This Week at the Smart Markets Lorton Farmers' Market

This Week at Our Lorton Market
Thursday 3–7 p.m.
Workhouse Arts Center
9601 Ox Rd.
Lorton, VA 22079
Map

Now the fun begins! I am going to have take a vacation next week in order to map out all of our activities for this summer and to make sure we get the word out to you. We will be hosting canning demos throughout the season and at least one free-of-charge interactive canning class at a location where we will not be rained out. And our demo chef Annie Sidley will return at least once a month for a free cooking class on site with market ingredients, which usually involves a full menu.

I will give you a week’s notice about the big events, but you can always check out the event calendar on our website. If you want to catch a class with Annie at another market or bring guests to a concert, we would love to see you at a market other than the one you usually attend.

Beginning this week, Maria Whimpop (as we call her) and her staff, who bring those amazing good-for-you popsicles, will host each week a 30-minute craft class for kids using popsicle sticks. While you shop, they will have fun and end up with something to decorate the refrigerator or their own rooms with. We’ll post the scheduled time on Facebook this week.

Pete Lund returns this week on his new tire with lovely flowers from Southern Maryland, and Fossil Rock is introducing a new product line at my personal request. They will bring products from Wade’s Mill, which is not far from their farm, to enable you to enjoy some of the mill’s products, including assorted flours, corn meal and wheatberries. You should try wheatberries in a recipes that you will find at the Smart Markets tent. They will also have gorgeous peony bouquets this week.

If you missed him last week, you will see that Chester Hess is back with us with his crisp apples and fragrant strawberries. You can smell those berries as you come down the walk. He will soon bring peaches, apricots, and a variety of berries. I remember tasting his peaches for the first time years ago and being reminded of the peaches I enjoyed as a child when I lived in southern Georgia. I had not tasted one like those in many years. It seems that growing on the sunny side of a mountain in West Virginia imparts much the same deliciousness as the red clay and unrelenting sunshine of Cordele, Ga.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

It’s not a stretch for me to say that I learn something new every day; I work with so many different people on so many different projects, and I do read a lot. But last evening I learned in one article lots of things I did not know and which happen to directly inform all those things I do.

Michael Pollan is at it again, going where no writer has gone before to enlighten and inspire us to change our lives and, in small ways, to change the world. His most recent piece for the New York Times Magazine is another clearly laid-out indictment of our personal diets as they are dictated by “Big Food” and our personal health as dictated by “Big Pharma.” In the article he moves from the revelation that he had his gut analyzed for levels of good and bad bacteria to a discussion of the history and geography of our diet and how it has evolved to remove from our bodies many of the good bacteria that would normally keep asthma, allergies, and other autoimmune diseases out of our bodies. It would seem that the greatest threats to our daily health may not be the bad stuff out there but the lack of good stuff in our own bodies to fight off the bad stuff.

You need to read this to see how his argument develops. But his final point, once again, is that the “components of a microbiota-friendly diet are already on the supermarket shelves and in farmers’ markets.” He reminds us that “the less a food is processed, the more of it that gets safely through the gastrointestinal tract and into the eager clutches of the microbiota” (the collective microbes in our bodies). And as he often does, he explains in great detail why his major point is so important for us to understand: “This is at once a very old and a very new way of thinking about food: it suggests that all calories are not created equal and that the structure of food and how it is prepared may matter as much as its nutrient composition.”

Feed on that, folks — read more and learn more.