Reasons to go to the state market this weekend:
- Strawberries!!! Local strawberries that taste like strawberries, not like cardboard. You’ll never eat strawberries from the grocery store again.
- Support local farmers and get to know them. Walk up and down the aisle and at each stall they call out to you, holding out a strawberry for you to sample. You can sample strawberries until they all start to taste the same, then you decide which stall to buy from according to other factors like which one had the cutest farmer boy or girl, or the friendliest grandfather/granny or the best stories.
- Get out of the rain and under the open shelter and just gaze around at bright red strawberries and tomatoes, red-skinned potatoes, green asparagus, peppers, beans, and loads of blooming flowers of all colors, heavenly smelling herbs, and tall plants/trees/shrubs that will make you feel like you are in someone’s garden. You can get close to nature without getting wet.
- You know how you get a bag of spinach at the grocery vowing to eat better and be healthy, but of course you go right on eating unhealthy, quick and easy food on the run? And a week later that bag of spinach in the produce drawer of your refrigerator has turned to a dark green glob of seaweed smelling like dead fish? And you have to throw it out. Well, last weekend I bought a huge bag of spinach from a farmer at the market, and it is still very nearly in the same shape as when I bought it, an entire week later–not even limp or wilted, still tender-crisp. Yes, I should have eaten it sooner but I am about to cook it now.
- How did it last so long? No, the farmers don’t add special preservatives–this is fresh non-processed food picked just this morning–it lasts longer because the produce you get at the grocery is already about a week old by the time you buy it.
- Not only is this produce more patient than the grocery’s, waiting and holding off decay until you have time to cook it, it tastes better (especially if you eat it right away!)
- Now, here are two special farmers that are only at the market on weekends and are worth the trip there alone!
- L F C Honey A family from Hillsborough that keeps bees without using chemicals, and sells the best tasting honey, royal jelly, beeswax candles, and skin care items they make themselves. Their two long-haired sons handle the sales at the market and will tell you all about their mom who makes the wonderful lavender scented hand cream and orange scented lip balm from beeswax, oils, and other natural ingredients. No petrol! And their dad who keeps the bees and makes the candles from beeswax. The LFC stand for Little Flying Cows! Get it? Bees are little flying cows that produce the great stuff this family farm makes for us.
- In the Red Farmstead Cheese You have to go into the long shed for this one. Another family farm from Chinquapin, raising goats and pigs organically, chemical-free, allowed to roam. Their stall has a table loaded with samples of the best goat cheese I’ve ever tasted, arranged from the mild-but-delicious flavored and/or herbed (try the blueberry!) to spiced so hot and fiery people bring their friends and challenge them to try the one at the far end. This is a happy tiny space; everyone nibbling samples and swooning and some screaming and laughing and sweating, begging for water. I took home the rosemary and garlic cheese. Now that did not stay in my refrigerator for a week like the poor spinach. That little gem disappeared quickly, gone in just two days. I’ll go back for more. They also sell bread, chemical free sausage, eggs, and other organic items they grow themselves.
Have fun!
Raleigh State Farmer’s Market
1201 Agriculture St.
Raleigh, NC 27603
