Capture the spirit of the Hollywood Farmers' Market on camera!

Bring your camera and head over to the Hollywood Farmers' Market during the month of August. First place prizes will be awarded to entries in three categories: People, Pets and Products. The winners will be announced at 11am at the market on September 15, 2007.

Contest Rules

• ·Photos must be taken at the Hollywood Farmers' Market during the month of August only.
• ·All ages are welcome to enter but amateur photographers only.
• Submit prints of 3-by-5 or 4-by-6 sizes only. No digital modifications are allowed.
• ·Photos become property of the Hollywood Farmers' Market and cannot be returned. HFM will be featuring photos online and at the market without payment to contestants.
• ·Staff and board members of HFM are not eligible to enter.

Join us this Saturday for our third annual Blues Berry Festival! Four of Portland's finest blues musicians take the stage.

James Clem has been performing for over thirty years, recently establishing himself as one of the Northwest's top acoustic blues artists since moving to Portland last year. In addition to his strong vocals, he is known for playing a wide variety of blues styles on his guitar and even some 20's jazz on his National ukulele.

Lee Blake plays classic blues and R&B adapted to slide guitar tunings with original songs along the same lines. He has taken a page here and there from all the great blues and R&B singers he admires.

Steve Cheseborough brings to life the acoustic country blues and hokum of the 1920s and '30s by re-creating the music and recounting the lives, legends and lore of the fascinating men and women who created the blues. He sings from the heart, accompanying himself on antique-style guitars that look as beautiful as they sound.

Featured Vendor: Persephone Farm

When we started Persephone Farm 22 years ago, soil maps indicated we would be working with one of the best soils in Oregon. We quickly learned that we had moved onto a heavy clay soil that was slow to dry in the spring and eager to form clods at any time of year. For years, we struggled to plant by April first. More often than not, tens of thousands of greenhouse starts were discarded for lack of dry ground. And, even when crops were planted early, cold soils resulted in poor growth. Compounding the problem was a stubborn, and perhaps foolish, wish to minimize our use of non-renewable, non-recyclable plastics. This commitment foreclosed the option of growing crops to maturity inside plastic greenhouses, as is commonly done in Western Oregon. Conventional wisdom says that bringing produce to market early is an essential element of success. Success looked like a dim prospect.

After years of regrets (did we purchase the wrong place?) and disappointment (drowned crops and discarded starts), we gave up trying to plant early and came to realize that the limits of our soil and the restrictions imposed by our own efforts to use resources sustainably were a profound gift. We discovered the meaning of seasonality and learned to thrive within the constraints of nature. We found joy and fatigue in the hurried pace of a five to six month growing season when the exuberant tide of life sweeps us up in her onrushing current. We found peace and sweet rest in the long winter nights while the land lay easy beneath gentle rains. And a farm name chosen largely on a whim came to symbolize a belief that life and land are enriched when we learn to work within the natural boundaries of the seasons rather than pursue the notion that we should have whatever we want, whenever we want it.

Thankfully, our customers, too, have accepted and welcomed our seasonal produce.

-Jeff Falen and Elanor O'Brien