Kicking Off the Los Lunas Farmers' Market

June 16th was the first day of the Los Lunas Farmers' Market, just 6 miles south of our place. We've signed up to be vendors later in the season when our watermelon, honeydew, cucumbers, radishes, and beans mature (if they make it!), but Tuesday we went to the market as customers.

It was a fantastic turn out for Day One of a brand new farmers' market; they had a bluegrass band, several vendors (many we recognized from various Albuquerque markets), and the Master Gardeners Program volunteers selling plants--oh, and DELICIOUS Italian Ice. We rode our bikes the six miles to the market along the Rio Grande bosque with our friends and neighbors, Karen and Jerry.

The ride to the market was gorgeous: not too hot, not too dusty due to recent rains, but not muddy, either. The ride back, on the other hand, was rife with mobs of mosquitoes and flurries of cotton flying into our faces, noses, and throats. I was pocked with mosquito bites and hoarse from coughing and sneezing when we arrived home. But it was definitely worth the ride!

The vendors were amazing: a couple with a one-acre farm had already sold out of bushels of artichokes by the time we arrived but still had some Swiss chard and beets, which we purchased. Another vendor sold blackberry habenero jam, blueberry marmelade, and apricot jam, mostly from local fruit. Yet another offered frozen grass-fed and -finished beef and wild-caught Alaskan salmon and other fish (his sign read "The Fish Hugger"). Mr. Hugger also ensnared us in a long diatribe about the health and reproductive dangers of electro-magnetic fields (EMFs) and how carrying a small piece of magnetite can help deflect them. It was actually my fault that we got into that conversation, as I've been reading a lot about health and EMFs lately and for unknown reasons brought up the subject. My mistake....

Strange, drawn-out conversations aside, we plan to go to the market every week, if we can make it. The wild fish and grass-fed and -finished beef is definitely in our plans next week!