The Old Oakland Market

On Friday morning I had set up a short business meeting over coffee with a colleague near the Oakland Federal Building.  I walked the seven or so blocks up there, and to my surprise, found that I was strolling right through the middle of the Old Oakland Farmers Market. So while I thought I was finished writing about farmers markets this trip, it turns out I have one more in me.

I decided to go ahead and post since our vacation is coming to an end, and I won't have the chance to write again for a few days...maybe not even until next Tuesday.  Also, this will be a rare Saturday post - I can probably still count how many of those there were on one hand, even after seven years!

Turns out there is a decent market history in this part of Oakland - the farmers market is near a building that is named the Housewives Market, and it is similar to the Union Market building in DC.  Also, the blocks that are closed off for this one border on Oakland's China Town, and I heard Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese being spoken among the clientele - so I expected to see regional offerings to reflect their tastes.

The two photos here show some Asian vegetables - bitter melon and Thai eggplant.  I also saw tables of greens (I may have had some of that lettuce and cilantro at dinner tonight over at Le Cheval), green beans, squash, and traditional eggplant, not to mention an incredible display of strawberries.





For value-add ag, there wasn't much to mention here - the size of the city and these neighborhoods probably make a straight produce set up profitable enough.  There was a booth offering "home made" soap, although the packaging suggested otherwise.

And then there was this incredible honey booth - large jars of it, and the proprietor even offers to recycle your old honey bottles.  Mary told me she'd seen an article somewhere that offered to set up bee hives, with the host getting a share of production.  I'm wondering if this booth is part of that operation.

So this will be the final post during the vacation.  I have a lot of material to write-up when we get back to Alexandria, probably enough to cover the month of June.  So until my next post, have a good one!

The Fort Bragg (CA) Farmers Market

Maybe it's eccentric, but when we arrived in Mendocino I saw the poster for the Mendocino Farmers Markets.  I made a mental note to check out the one in Fort Bragg, since it was scheduled for Wednesday and we would still be in town.  I was interested in seeing what sorts of crops might be available already - it being so early in the season, and I wanted to compare the offerings with what we had seen at the Mountain View market (see yesterday's post).

I'll write more about the town itself in a future post (I actually have a pretty good backlog of posts from this vacation), but for now I'll just say that with a population of just over 7,000, Fort Bragg is comparable to Luray - just substitute the Safeway for the Food Lion, and don't let a Wal-Mart in - and with Mendocino and a couple of other small towns around, you have a population base that is similar to Page County, only maybe more remote.

The market wasn't hard to find - they'd closed off a block downtown for it, very near the North Coast "brewery campus."  There were probably 15-20 farmers there, a few with crops (notably onions, carrots, and lettuce), and a few other with what I have been calling "value-add ag."  Included in this group were a couple of bakers, a nursery, and a goatherd that was selling locally-made chevres.  We bought some of the goat cheese, and a specialty product they had of Peruvian origin - caramel made with goat's milk - and took it back to the hotel for a snack, along with a baguette from one of the bakers.

Last year during our May vacation, we visited the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction, in Dayton, Virginia (see the post here), and while there were some crops around (not to mention pie!), the emphasis was on flowers and young plants that you could transplant into your own garden for summer crops.  At Fort Bragg, there were three or four booths that featured tomato, squash, and pepper plants.  Also, much like the Mountain View market we visited on Sunday, there was a "Sprout Lady."

I think the most interesting vendor was the Mendocino Maples Nursery, where they had more than 20 trees on display.  They advertised having specimens from "around the world" - I imagine they will be beautiful trees when they are fully grown and established in somebody's landscape.

This will be the final post for May 2014, and closes out the mini-series I've had going on Farmers Markets out here on the West Coast.  Next week, we'll be back in Virginia, and I'll roll out the rest of the tale about our vacation.

Of 'Shrooms and Sprouts

The last time I was in California, in 2010, Mary couldn't join me since I was on a business trip that would eventually take me to Yosemite for a week to do some facility condition assessments for the National Park Service.  That was a cream puff assignment, and it only got better because I was able to check in with friends on the weekend before and the weekend after.  Our good friend Cathy was kind enough to put me up on that previous trip, as she did for Mary and me on this one.

As on that last trip, we decided to head over to the Mountain View Farmers Market on Sunday morning, and to enjoy breakfast at a little Turkish diner there by the train station.  Cathy reminded me that it had been an Israeli-run place back then, but it had changed ownership and seemed to be doing better in the current iteration.  (By the way, most of the posts from that last trip are here.  The Yosemite ones and some from San Francisco will be at the top of the page - you'll have to scroll down for the farmers market ones.)

This time, market was packed when we started our walk there - even though closing time was approaching.  The market basket shown in the photo was set up near the entry (the market is in a commuter parking lot near the Mountain View train station) - thanks to Cathy for sending this photo - it shows a lot of the produce available on the day we visited.

When I compare this market to the DC markets I am familiar with, the thoughts I most typically come away with are that there seem to be more booths focused not just on produce, but on value-add ag products...hence the title of the post.  There were two booths that really caught my attention this time - the mushroom stand and the sprout lady stand.

I talked to the mushroom lady for a few minutes about all the varieties.  There were many for eating, and several herbal tea types - speaking of which, I am writing from the inn in Mendocino, and yesterday I saw an offering of a coffee brewed and flavored with a sweet local mushroom.  I mentioned the big morels that my friends in Luray find in their secret hunting grounds, and the 'shroom lady nodded in approval.

The sprout lady (that is the name of her booth, I did not give her this name myself) also had a wide range of products to offer...not just alfalfa or bean sprouts.  Looking them over, I remembered my first encounter with them on a bagel sandwich in Monterey, during language school.  They are still not my cup of tea.

We browsed the produce and found a lot of items I would not have expected at this time of year - summer squash and tomatoes, but no peppers.  Maybe these came from greenhouses or from valley farms further south?

Cathy's daughter was with us, and she carefully showed us all the different fruits and vegetables that she knew of.  I asked her if we could pick out something to buy - what she would like, and she chose carrots.  We found some big beautiful bunches, and I think we got a few of the "donut peaches" for her as well.

She also talked us into getting some of the summer squash.  These were huge, like we only get later in the summer.  She picked four, and then Cathy used them in a chicken dish later on, after we had hit the road.

Speaking of value-add ag products, this market has quite a few butchers and meat stands.  The photo here is from one of the farmers that offered beef, lamb, and chicken, all pasture-raised, in addition to the pork advertised on the sign.

Mary and I still haven't made it to the Luray farmers market for our inaugural visit this year.  After seeing the Mountain View farmers market again, I'm really looking forward to it!

On Arrival in California

Mary and I are away on vacation - we decided to repeat some elements of past trips and are visiting Northern California this time, with our stay centered on an old favorite of ours - Mendocino.  There'll be highlights from there soon enough, but today's post will be about our visit to Olson's, a little farm market in Sunnyvale.  Our host, Cathy, and her daughter took us on a short walk around the neighborhood, and we ended up in the little green grocer's store there.

It is cherry season, so there were several varieties for sale, and Cathy's daughter knew all the names of them (she also took me around to show me where the best samples were - I had no idea about chocolate covered cherries before she pointed them out).  In fact, most of the stone fruits were already in, so the arrays of peaches and nectarines were simply overwhelming.

We picked up a few items to enjoy while we were out on our drives between vacation destinations.  Then we went off on a second walk for a few blocks, to a small orchard that is nestled into Sunnyvale, 10 acres or so surrounded by development - and the fruit was in season on the trees!

Being at the store with our friend's daughter reminded me of a similar market that was near our house in Sanford, Florida, when I was about her age.  I remember the smell of the fresh fruit and the sight of all the baskets that the fruit was packed in and displayed from.  It was a short walk from the house, maybe a little farther than our walk that day, but not by much.

When we got old enough to take the walk ourselves, mom would give my sister and me a few cents and we could go over there to by a rocket pop or some Mary Janes.  They didn't have any of this at Olson's, but the apple smoked almonds I picked up are really good!

From Sunnyvale, we head up to Mendocino a few days, stopping in Healdsburg for the night before heading over to the coast.  Then back down to the Bay Area, staying in Oakland, near Jack London Square, before flying home next weekend.  As long as I have reliable internet, I'll put up a couple of additional posts from the road, and finish up the vacation posts next week when we get back.