It’s goodbye Irene, hello school, and…. Labor day in less than a week: a perfect storm of late summer events. Lives have been blown a little off course by Irene, including the lives of our weather-dependant farmers, and hard-working cheese-makers and bakers. By Thursday, we hope, power, communications, and good spirits will be restored to one and all, and everyone will be ready—perhaps more than ready-- for the last big weekend of the summer. Here’s what we think we might see at the m...
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Tomatoes are finally coming in strong, with all sorts of heirlooms, cherries and plump field tomatoes on luscious display. Bring a box, if possible, to transport them home without bruising them (a good market tip for any ripe fruit.) Make the most of fresh tomatoes while they are at their summery peak. Or pick up a beautiful jar of Da Silva’s preserved tomatoes--summer captured in a bottle--for a rainy day. Here’s what we’re expecting this week.

• Ripe field tomatoes, sungolds, mixed cherr...

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Dan Silva and his wife Sandy have a small farm in Teaticket. They keep two goats, Brownie and Gertrude, that supply their family with fresh milk, four proud, territorial roosters, and a harem of some 300 egg-laying hens, scratching in the dirt. The birds and goats were busy polishing off a neighbor’s vegetable scraps on a recent visit. Da Silva Farm supplies eggs to Amber Waves, Bean and Cod, and to local farmers’ markets, including ours. You’ll sometimes find eggs at Silverbrook and Oa...
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Is summer finally with us? 

A girl was at the market last Thursday, with pigtails and a blue top that matched her eyes. She had strawberry stains all over her face--and a smile as wide as a frying pan.

We are promised another feast of strawberries this week. Come prepared with containers to safely ferry them home. There will be snap peas, probably string beans and shelling peas. There will be lunchtime snacks, including tasty sandwiches at Pain d’Avignon and empanadas at The Artisan Bake Sh...
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Peachtree Circle Farm in Sippewissett grows wonderful hard-neck garlic. And unlike some of us unruly garlic growers, who soon lose track of what kinds we planted, Carrie Richter and Heidi Walz keep note of which variety is which. At last week’s market they were selling half a dozen different kinds: Northern Whites, Russian Red, Siberian, Broadleaf Czech, Chesnok Red and a big-seller, Georgian Fire. “Garlic lovers seem to like the word fire,” said Carrie. Indelible pens were on hand to i...
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Beautiful ripe juicy tomatoes are arriving at the market. You’ll find properly plump red tomatoes, cartons of cherry tomatoes in many colors, and evocatively-named heirloom varieties, such as Striped Germans, Cherokees and Green Zebras. And then there are the little husk tomatoes that go under various names such as pineapple tomatillos or strawberry tomatillos. They look like tan-colored little papery lanterns, and at first glance, they don’t look like anything much at all. But open the h...
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The season’s first field tomatoes made an appearance last week, along with their solanaceous relatives, potatoes. Though tomatoes may be more charismatic, some of us look forward at least as much to local, newly dug spuds. Tripp Farm, a new vendor from Westport, had both for sale, as well as other summer vegetables.

At last, recycling is coming to Main Street. One of the recycling containers has been placed at Peg Noonan Park, and at 12:30 this Thursday, there will be an inaugural bottle-fli...
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