last fall, I missed some and now, we have potatoes growing randomly in the beds. This week, I did plant some seed potatoes and hopefully, we will have some russets to go with the reds and golds that have been sprouting in the garden.
Swiss chard is so pretty to look at, I love the colors of the stems.
In one booth, peppers were being flame roasted-it smelled so good!
It is almost tomato season-I saw the first tomato blooms in our garden just this afternoon!
What’s in season? Beets!!! Love beets and I have red and gold in the garden.
These look perfect for roasting, although, pickling them would be pretty tasty too!
Lacinto Kale is another one of those plants that hasn’t been a good producer for me in the garden. Considering how much we like it, I will have to try again.
If I hadn’t started off our visit with a donut, I might have had an almond croissant!
Love the stenciled loaves, they were eye catching and very tempting!
Every where we went, there was food to eat. These ladies were cooking crab cakes.
The bagel ladies had sandwiches on the grill and bagels to take and bake at home.
Feel like tacos? In this booth, they were pressing fresh tortillas and making tamales. If only the line wasn’t 20 people deep, we might have had tamal for lunch.
Remember those donuts I mentioned? In this booth, they fry them and then coat them with a sugar and cinnamon mix.
The batter gets poured into a hopper and it is portioned and dropped into the hot oil.
Feel like an omelet? Chef Tony has your back! He was cooking them to order on a grill.
We decided to have some fresh Filipino style noodles.
Thin rice noodles with chicken and vegetables.
We haven’t had much Filipino food since we left San Francisco and it was a nice change from the usual Asian fare we find here in Williamsburg.
Fear not, they are also a green market! Food scraps can be composted and recyclables are collected separately from the trash.
As spring comes to an end, our garden is beginning to provide us with more than we can eat. Because we have more freshly picked vegetables than we can eat, we very rarely go to the farmers market to shop. This past weekend, we ventured down to Merchant’s Square and took a look at what the farmers had to offer.
There was no shortage of plants either; we came home with a Joe Pye Weed for our new bed in the front garden.
Onions and radishes were also plentiful.
Since I discovered roasted radishes, I very rarely eat them raw but we did make some wonderful kimchi with them. Each week, the market has a core group of vendors that stay the same along with a group that come less frequently. This week, a group of women from the 
A table top spinner being used to spin cotton into yarn.
It’s all about the tension, keeping it taught creates a fine thread.
Not everyone uses a wheel to spin, some do it by hand with a drop spinner.
The color of this yarn is beautiful, it looks fluffy too!
She worked at this yarn the whole time we were there.
The weavers had Darry’s attention and he asked many questions about the process. This weaver had completed all of the work you see there in a rather short time, in between demonstrating the technique and answering questions. After we asked many questions and chatted with the ladies for a while, we headed back to the car.
Not far from where we parked, Darry showed me a patch of 
We have a 
There were dozens of them and since we did not know anything about the mulch they were growing in, we did not pick any.
For now, we will have to wait for our patch to grow and multiply.
will garden for cake 