Farmer's Market

Wenatchee Valley has an awesome Farmer's Market... There is one on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. It is one of our favorite things to visit... It is tiny... being from a much larger city, we actually started laughing when we walked up to it the first time... here is a picture of the entire Wednesday Farmer's Market... for the record, a Saturday Farmer's Market is much bigger... but, we've really grown to love the smallness of it. Supporting your local community of Farmers is SO important. Eating healthy, nourishing food that didn't have to travel 1000 miles to get to you is SO important. Farmers, Ranchers and Dairymen feed America, and truly are one of our most important assets. It is my observation that Uncle Sam currently seems to be in the business of screwing over hard working Americans, and visiting your local Farmer's Market has no negatives... Farmer's get the money directly from you, the consumer. You get the cost of the produce without paying any money to a middleman, and it is much fresher. You also get the added bonus of being able to trade recipes & ask questions directly of the person who grew your food.

As a side note, I have discovered a couple things about this farmer's market business. If you want the best produce, you should go first thing in the morning. However, if you like to gamble, and can plan your recipes on the fly according to what's available, visit your farmer's market in the last hour or so. They don't want to take the produce home with them, so you will be more likely to get discounted prices on the things you buy. However, they may be out of some things, so you might not have the options available to you. I discovered this little trick quite by accident... for the record, I did not go into my farmer's marketing in the last hour with the intent of being cheap, it just sort of happens that I don't like leaving my house, and rarely do it in time to be early to anything, so my borderline agoraphobia and passels of morning chores contributed to this fun little discovery.

Anyway, the thing about Farmer's market is that it is all local, currently in season produce. So, you have to plan your menus according to what's in season, not what you can buy at the grocery store, which came from Chile, or South America, or Mexico, or whatever. So, it takes a little more creativity and thought process, instead of mindless putting stuff in plastic bags while listening to tinny 80's pop hits over grocery store speakers. If that's your thing, well then, I certainly won't hold it against you, but for me, I love the challenge and creativity of eating this way. For the record, I'm not opposed to buying produce at the grocery store--I like bananas and oranges way too much to not, I just think that when you can with what is available, you should eat seasonally and locally.

These two get so excited at the mention of going to the Farmer's Market...

Wenatchee has this fun thing called Art on the Avenues... a collection of permanent sculptures and visiting sculptures all over town, it makes walking through downtown Wenatchee a totally fun, inspiring thing to do, because sometimes they are the same, and you get to see your favorites, and sometimes you get to see something new and exciting. The girls love to go over the bridge and walk along the waterfront park, so we have to do that every time we go downtown.

My favorite sculpture...

And, they have an example Xeriscape garden, which I LOVE LOVE LOVE... it is such a treat to visit. I've gotten so many great planting ideas from this garden. Draught tolerant landscaping can be truly beautiful.

I need this plant... They have a map with a list of plants, and also a lot of them are individually labeled, so you can find whatever you want to find in this garden.

The girl's favorite sculpture...

A new one we hadn't seen yet that they absolutely loved.

And, heading back over the beautiful walking bridge to Rovey. You can tell we live in a small town, can't you?! They are so used to getting way ahead of me... not a soul was in site.

The bridge goes over the railroad yard, so makes for a great birds eye view of the happenings down there...

And a stop by the waterfall of the Civic Center, another one of the girls favorite things about downtown Wenatchee.

Have a great day!