Friday, August 29, 2008

Saturdays at South of the James

Okay, so here officially starts my attempt to visit all of the area's Saturday markets and report back. Starting with my neighborhood market, the South of the James Market at 42nd st. in Forest Hill Park I brought along my camera and attempted to capture some shots of this very busy market without capturing anyone unaware in closeup at 8:00am on their Saturday shopping trip! Tricky, seeing as at times the volume of shoppers and vendors at this market can seem a bit over whelming for me so early in the morning. It is always well worth the trip.

The Market opens at 8:00am and as seen here the place is buzzing with early a.m. activity!

Full of produce and meat vendors as well as multiple vendors selling fresh breakfast and lunch items and coffee, people stroll the market shopping, people watching, and walking their dogs.
People shop their favorite vendors most often bringing their own bags. On this day I walked out with my usual pound of coffee, bags of produce and for dinner with my in-laws, we also had two beautiful dessert tarts from Seven Hills Market and a bouquet of flowers from Amy's Organics. One of my favorite purchases this week was two bags of deep purple shelling peas from Bills Produce (That's their booth here on the left)

In addition to several produce and meat vendors, as well as homemade tofu, coffee, fresh baked desserts, honey, preserves, biscotti, (and coming soon homemade chocolates!) there are also many craft vendors. Some, like House of Lukaya sell homemade all natural lotions, scrubs and insect repellents using homegrown herbs. Others sell goats milk soaps, and soy based candles. Although some people seem opposed to such a large number of crafts vendors, I really appreciate vendors like these so long as the focus of local fresh foods is not lost. Adding locally made lotion that uses locally and organically grown herbs can't be a bad addition to the buying local philosophy.
There are also a number of other educational or entertainment elements to the market. Here a super cutie enjoys the pool full of corn. Probably a better use for all that excess inedible corn than car fuel and corn syrup.













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