July 30 and Aug. 4, 2011
market produce photographed at Pemaquid Point
Bath Farmers Market, Thursday, July 30, 2011
Boothbay Farmers Market, Saturday, Aug. 4, 2011
On a week-long vacation in Maine, I visited two farmers markets, from among the dozens that spring to life in the summer months. The Maine Federation of Farmers Markets maintains a list of them. On Saturday, I dropped by the well-attended and well-stocked Bath Farmers Market, at its picturesque waterfront site. This market’s bylaws assure that at least 75 percent of what is on each table was grown by the vendor. “Buy-ins” that can account for the remaining quarter of goods sold must be approved in advance, and “may not compete against the produced goods of other members.”
On Thursday, I paid a visit to the Boothbay Farmers Market, located on the town common alongside the main highway into town. This is a market for “farmer produced” goods, the web site’s homepage promises, though the rules explaining how that term is defined aren’t posted.
– Mark Thompson
slide show
What I Bought
(clockwise from upper left) Red Norland, Yukon gold, all red and all blue potatoes
Price: $5
‘wild’ blueberries
Price: $3/pint
These tiny, tasty berries are actually semi-wild, judging from the description of the woman who sold them to me at the Boothbay farmers market. They are from a field that is tended by her husband, she said. He harvests berries from the plants every other year, and burns the fields in between, to keep the forest at bay.
A sampling of summer squash (top), and zucchini with blossom (right)
Price: $2/bunch for turnips
Both male and female squash blossoms are interchangeably edible. This is a female blossom, with the baby zucchini still attached.
Squash blossom recipes
cherry tomatoes, tropea onions and green zebra tomatoes (top), and a sampling of other heirloom tomatoes (below)
Price: $2.50/bunch for onions
$3.50/pint for cherry tomatoes
$3.50/lb. for heirloom tomatoes
goat cheese wrapped in grape leaves
Price: $6