Portland
Farmers Market
Southwest Park Blocks,
Southwest Park Avenue at Southwest Salmon Street, 241-0032.
10 am to 2 pm Wednesdays and 8 am-1 pm Saturdays.
In the past few years, farmers markets in the Portland area
have burgeoned like rocket lettuce under an August sun. Farmers,
flower growers, handcrafted-cheese makers, bakers, gatherers
of oysters and oyster mushrooms, and even emu breeders have
helped make these markets true community gathering places
on Saturday mornings from May through October.
Markets in France may feature more gorgeous displays, as
well as a sizable number of the 350 cheeses that de Gaulle
proclaimed made that nation ungovernable, but unlike in
France, you'll never hear, "Ne touchez pas!" when
you finger a fingerling potato or squeeze a peach in Portland.
Here you'll be urged to touch, taste and engage in conversation
light and serious, whether regarding cooking techniques
for fresh garlic spears or arcane matters of soil management.
The Portland Farmers Market began in 1992, when Craig Mosbaek
chased a nostalgic memory of truck farmers selling fruits
and vegetables on the streets of Bethesda, Md. For several
years a small gathering of the faithful at Albers Mill on
Northwest Front Avenue took home produce that no commercial
store in the area could match. Story had it that some growers
plucked greens from their farms at 3 am and drove a hundred
miles to Portland to set up shop for the 8 am opening. Even
today a family of Old World Baptists from Winters' Farms
in Pasco, Wash., trucks in the night before to present gorgeous,
luscious fruit that would make a three-star Michelin restaurant
proud.
Last summer, the Portland market moved from Albers Mill
to the Park Blocks near Portland State University and added
a Wednesday version a few blocks north. Albers Mill had
the Willamette River and its bankside deco grain elevators
as backdrop, but at PSU a canopy of umbrageous trees provides
a natural cooling shelter, and the grassy stretches, with
their gardens and fountains, create a comfort zone when
folks need a respite from their quest for the perfect baroque
heirloom tomato. Strolling from booth to booth is a pleasure,
and few other places in town provide such a sense of instant
community. At about one-third the size of the Beaverton
farmers market--with its hundred vendors, country-and-western
music and stands providing lunch fare--Portland's market
has a charming intimacy. Some 3,000 people throng the market
each week, but it never seems crowded. (Just recently, at
the Berry Festival, one of several special events, the market
handed out 2,000 free strawberry short cakes).
Prices aren't cheap--you don't come to the market for bargains--but
there's an easygoing economy here, as vendors throw in the
extra apricot or handful of beans; I once saw a vendor trade
her tayberries for another vendor's basil. Parking is easy--the
university's lots are open, and for $2 you can stay all
day.
There are ground rules: Purveyors must grow, gather, bake
or prepare at least 75 percent of what they sell. No distributors
or middlemen are allowed, and the vendors must come from
Oregon or southern Washington. No crafts cross the threshold
of the market; as a rule of thumb, containers cannot be
more valuable than the thing contained. About three-quarters
of the tables are stocked with agricultural products, including
herbs and flowers but principally a wide range of seasonal
fruits and vegetables. Some, but not all, growers offer
organic foods; Rossi Farms, operating since 1880, proudly
announces that it uses green manure.
There are treasures here that you won't find at Fred Meyer.
"Gathering Together Farm" has miniature potatoes no bigger
than pearl onions, "Baker and Spice" offers lemon and blueberry
tarts and the delightful bonneted and hatted youngsters
of Winters' Farm sell golden apricots and glistening, blood-red
cherries of such intensity that the lines stretch beyond
the adjacent mushroom stand.
There's not a lot more room available for new kids on the
blocks, but in a recent survey, shoppers expressed a desire
that the market expand to include more dairy products (fresh
eggs, milk, cows'-milk cheeses, even country butters), fresh
fish, lamb and especially Asian vegetables.
A farmers market not only provides the freshest, most flavorful
produce available--"real" food--but, by supporting local
growers, it helps save the family farm and encourages the
preservation of green spaces around the city. Perhaps just
as significant, the Portland Farmers Market was instrumental
in improving Portland's restaurants. The farmers market
movement coincided with the takeoff of the local food scene
in the early '90s. Chefs could shop at the market and establish
relationships with local growers, whose ingredients they
then purchased directly; the farmers learned what the chefs
needed; and restaurant customers, introduced to unusual
produce they'd never seen in the stores, soon realized that
local restaurants were doing amazing things with the very
ingredients to which they themselves now had easy access.
There's some talk of a new, year-round farmers market,
a permanent structure (to be named after James Beard?) that
will allow Portlanders to enjoy the fruits of even the dreary
seasons. If the Seattle Mariners can have a retractable-roofed
stadium that lets in the breeze even when it's closed, why
can't we put a similar top over winter rutabagas?
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 11,
1999
|
