We’ve had a hectic week! If you are looking for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge Week 3 (which is bagels), I didn’t get to it… But I have a good excuse: we rescued a 10 month old black Labrador Retriever named Dreyfus! He’s slowly getting integrated into the family, meaning Bucky and Petey still hate him, but they’re getting better. He gets very excited when he sees the cats, and chases them. It seems to be out of fun, not out of wanting to eat them! I have a feeling Bucky will let him have it with a claw or two to end that soon, though I hope nobody gets hurt! We’re praying that the animals get along so that Dreyfus can be part of the family.

I know some parts of the country have earlier growing seasons than Ohio does, but late April to early June is when we see most of the farmers’ markets opening here. The markets are already popular in most places, and are generally getting more popular, though there also seems to be some non-foodie confusion between farm markets and farmers’ markets.

The different between them to me is that farmers’ markets offer booth space to multiple farmers to sell their best offerings, and several producers will be at one market. A farm market is generally a market on a farm, selling only what that one farm wants to sell. This usually means, it seems, higher prices and non-farm stuff like decorations, etc. I generally greatly prefer farmers’ markets for the variety. The exception to this is going to orchards; I’d rather go directly to Stolz’s Fruit Farm north of New Carlisle, Ohio, or similar orchards, than to go to somewhere that apples have been transported to. There’s just something about being on the farm where the apple trees are that I love.

Anyway, we recently went back to Findlay Market in Cincinnati, the country’s 2nd longest running open air market. The farmers’ market is open on Saturdays and Sundays, from April to November. We also have been to the Lebanon Farmers’ Market, which is open on Thursday’s from noon to 6:00.

This time of the year, the farmers’ markets typically have plants more than produce, though strawberries are showing up now, too (great strawberries!). We’ve found that we can get young herbs at good prices, and a great variety. Even better, we found a booth that had perrenials for… $1.00 each! sure, they’re small, but they grow fast. At a local garden store, perrenials are anywhere from $7 up, often in the $12-15 range, so I figured we can plant about ten times the plants this way than going to a garden store. Sure, it will take longer to see the finished plants, but that’s ok, too. Even just a year in one of our beds has shown a huge difference, so it won’t really take all that much longer.

What I find I really love about farmers’ markets is the connection to the producer. You can generally talk to the person that got the items ready for sale, whether it’s annuals, herbs, green onions, honey, meat or fresh eggs. If you have questions, they are the ones that can give the answers, usually.

Findlay Market is a great farmers’ market for a couple of reasons. One, it’s a larger farmers market that attracts very good quality vendors. Two, Findlay Market is there, which is fun all on its own. We always take time to go to Kroeger & Sons while there, and got camel sausage on this trip (yes, camel!). As we walked around, we found a group of men that got together to relax in the morning as well as lots of Cincy people enjoying the morning on a great May weekend.

We also love the North Market in Columbus (it helps that Jeni’s Ice Cream is there). If you haven’t found your local farmers’ markets, find them and try them all out, then pick your favorite! If you do, let me know what your favorite local farrmers’ market is (I’m very jealous of Napa Valley, San Fran, Seattle and all those very cool markets that we don’t have here).

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