It’s fruit stand season, people with tomatoes in the back of their pickup truck season, honor system melon patches (like the one I grew up close to) season, and full-fledged farmers market season.
It’s a good season.
It’s hard to beat the State Farmer’s Market in Montgomery for plants, especially. And the Curb Market in Montgomery has jams, jellies, and all manner of fruit, vegetable, soup, and stew put up in Mason jars. Plus, I can’t wait to go there each time and see how a certain vendor changes their signs:
We like going to Pepper Place Saturday Market in B’ham too. Local fruits, vegetables, old-Alabama plants, strawberry cupcakes, driftwood birdhouses, someone Av knows that makes lamps out of musical instruments…
…and ‘ASAP’ explained:
The old, open year-round farmer’s market on Finley in B’ham is a favorite too:
You can bring in your peas/beans to be shelled:
Oh those gorgeous pink-eyed peas I brought home:
Okra. Green tomatoes. You know what happened next.
The USDA has a pretty spartan database of farmer’s markets in every state, but the nice one is at LocalHarvest, which shows CSAs too.
If you’re in Alabama, the Farmers Market Authority even breaks it down into farmers markets, roadside stands, and U-pick operations by county. The people that ate only food grown or raised in the state of Alabama for a year (April 2008 – April ’09) are working on a documentary of their project and have a nice map of farms they like here.