This Week at
the Market |
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Old Time Music Jam
Face Painting with Crista
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| Tip of the Week |
Plant Your Blueberries Now
The beginning of fall is the best time of year for planting trees and shrubs, especially blueberries.
By planting blueberries now, they will become established and be ready to produce a small crop for next year.
When planting blueberries, add peat moss or compost to your planting hole as blueberries thrive in acidic soils. Water well upon planting and let the winter rains take care of the rest!
-- Gretchen O'Brien, River Rock Nursery
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Featured Produce
Part of the beauty of farmers' markets is that our produce changes with the seasons. Stay current with weekly produce highlights here!
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Utah Giant Celery(Happy Harvest Farm) Yukina Savoy(Persephone Farm)
Star Krimson Pear
(Market Fruit/Packer Orchards)
Kabocha Squash
- pictured above
(Winter Green Farm)
Red Flame Seedless Grapes
(Unger Farms)
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| Tomatillo Tasting This Week at the Gales Meadow Farm Booth |
Tomatillos are wonderful and tasty, and yet they are often stereotyped and limited to one role: Salsa.
Epicurious.com has 108 different recipes with tomatillos and every single one of them is a sauce or a salsa!
In the interest of tomatillo liberation, Gales Meadow Farm will offer a tasting this Saturday, October 4th, featuring tomatillos in two unusual roles: as an ingredient in a sorbet and as an accent for polenta.
These dishes will be prepared by Blake Van Roekel, consulting chef to Gales Meadow Farm, and will be available from about 9:30 until they run out.
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This Saturday we will host the Third Annual Old Time Music Jam. Six different musicians will delight market-goers with their lively and festive tunes. Also, Crista will be at the market painting faces young and old. Don't miss this Saturday at the Hollywood Farmers' Market!
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The Hollywood Farmers' Market is Now Seeking Board Members!
The Hollywood Farmers' Market is currently
recruiting enthusiastic Board members for our 2009 season!
Needed skills
and expertise include leadership, finance, marketing, staff management, food
systems, public relations, secretarial and general administration.
Click on the Volunteer page on our website
to learn more about the roles and responsibilities of the Board of Directors. Applications are due by noon on Monday, October 13, 2008.
The deadline is quickly approaching, so please fill one out soon!
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Community Booth Spotlight
 Learn more about the organizations tabling at the market each week in our community booth column.
Free Geek
Free Geek is
a 501(c)(3) not for profit community organization that recycles used
technology to provide computers, education, internet access and job
skills training to those in need in exchange for community service.
Columbia Ecovillage
Columbia Ecovillage is a new family-friendly cohousing community
forming in Northeast Portland that combines individual home ownership
with the use of shared community space on a functional urban farmstead. Located on 3.73 lush acres with mature nut and fruit trees, chickens, and a community supported farm, the Ecovillage still
has a few condominium units available, a studio, a two bedroom and a
three bedroom, with an anticipated move-in date in early 2009. The site
is close to the Concordia New Seasons and there are two
frequent-service TriMet bus route stops at and near the property.
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Featured Vendor: Sweet Leaf Farm
 Dave Sullivan has been farming for over 14 years, yet he says he's just now reaching his stride. At the young age of 35, Dave finds himself at the center of a thriving farm that pushes the boundaries of tradition. In its tenth year of production, Sweet Leaf Farm markets over 1 million pounds of produce annually. With less than 22 acres in cultivation, it's quite a feat, even in what he calls the farm's protected "banana belt" along the Willamette River.
Dave credits much of his farm's success to the combined backgrounds and experiences of the people he has worked with over the years. He has spent significant time learning about season extension techniques that allow Sweet Leaf to be at farmers' markets earlier and continue producing later than many other area farms. Through trial and error and a willingness to take chances, Dave has finally found "a pretty good recipe" for making things work at Sweet Leaf. They mix old-school traditional methods with modern day appropriate technology all the while paying attention to what's cutting edge in the world of organic growing methods. He says the farm's biggest success is the great crew of people who work together to pull it all off while remaining productive, happy, and relatively balanced. It is still farm work after all.
Sweet Leaf Farm grows a full spread of mixed vegetables as well as strawberries, a variety of melons, and brilliant tomatoes. Almost two acres are cultivated in hoophouses, one of the season extension techniques that has proved so rewarding. Dave credits this year's crop of deliciously satisfying and huge onions to a field with low weed pressure, high soil fertility, drip tape, and plain-old good onion weather. Which is a good example of a recipe that blends the old with the new.
Dave likes his career as a farmer because he finds he is constantly developing his skills and talents to meet the needs of the farm. "It's not just about growing veggies. I have to be part electrician, part carpenter, part businessman. I love it. It's a tangible way to be a positive part of community."
Sweet Leaf Farm brings vegetables to two other Portland area farmers' markets and three in Eugene. They also sell direct to small groceries and restaurants in the Eugene area. The Hollywood Farmers' Market is one of Dave's favorites. He likes the neighborhood, appreciates the loyal customers, and loves that dogs can come to market with their humans. "It's a great market community."
Changes ahead for Sweet Leaf Farm include a new Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program to begin in 2009 and Organic Certification. Sweet Leaf will be offering CSA shares of weekly boxes of farm-fresh vegetables from May to Thanksgiving of next year. If enough people sign-up, the Hollywood Farmers' Market will be a pick-up location. The farm has also been undergoing the lengthy process of Organic Certification with Oregon Tilth since the beginning of the season. Dave expects the farm to be certified by the end of fall, so keep an eye out for that development as well.
Sweet Leaf Farm will be at the Hollywood Farmers' Market through the rest of the season, which ends November 22nd. Stock up now on squash, onions, and garlic to last through the winter. This weekend, Sweet Leaf Farm will have boxes upon boxes of tomatoes, so capture the flavor of summer while it lasts! | |
The Hollywood Farmers' Market is open Saturdays, May through October from 8am - 1pm and November 1, 8, 15 & 22 from 9am - 1pm. We are located on NE Hancock Street between 44th and 45th Avenues (one block South of Sandy Blvd).
For more information, check us out online at www.hollywoodfarmersmarket.org.
See you Saturday!
Hollywood Farmers' Market
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