The first day of the Magnolia Farm-ers Market is my personal version of "Opening Day." I begin to anticipate the start of the market season in February, when the daffodils are opening their sunny faces. By then, I've had it up to here with winter produce and fruit that is shipped unripe and half-frozen from half the world away, frequently arriving hard as stones or full of brown mush.
I begin to wonder and pine: "When will I get strawberries that can't be confused with a pink Styrofoam craft project? Or a squash variety I've never even seen before? Or an entire bucket of fresh raspberries covered in cream over just-baked scones?"
Well, this year it will be a week sooner than last year. On Saturday, June 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Magnolia Community Center, 2550 34th Ave. W., will once again welcome the farmers and vendors who provide Magnolia and Queen Anne with the best and the brightest in fresh, organic produce, fruit, flowers, baked goods, fish, cheeses and local grass-fed beef.
The dedicated, hardworking folks at the Farmers Market Alliance - the nonprofit, community-based organi-zation that is responsible for bringing local farmers and their products to our doorstep every week - say that this past winter has offered up some of the strangest weather farmers can recall. Because it was so much warmer and dryer than usual, farmers have been in the fields for weeks, and some crops are coming to harvest sooner than normal.
This means there should be a lot of variety available when we all converge the first Saturday in June at the Community Center/Blaine School parking lot to welcome our market back to town.
With the support of the Magnolia Advisory Council and the community center staff, the Magnolia Farmers Market opened two years ago. Everything is there: beautiful and unique foods, a wonderful gathering spot, quiet music, community-oriented information booths, master gardeners and composters, cooking demonstrations by local chefs and - one my favorite things - market manager Molly Burke's cute little chickens and fun activities for kids, including the famous Zucchini Car Race and the Cherry-pit Spitting Contest.
If we support our market by shopping every weekend, we contribute to the financial stability of well over 35 vendors and farmers (as well as their employees and families) who make their livings by selling to small markets.
These farmers work hard growing dozens of varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and unbeatable cherries and peaches. The vendors who make artisanal cheeses and breads, who pick wild mushrooms and harvest acres of flowers, are up at the crack of dawn, many driving three and four hours from all points of the compass to get their products to us by 10 a.m.
Then, what doesn't get sold at the market and can't be taken home is donated to local food banks.
If we continue to buy from local farmers, we help them get fair prices for their products and help them stay in business. And that is good news for city-dwellers: successful farmers can keep bringing us a wonderful amenity that contributes so much to the overall quality of life we are lucky to enjoy in Magnolia and Queen Anne.
And if you occasionally spend a little more than you meant to, remember that you are not buying vegetables grown with 500 million pounds of pesticides that the United States long ago banned but that are still allowed in developing countries, where they cause serious environmental and health problems.
I'll see you down there. I'll be the one waddling by with red streaks on my shirt, carrying a large stack of empty strawberry baskets and a cream bottle.
Lindsay Brown is the past President of the Magnolia Community Club.
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