Items in the picture.  Clockwise starting with the flowers: edible chive flowers, radishes, young dill, chives, swiss chard.  In the bowl, asparagus.

Today the weather was colder than last week at the Village Point Market, due to the wind.  But the sun was shining and more farmers and more customers were out.  The cool weather keeps the produce fresh I guess.  Soon we’ll be complaining about the heat.

Well I did it again, I failed to get the name of one of the farmers I purchased from.  Last week I saw some nice looking chard just as we started making the rounds.  By the time we came back I heard, “That’s the last of the chard.”  So this week I started with his stand and bought two nice bunches of swiss chard.  Next up I stopped by Wolff Farms.  I talked to Duane Wolff for a bit about his farm.  He’s from Norfolk and has been farming since 1979.  He grows produce and grass fed beef.  I bought some nice radishes from him.  Xiong’s Gardens had the first dill of the year.  I got a couple of their young bunches.  They grow their produce in North Omaha and Missouri Valley.  The asparagus I got from Grandview Farms of Fremont.  Asparagus was all he was selling, so I asked him, “You must grow a lot of asparagus.”  He replied, “Four acres.”  That’s a lot of asparagus!  The chives I bought from Black Sheep Farms.   They had a terrible tragedy last week.  They lost several chickens to a varmint of some kind .  You can read about it on their blog.  The chive flowers I got from Bryan Family Farm.  I also picked up another 1/2 pound of moral mushrooms from him.

Last week I forgot to mention meeting Christy from Real Foods.    She’s put together a nice group.  We joined after we got back from the market last week.  Also my apologies to Brian Davies from Harvest Nursery for not stopping by to say hello.  I just totally spaced.

By Kenton

Items in the picture. Clockwise starting with the mushrooms: moral mushrooms, jerusalem artichoke, baby romaine, rhubarb, asparagus, daylily, pac choi. In the center, musclun.

Last Saturday was the second farmer’s market of the season and the first visit by us. We have several farmer’s markets in Omaha, but we decided to start off with the Village Point Farmer’s Market. There weren’t many vendors present, it’s still early for this part of the country. In fact there weren’t many people period. I suspect the 45 degree weather had something to do about that. Never-the-less we we’re excited to see what we could find and we weren’t disappointed. I love trying new foods and we found three we had never eaten: moral mushrooms, jerusalem artichokes and day lily stems. The moral mushrooms were sold by Bryan Family Farm and we also purchased mesclun, baby romaine, pac choi and rhubarb from them. The other two farmers we purchased produce from, I didn’t catch their names. I should have asked. Hopefully they’ll be there next time we visit and I’ll add their names later to this post. At any rate a young woman who will have to remain a mystery for now, had a small but interesting group of produce. We purchased jerusalem artichokes and daylilies from her. They were the first two things we tried upon arriving home. We tasted the jerusalem artichokes raw and they reminded me of jicama, sweet and starchy. We added some of the daylilies raw to a salad. They really didn’t have much flavor and we’re a little fibrous. We’ll try them cooked a bit next. We also purchased asparagus from another woman. The last food we purchased was two different goat cheeses, Chevre Frais and Natalie in Gray, from Shadow Brook Farm.

All-in-all we had a very nice morning at the market and were happy with our haul. Most of the produce has already found it’s way to our stomachs! Hopefully I’ll find the time to post some of the meals I’ve cooked with the ingredients.

By Kenton