Oxford Farmers' Market Uptown May 3

I hit the Oxford Uptown market yesterday -- great market, despite the rain. I'm always impressed that little old Oxford can support such a large and diverse farmers' market. The diversity of product Saturday was much greater than at Findlay last week. In the Findlay farmshed last week, there was one vendor of meats and eggs (Back Acres Farm), and he's only there until June when the regular stallholder (Turner Farms) shows up and Back Acres moves to an outdoor stall. There are no vendors of cheese or grains in the Findlay farmshed. Produce is king. Why is this? Is it that meat, egg, grain, and cheese farmshed stallholders would have a hard time competing with the permanent storefronts at Findlay selling these items? Someone clue me in.

At Oxford this week there was a goatcheese maker (I sampled Debra Bowles' block cheese, and it was so good I bought 4 packages), several meat vendors (Filbrun farms even sells lard, cracklings, bacon, and several kinds of sausage as well as spelt flour), and several egg vendors (Artistry Farm was even offering duck eggs.) Downing had cider and honey. Four baked goods vendors were there, including Mr. Peck, who bakes in a wood-fired brick oven in his back yard up in Monroe, and an Asian woman selling incredibly delicious pineapple rolls that my kids snapped up when I got home. And the produce was spectacular for this time of year -- I picked up kale, radishes, leeks, and asparagus.

Oxford is open for the season now, every Saturday 7:30 - noon. If you have the time (and gas) for a trip, go. And go early -- it's a popular market, and some items go very quickly, especially items that are early or late for their season. I bought the entire final week's harvest of the season's last leeks from Lucy at Boulder Belt and chopped them for my freezer yesterday afternoon to hold me until August when the coming season's first show up again. (Cleaning and chopping leeks is much more fun munching on Boulder Belt's last bunch of early purple asparagus -- she took the sign down after I grabbed the bunch.)