Seeing Green: Farmers’ Market Debut
Rain on one’s wedding day is considered an auspicious beginning for marriages. The same fate may hold for farmers’ markets. It drizzled steadily on Saturday morning, June 5, yet the West Windsor Community Farmers’ Market opened with six vendors and plenty of shoppers.
Granted, six was two shy of the eight anticipated and wet weather was not the desire of organizers Beth Feehan and Mireille Delman, both West Windsor residents who acted as agricultural midwives for the past 18 months ushering the idea of a local market to fruition. Yet despite the rain, a steady stream of customers, wearing slickers and carrying umbrellas, visited during the hour and a half I spent there.
Feehan envisioned a small scale farmers’ market fashioned after the famous Greenmarket in New York City’s Union Square when she started work on the project in February 2003. Delman, who grew up in France near Lyons in a small village surrounded by farms, was hoping for a place where people would not only shop but also socialize. “”In France markets are very much part of the community life. I have been thinking about creating a market here for years,”” she says.
Delman, who lives on Bear Brook Road in West Windsor, formerly worked in textiles in the garment district in New York City. Mother of three, her two older children are graduates of the West Windsor Plainsboro school system and her youngest is currently a sophomore at High School South.
Feehan has been a West Windsor resident since July 1998. She is at work on an undergraduate degree in journalism from Rutgers, has three children ages 17, 15 and 8 in local schools, and is also a member of West Windsor Open Space.
What drew the crowds even in the downpour was the prospect of fresh veggies pulled not from a refrigerated case in a supermarket or from backyard soil with all that attendant dreary labor, but rather offered right from the farmer’s hand.
The major ingredients for a nice dinner, including a bouquet of flowers for the table, can easily be assembled during a stroll through the market. As any casual gardener knows, a Jersey summer’s bounty of field-raised corn and tomatoes does not arrive until mid-July. But there was a line waiting at the Robeson stand to pay for peas, purple tipped asparagus, bedding plants, bunches of larkspur, hothouse tomatoes, strawberries, and sensational heads of lettuce for 75 cents a piece. Arugula, oregano, mint, kale, and Swiss chard were offered at another stall.
And at this market even diehard carnivores will be happy with the offerings. Simply Grazin’ of Hopewell – owned by Mark and Karen Faille, who raise animals on grass – sells organic poultry, pork and beef from a deep freezer in the back of its delivery truck. Its frozen, cryovac-sealed products are already the favorite of many West Windsor residents. Whole roasting chickens sell for $4.50 a pound and hamburger patties for $6.99 a pound – clearly this stall is a destination for those determined to avoid conventionally-farmed meats.
However tempting the sample chicken looked, tinged pink and white rather than vaguely yellow, I couldn’t really put my arms around a twenty dollar bird when the weekly supermarket sale flyer listed them for $.79 a pound.
It’s not that hard to understand how prices for boutique meat can hover between two and three times the cost of grocery store products. As the owner of a tiny flock of laying hens that I threaten with death every time egg production drops, I know animal protein costs more than pennies a pound to raise.
Two farms that were missing on opening day but plan to be there in the next week or two are Griggstown Farm, with its free range poultry and frozen ready to bake pot pies and fruit pies, and Catalpa Farm, which specializes in summer vegetables.
Badger Bread of Hopewell (run by the owners of Rat’s restaurant at Grounds for Sculpture) sells artisan-style breads and rolls as well as fresh coffee to marketgoers. Chia-sin Farm, which promises Asian specialty produce like Chinese persimmon, Asian pears, Chinese cabbage and eggplant, Taiwan long hot pepper, water spinach, and Taiwan honeydew melon later in the season, filled their booth on opening day with decorative plants, small jasmine and peony trees, and hanging baskets brimming with New Guinea impatiens.
En Route, the cafe at the Princeton Junction train station, crossed over (or rather, under) the train tracks from its location on the northbound side of the station to sell freshly-grilled chicken shish kebobs, cups of fruit salad, big chocolate chip cookies, drinks, coffee, and bags of candy that were a hit with the kids.
The West Windsor Community Farmers’ Market was set up as a nonprofit corporation. Its board includes Susan Stember of Plainsboro in addition to Feehan and Delman. Other volunteers are Bonnie Blader and Rosalind Gracey, who spent the first market day conducting an informal survey asking passersby their opinion of the prices at the stalls.
Rebecca Ebert serves as market manager. Ebert is a Mercer County certified master gardener who resides in Hamilton and comes from a south Jersey farming family.
On its first day, the Farmers’ Market was clearly a success. Even Delman’s dream of the market as a community gathering place was realized. After chatting with Fran Marcetta of West Windsor as she stood in line waiting to pay for a flat of bedding plants, I toted home a bit of news about the results of a mutual friend’s knee surgery in addition to a bag of salad greens and a pot of flowers.
-Caroline Calogero
West Windsor Community Farmers’ Market, Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Princeton Junction Train Station, Vaughn Drive. 609-799-2400. Grand opening on Saturday, June 19, Farm Heritage Day. After Hours performs at 11 a.m.; Ben Nemsker, a magician and balloon-making senior at High School North, will demonstrate his skills; and children will be entertained by Farmer Green Jeans with riddles and stories.
