This Week at the Smart Markets Bristow Farmers' Market

This Week at our Bristow Market
Sunday 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Piney Branch Elementary School
8301 Linton Hall Rd.
Bristow, VA 20136
Map

Some changes are coming to the market. First off, we are open an extra hour starting this week!

Doug Linton and his Taste of Local Food Truck will be leaving this market to pick up the other summer markets he does for Smart Markets. He will be replaced by Prince William County’s very own Century Farm: The Smith Family Farm. The Smith family once farmed the land that now includes much of Virginia Gateway and the surrounding area and after 100 years in the farming business, they are still raising cattle, hogs, and chickens for meat. They also raise laying hens for those great country eggs.

We also will welcome a brand new food truck built and operated by another Bristow neighbor, Tara Lucas. She calls her business the World’s Tastiest Food Truck, and she is going to be buying ingredients from our own vendors and other local farmers as often as she can. This will be a “soft” opening this week; they may not come with a full menu, but I encourage you to come out and support their efforts. Remember that these small food businesses we help to incubate are the future bulwark against the onslaught of fast food nation. And their food is so much healthier for you and your family.

Absolute BBQ will be with us again, and we continue to hear back that you like them very much — their sides seem to be a particular hit.

And of course all your favorite vendors who have wintered-over with you will be with us. Tyson Farms will soon have the first asparagus of the season. B&D Poultry will have that great fresh chicken and those gorgeous eggs, and we may even see our first Northern Neck farmer this week. If so, we’ll let you know on Facebook.

Shelby of Cakes by Shelby will be on site with more examples of her creative kitchen skills, and Owl Run Nursery will be with us throughout the spring to sell you locally nurtured plants and to offer great gardening advice.

We may have some more surprises for you — this is the time of year when even the farmers don’t know what to expect or how much of it.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and boy am I glad to know that today. We opened in Reston on Wednesday a market which will eventually be the largest we have ever managed. The last-minute machinations are always so hectic that I was afraid I would not have time to write this week. But in spite of the homily, I will add a few more words of explanation and gratitude to this great picture.

I got a call the other day from Max Tyson Jr., our fruit farmer extraordinaire and vegetable cultivator as well. He had been trying to send me this picture via his phone and it wasn’t going through, but he had to call and tell me that he had just picked the first “bunch” of asparagus of the season — not bunches or boxes — but the first single bunch from the entire patch. I could hear the anticipation and pride in his voice. When I got home and saw the picture on the computer, I had to admit that the picture tells the story pretty well. Caring hands picking his own crop, the first real spring crop of the season, and even though it happens every year, it is still a miracle when it does.

Our farmers have been in the fields literally into the night for weeks now. Ignacio emails that he is sorry he cannot come to market yet; he has too much work in the field, and he is very tired. Baron Faust of Fossil Rock Farm writes that because of the “much extended winter,” it will be a couple of weeks before he can come. Curt Shade is just waiting for his tulips to get a little higher, and Mike Burner tells me over the phone in his greenhouse at 9 p.m. at night that he can hardly wait to come to market in a week or so.

We have no idea how hard these guys work to feed us, and I wonder how many of us suburbanites could even do the work. This is the connection between farmer and market shopper that a grocery store can never replicate, no matter how many signs and pictures they put up to tell us about their suppliers. Those large suppliers are not in the grocery store telling us how they grow their produce, and they certainly aren’t getting that retail price that the small farmers need just to get by. Our farmers need us as much as we need them. That’s the connection, and that’s what makes us feel good about shopping at a farmers’ market.