This Week at the Smart Markets Oakton Farmers' Market

This Week at our Oakton Market
Saturday 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Hosted by Unity Church of Fairfax
2854 Hunter Mill Rd.
Oakton, VA 22124
Map

This Week at the Market

Dear Shopper,

You will be amazed at how fast the big snow will have melted by Saturday (ha!), and it looks as if we will have a lovely early spring day. And we will also have a full house of vendors, including our newest vendor who did not make it last week, Rockahock Farm. They will bring their wonderful selection of baked goods, both sweet and savory. Look for fruit butters and marmalades, savory cheesecakes, cheese straws, and their famous sweet potato biscuits. Their products are all locally sourced and just plain delicious.

You can stock on Celtic Pasties after their absence last week. They will have Beef & Guinness, Cottage Pie Style, Chicken Alfredo, Mango Chicken, Cheese & Onion and All Day Breakfast.

We will also welcome B&D Poultry to fill the chicken gap that we are experiencing with Heritage Farm waiting out the growth of their latest batch of peeps. Florian and Timm manage a farm full of fowl in Loudoun County, raising chickens, quail, turkeys, and ducks. They will bring eggs from all of the above and freshly-processed whole chickens and parts. They have been participating in our year-round market in Bristow on Sundays and have graciously agreed to step in and feed the masses-in-waiting.

We look forward to seeing more of you who have been hibernating this winter. You will notice that we have picked up some new shoppers this winter, and we are grateful for that.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

One of our earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, Kimberly Hartke, has asked me to let you know about an event she is helping to sponsor this weekend for anyone interested in eating healthy, buying local and learning more about how to decide what and how to eat. Please check out this event and take your children with you. Bring them along on your journey to better health and involve them in your decision-making and food preparation.

We are reopening in Lorton next week at the Workhouse Arts Center. The market will operate from 3-6 p.m. through April, when we will expand our summer season hours to 3-7 p.m. We will welcome Heritage Farm and Kitchen this year, and you can expect to see many of your favorite vendors from last year and from our other markets, including Celtic Pasties, Delicias del Sur, Kylie Carey’s Pop Shop, Gianni Cavanna’s Pasta, Tyson Farms, the Kettle Korn Man, Joie de Vivre Salad Dressings, Kustomcoffee and Valley View Bakery. We will be welcoming back more familiar faces this spring and some new faces, too.

And I want to strongly recommend a recent New York Times magazine article. It’s just the incentive you need heading into market season and hopefully will inspire not only a commitment to personal and family health but a year of living purposefully as an advocate for healthier options for all, including the children in our schools. We pay the salaries of those who decide what these kids eat and bear some responsibility for what they are fed. The obesity epidemic probably more than any other affects all of us not because it is contagious but because it eats away at our general health, our economic health and our environmental health. At some point, we will all be paying for that.