The Market is Open! The Market is Open!

Imagine me skipping around in circles! The market is open! OOOOhhhhhh! I can't begin to tell you all about the wonderful farm goodness that was surrounding me on Tuesday. The lovely people over at Victory Farms have been hard at work and God has been kind with the weather and fabulous farm foods were available for pick up at the Byrd Street Market.

It was a beautiful afternoon, not too hot or muggy. We had just had a couple of days of downpours and the sun had started to poke just after lunch. I debated on whether or not go, "the ground was wet and muddy and the market is in a field", "it's still early in the season - they only have lettuce", "the parking frightens me", etc. It just so happened that my daycare child was sick that day and didn't come, so that was one less child to chase around over there. So I did it and boy, was I glad!

We got there about 15 minutes after it opened and I found a parking spot right away! First hurdle overcome :) It was a little chilly and the ground was a little squishy and muddy, but oh well. Victory Farms was the first tent as we walked in and OH! the beautiful veggies stacked in nice bins and perfectly laid out. We looked around the table - Miranda and Ronan wide-eyed at the feast available. "Is this our farm?!" one of them said. "Look at all those beautiful green vegetables for salad!" said the other. "What should we get?" I asked. Little fingers pointed here and there and whispered "Look how BIG that is!" "What is that?! Let's get some!"

So we picked and we chose, we sniffed and we smiled. My market bag was full and there was still meat to get. So we checked out - Gina was lovely and explained to the kids how they would get to come every week to pick out their veggies. They were impressed to say the least.

We moved onto Faith Farm Foods for our exceedingly tasty pasture-raised beef and pork. Oh yum! Visions of burgers and briskets and bacon in my head, I looked and I chose. Linda tallied. I threw blessings her way and lamented about what a long horrible marketless winter it had been. She chastised me for not knowing that they could deliver all winter - oh fool am I. I signed up immediately for the email newsletter, never to be left out of critical farm news again.

We did a final pass around the market and found an old favorite - Mary Kroll from Wild Heaven Farms was there with her locally famous goat milk soap. We toured her farm once as a field trip and the kids wanted to keep all her kids! (I mean the goats!) Had to get some of those too and finally is was back home we went. We rushed in the door and started unloading everything we bought.

There was 5 lbs of ground beef, 2 lbs of brisket, 2 lbs of hot sausage, carrots, radishes, spinach, romaine, kale, Russian kale, green onions, salad mix, goat cheese and soaps. It was beautiful! That night we had burgers and sausage on toasted Italian bread and a salad that amazed everyone. The Market is BACK baby! Let the feasting begin :)