Farmers’ market in full swing
WAYNESBURG – “What color are the flowers?” Kathy Coss of New Freeport wanted to know. In her case, color was important because she’d just painted the outside of her backyard stained glass workshop purple and was looking for something to match.
“I have an old canner that I’ve been planting with annuals, but I want something I can leave in,” she told Cari Dean, whose colorful assortment of homegrown plants lined a portion of Church Street.
The Wednesday morning Waynesburg Farmers’ Market was in full swing and the early lunch crowd had already began arriving to mingle with the produce shoppers and people like Coss. She was on a mission to get that one hardy, locally grown plant that would bloom year after year and remind her of the day she bought it and the fun she had picking it out.
Every vendor’s space was full of homemade and homegrown offerings, from high tunnel early green beans to baked goods, soaps, teas and wine. From now until mid-October, each week’s market brings the products and produce that are ready and ripe. Now that early summer is here, fresh corn is right around the corner – maybe even in a couple of weeks. The soaking rain that fell throughout Tuesday night is a sure promise of tasty things to come.
“I gather most of my teas myself,” Rachel Miller said, holding up a bag of blended herbal tea. The forget-me-not flowers were a bright blue amid the dried mint leaves. “I dry them at a very low temperature and it preserves the color.” Her booth was stacked with bags of tea and bars of soaps, fragrant with rose petals and other natural scents, each item offering a list of ingredients on the label. Laughing, Miller held up her latest piece of whimsy, dowel rods topped with whole walnut shells. “Back scratchers. They really work and they come with a poem I wrote for them,”she said.
The regulars who shop the market have their timing down to the minute. Vehicles slipped in and out of the reserved 15-minute parking spaces in front of the courthouse and shoppers disembarked and headed for their favorite stalls, most sporting their own reusable bags.
“We have sporks,” Julia Paganelli said from her seat under the community booth canopy on High Street. Paganelli and other volunteers man the booth each week, with information to share about fighting hunger in the county and where to go to get food if you need it. Cans of spaghetti sauce, greens and peaches – just some of what is available each month through the county’s 12 food pantries – held down the fliers as people stopped to talk and ask questions.
The sporks – sturdy plastic utensils with a spoon on one end, a fork that had a serrated side sharp enough to cut on the other – were printed with the Greene County Food Security Partnership logo and the “URL” to click for more information – GreeneFoodPartnership.org.
“May I have one?” a little boy asked, staring at the other give-away, a frisbee with the same information printed on it.
“Sure,” Paganelli said, handing him one and he was off with his prize, back to the crowd of children who were having lunch with their parents at the picnic table under the big tree on the courthouse lawn.
Cari Dean, left, helps Kathy Coss pick out the right perennial to plant next to her stained glass workshop in New Freeport. Wednesday’s Waynesburg Farmers Market had refreshing weather and plenty of fresh plants and produce to choose from.