Weekly Update: July 2, 2015
School’s out. The Fourth of July is this weekend. There’ll be ice cream at the Falmouth Museums on the Green, the children’s annual Bike Parade on Main Street, seaside fireworks in the evening—and family gatherings and cookouts all over town.
At the market this Thursday, just in time for your celebrations, you’ll see local hoop-house tomatoes, so welcome until field tomatoes come into their own. In fact, you’ll find many of your cookout needs from crisp lettuces and salad ingredients, to burger and hot dog buns, delicious relishes and pickles, local wines and (while supplies last) a patriotic red-and-blue fruit pie from Pain D’Avignon.
Markets have always been community affairs. Each week, as space allows, ours offers a table to a compatible nonprofit group. This week Falmouth Community Television will talk about its tools for groups and individuals who would like to communicate their information, ideas, or concerns to the community at large. Learn about FCTV’s classes and some of the equipment it makes available, like the go-anywhere GoPro camera and the Padcaster, which turns an iPad into a video-shooting and editing machine. Between noon and 2 PM, the Falmouth Bike Lab will be doing tune-ups. We love our market-goers who arrive under their own steam by bike. Good exercise, environmentally friendly, easy to park—what’s not to like about bikes? The Falmouth Bike Lab does a great job of educating the next generation about the power of biking and how to care for their bicycles and ride with confidence.
Here’s what you might expect at the market this Thursday: the last strawberries, plenty of sugar snaps, snow peas and shelling peas, fava beans, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, and Peachtree Circle’s carrots. Mushrooms, broccoli, bok choy, and leafy greens, including lettuce heads, spinach, bags of mixed greens (some with edible flowers), arugula, pea greens, sturdy chards, mustard greens and kales—plus baby beets, kohlrabi, radishes, sorrel, scallions, and curly garlic scapes. Herbs in bunches and pots, mosquito-repelling lemongrass—plus young tomato plants, vegetable starter plants, and plugs of multi-colored lettuces.
You’ll also find eggs—including duck eggs—cheeses, bread, baked goods, apple-cider doughnuts, salad dressing, jams and jellies, honey, coffee, wines from Westport River Winery, flowers, edible flowers, dried lavender, herbal products and botanical oils. Sirenetta is back with salty caramels, her seasonal chocolate collections and, new this year, pretty bags of sea-glass candy.
And Common Ground returns with granola, fruit crisps, and soft drinks.
Looking for day-boat fish? Grab a map at the market information table to steer you quickly to Machaca Charters at the dock.
You can also bring food scraps you’ve saved at home to the bins provided by Compost With Me; Mary Ryther or Tyler Barron will tell you what can and cannot be composted. While you’re there, for just a few dollars, you can pick up a mini-sack of rich finished compost.