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September 30, 2022

The Chestertown Spy

An Educational News Source for Chestertown Maryland

Food and Garden Garden Notes

Centreville Farmers’ Market Returns on Lawyers Row Starting May 15th

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As the days become longer and warmer the desire to seek out farm-fresh vegetables and fruits and becomes as much of a need as it does a natural tendency. Sure, you can always turn to your local grocery store in a pinch, there’s nothing like the taste of strawberries that were picked that morning. This basic premise is at the heart of farmers’ markets where customers purchase produce, meats, and value-added products like cheese and honey, and know exactly where it came from.

The Centreville Farmers’ Market continues its tradition and commitment to offering farm-fresh products to local shoppers as it opens its 2022 season on Sunday, May 15th for a 23-week season. The season will extend to October 9th, but will officially cap off the season with a special holiday market on November 13th. The market will be open every Sunday from 9 a.m. to Noon on Lawyers Row, which will be closed to traffic.

Microgreens are a vitamin enriched superfood available at the Centreville Farmers’ Market thanks to Fat and Happy Farms of Grasonville. Stop by their stand at the market and try some. Chances are you’ll get to meet Blake Jackson, left, and his brother Dylan, right, who pitch in to help their parents Brien and Jessica Jackson.

The market’s launch will include a special master gardener clinic courtesy of the University of Maryland Extension Master Gardener program. Shoppers can bring plant samples and photos for identification or Get advice on pruning, vegetables, insects, lawns, trees and shrubs and lots more! The master gardeners will visit the market frequently throughout the season.

“We are excited to welcome new vendors and are looking forward to helping our community discover new ways to shop for locally grown and crafted food as well as embrace a sustainable way of living,” says Hannah Combs, Centreville Farmers’ Market Operations Manager.

The Centreville Farmers’ Market is still accepting vendor applications as well as food truck and musician inquiries. The farmers and vendors at press time include:

  • A Shore Thing Cakery: breads, muffins, pretzels, crackers, brownies and cookies;
  • Beneventi Botanicals: herbal truffles, gran-free dog treats, lotions, balms, and assorted bath products;
  • Carrie Sue’s Cupcakes: cupcakes and baked goods;
  • Chesapeake Shoppe: handcrafted jewelry and other crafted goods;
  • Craft Bakery & Cafe + Night Kitchen Coffee: sourdough breads, bagels, croissants, danish, scones, cookies, coffee and coffee beans, lemonade and iced tea;
  • Dogwood Lane Dairy: 14 different varieties of handcrafted cheese and peach, strawberry and apple jam;
  • Enoch Farms: pork, ham, scrapple, and sausage;
  • Fat and Happy Farms: microgreens, seasonal produce, herbs, and native perennial flowers;
  • Little Cake Empire: cinnamon buns, bagels and bread;
  • Harris Farms: vegetables, fruits, and cut flowers;
  • Nine Chicks and One Hen: eggs;
  • Rosy Side Farm: vegetables and cut flowers.

For more information about the Centreville Farmers’ Market or to request a vendor application or to inquire about food truck or musician openings, contact Hannah Combs, Farmers’ Market Operations Manager at centrevillefarmersmkt@gmail.com or (443) 239-9169.

Centreville Farmers’ Market Hosts Live Market & Sunday Brunch September 27th

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When it comes to places that serve to connect people to each other and to their community very few places do it as well as community farmers’ markets and independent restaurants. At a farmers’ market shoppers connect their purchases to the people that produced them while restaurants serve as gathering places to break bread, to celebrate special occasions or simply to relax and catch up with friends and family. Both serve to anchor communities and create a sense of place.

This year restaurants and farmers’ markets shared another important thing in common – they’ve worked through sweeping and often dramatic operational changes due to the pandemic.

Both these special institutions will join forces on Lawyers Row in downtown Centreville on Sunday, September 27th, from noon to 3 p.m. to present the Centreville Farmers’ Market & Sunday Brunch.

This market day will be presented as an in-person market, the first one this season for the Centreville Farmers’ Market, who has been operating as an online market for pickup or delivery on Wednesdays. The online market will continue through September 30th.

Friends of the Centreville Farmers’ Market volunteers Liza Watson, and Zach Troyetsky.

“Coincidentally this special market day and brunch will take place on the final day of the inaugural statewide restaurant week. Since this may be the only live market day, we do this year we wanted it to be a special one,” says Carol D’Agostino, Centreville Main Street Manager and liaison to the market.

Shoppers will have a chance to shop socially distanced market stands and also enjoy brunch from Centreville restaurants. Farmers/producers and shoppers 5-years-old and above are required to where facemasks at all times except when seated to drink or eat.

A selection of food will be available at onsite food trucks operated by Centreville brick and mortar restaurants. Other brunch entrees will be available for online ordering by September 18th through a new website on the same platform that currently handles the market’s online market orders. Current market customers can use their same login.
Shoppers will select and prepay for an entrée, and then choose whether they want to pick up their meal at the market to take home or reserve seating in the socially distanced dining area on Lawyers Row. The dining area will also include open tables where market goers can enjoy any food or beverages they purchased at the market. An onsite volunteer will sanitize tables and chairs as they turn over.

As of 9/9/20, farmers/producers include: Arlene’s Creations of Greensboro, baked goods & sewn items; Coops & Crops of Kennedyville, eggs, and certified naturally grown vegetables; Lucky Dog Treats of Centreville; Night Kitchen Coffee of Denton, small batch locally roasted coffee and spices; Rhonda’s Beaten Biscuits of Wye Mills, traditional Eastern Shore beaten biscuits; Starr Flower Company, cut flowers, houseplants and herb plants and more; Quarter Acre Farm of Tilghman Island, certified organic vegetables, pico de gallo (special salsa) and guacamole; Where Pigs Fly of Centreville, pasture-raised chicken – whole birds as well as cuts. Participating restaurants include Commerce Street Creamery Cafe Bistro, O’Shucks Irish Pub, Sugar Doodles Sweet Shop and Yo Java Bowl.

Chestertown Reverses Course on Farmers Market; Will Not Open on Saturday

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https://www.facebook.com/ChestertownResponds/videos/534655217248868/

In a video posted April 8 to the town’s COVID-19 Facebook page, Chestertown Mayor Chris Cerino said the town’s farmers market will not open Saturday.

The town had voted 4-1 Monday night to allow 13 vendors to sell fresh produce and food products in the Wilmer Park parking lot, with vendors separated by about 10 feet and a pedestrian flow configuration that attempted to maintain social distancing among shoppers.

After Monday’s vote, the Kent County Health Department told town officials the vendors “were still too densely packed,” Cerino said in the video, and the health department suggested they should be 30-40 yards apart.

“Clearly we are not to be able to accommodate that in that parking lot and as a result the market will not be reopening this Saturday,” Cerino said, noting “the market will be closed for the foreseeable future at least in the format that we’ve all enjoyed so much over the past several years.”

This video is about five minutes in length.

Letter to Editor: When it is Not A Walk in the Park

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President Trump’s lack of setting national policy with stringent guidelines is leading Americans to run amok. When the Centers for Disease Control advised Americans to wear face masks last week, he said he probably won’t wear one. Meanwhile Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister, is in the ICU for precisely the same reasons at present; failure to take coronavirus as a serious deadly threat.

Local ordinances regarding beach closures in some states are literally drawing lines in the sand between people gathering versus deserted areas. Georgia’s Governor finally announced social distancing claiming to have just learned a week ago that people not showing symptoms of coronavirus are spreading this pandemic.

Triage management at hospitals is the reason why all of us are presently restricted to self isolation. While it seems natural to resume outdoor markets as viable venues we must consider how far aerosol particles can travel on a warm breeze as compared with indoors. And with everything blooming sneezing is more frequent for certain even for folks without serious allergies.

The lack of federal oversight is making every American more vulnerable to increased risk of the spread and exposure of COVID19. And it doesn’t simply weed out the elderly and weak amongst us. This virus is unpredictable in severity among our population. By spreading it further throughout our communities we will increasingly see ‘hot spots’ emerge that will overwhelm already pressed hospital staff and resources.

When our township’s leaders begin undermining policy set under the present state of emergency guidelines it also puts undue burden upon local and state law enforcement charged with duties to carry out our current social restrictions in place.

Until we have widespread testing containment of this pandemic is impossible. In the meanwhile our children are not allowed to attend school, all sports including regattas are canceled. So why as adults can we not wrap our heads around the need to avoid congregating at a farmers’ market?

Until Americans adapt to wearing face masks (which is not presently in evidence as being adopted as a widespread precaution in the US), we cannot afford to stress our medical workers unduly and place everyone at greater risk of losing a mother, father, sister, brother, etcetera, or ourselves, simply because it would be so much nicer to purchase provisions by taking a walk in the park.

Virginia Kerr
Chestertown

Chestertown Farmers Market Will Reopen Saturday in Wilmer Park

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Chestertown’s Farmers Market will reopen Saturday at Wilmer Park with a baker’s dozen of food vendors.

After much discussion, the town council voted 4-1 Monday to adopt a plan to move the farmers market to Wilmer Park and to restrict vendors to only those selling fresh produce and food products.

The town had shut down the farmers market at its March 16 meeting; a day later, town officials learned that Gov. Larry Hogan had designated farmers markets as essential businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The plan calls for 13 vendors to set up in the parking lot at Wilmer Park. Vendors would be spaced out within the parking lot to maintain a safe distance.

Shoppers would park their vehicles along Quaker Neck Road (state Route 289) or in the Stepne Station parking lot and walk to the entrance of the park’s lot, where hand sanitizer will be provided.

Patrons would proceed in a counter-clockwise direction among the vendors in the parking lot while maintaining a 6-f00t distance with other shoppers.

Customers who walk to the farmers market and enter from the south side of the parking lot would proceed through the parking lot, shopping or going past any vendors in an overflow area, before entering the market from the north.

Councilman Tom Herz worked with Farmers Market Manager Julie King to develop the plan and provided the following diagram.

King said the vendors included those involved in the winter market.

Artisans and crafters who typically participate in the farmers market will not be permitted at this time under the governor’s executive order closing essential businesses.