| Market Updates | | Welcome to the first issue of The Local Dirt for the 2011 season! We are pleased to announce that we have a new cadre of volunteer journalists and writers working to keep The Local Dirt full of interesting news, helpful tips, and information about the market. Be sure to read the first article in a new monthly series, 'Market-Time' by Miriam Garcia, below.
Hollywood Farmers Market Returns for 15th Season!
The full spread of the Hollywood Farmers Market returns to the neighborhood in just three short weeks on May 7th. Can't wait until then? Come to a sneak preview of what a winter season market would look like on Saturday, April 30th from 8am - 1pm. We will be holding a test-run of our winter market layout in the Grocery Outlet parking lot. Nine vendors will be selling fresh produce, garden starts, cheese, meat, and fresh baked goods. We hope to bring you a year-round farmers market beginning this December but need to run through the logistics first, including customer experience. Please come, give us feedback and show your support for the idea of a year-round Hollywood Farmers Market on Saturday, April 30th!
Interested in volunteering with the market?
Come to the Volunteer Orientation this Saturday. Click here for more information!
See you very soon!
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 Market-Time
by Miriam Garcia
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Miriam Garcia is a folklorist-foodie, freelance writer and guardian of a super-secret chicken soup recipe. You can contact her at Miriam_G@me.com.
 Your Farmers Market is a kind of clock. It marks big cycles like the turns of seasons, as well as passages within each season. Here come the garlic ramps, there they go. Asparagus-time comes. Cherry-time. Peach-time. Tomato-time. Pumpkin-time. They all come. They all stay a while. They all go. They carry us like Cinderella's pumpkin-coach in a grand round from one season's gala to the next. The flow is fairly predictable, but not entirely so. Blueberries are done? Corn already? We just have to go with the flow of market-time and leave precision to mechanical clocks.
The first mechanical clocks appeared in India and China as early as 4,000 BC and measured time with slow drips of water. Over time, the technology became better/smarter/smaller, like it always does. Fast forward from falling water to falling weights to spring-driven gearing to digital clocks to the atomic clock. Time became a thing anybody could put into their pockets or strap to their wrists to nag them with precision, all day long. With mechanized measurement, time could be counted and accounted for, invested and squandered, divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller units. Unfortunately, it is not known precisely when all the tick-tock-ticking choked the flow of cyclical time and killed off the present moment. All we can say for sure is that by helping us stay on schedule, our timekeeping devices tend to take us out of the now. The Farmers Market offers a way back in.
 The next time you visit your Farmers Market, imagine it as a watch store and the farmers' wares as timepieces on display. If you like, select a piece of fruit to carry with you, say an apple. Let it be both snack and clock. Its crisp and juicy prime is brief. Better eat it today. The nearby orchard where your apple grew bears fruit for only a few weeks of the year. Feast with abandon while ye may. Better yet, buy enough to dry, freeze or can, connecting the juiciness of now to a future you take on faith. I'm not suggesting you duct-tape your apple to your wrist indefinitely. By all means, devour it - make it part of your body -- and enjoy the fact that you are eating time alive instead of the other way around.
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Volunteers Make the Market Tick
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Interested in volunteering at the Hollywood Farmers Market this season? Come out to our Volunteer Orientation this Saturday, April 16 at 10am, at the Rose City Park Presbyterian Church at 1907 NE 45th Ave (meet at the office door on Sandy Blvd). We'll cover volunteer roles, changes to the 2011 season, and other information about the market, and do a short "rehearsal" of the market setup and breakdown.
Volunteers enable our market to function and they make it fun. They greet customers and answer their questions about the market, help with special events, allow vendors working solo to take breaks, set up market equipment in the morning, take it down in the afternoon, and much more.
If you're interested in learning more about volunteering but can't make it to the orientation, no worries; contact Ari Rosner at 503-803-7279 or send him an email and he can schedule you and orient you on market day!
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At the Market
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Winter Market Test Run - Saturday, April 30th, 8am - 1pm
Opening Day - Saturday, May 7th, 8am - 1pm
HFM's 15th Birthday Party - Saturday, May 21st, 10:30am
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The Hollywood Farmers Market
is open Saturdays, May through Thanksgiving from 8am - 1pm. (November Markets begin at 9am). 