Grapevine April 7 2013 Market

What's Coming to the Market?

Lettuce Bowls from Sun Gold FarmEarly spring vegetables like asparagus, leeks, miner's lettuce, nettles, and mushrooms will be plentiful this week. Greens of all kinds will be available as well.  It's a bit too early for tomato starts but there will be lots of other plant starts available as well as seeds, perennials, shrubs and fruit trees.
Be sure to check the Availability List for updates throughout the weekend. Check our Twitter feed for Sunday morning updates.

IN THIS WEEK
Betsy's Best Bar None
Farris-Seaman
Herr Family Farm

OUT THIS WEEK
Columbia River Fish
Happy Harvest Farm (back May 5)
River Wave Foods (back April 21st)

Full list of farmers and vendors expected this Sunday is below.

Ancient Heritage Dairy
Bakeshop 
Bigfoot Bakery
Blossom Vinegars
Boondockers Farm
Boyco Foods
Copper Crown Fine Foods
Deep Roots Farm
DeNoble's Farm Fresh Produce
Draper Girls' Country Farm
Fraga Farm Goat Cheese Org
Fressen Artisan Bakery
Gales Meadow Farm
Garden Color
Gathering Together Farm Org
Gee Creek Farm Org
Greenville Farms
Happy Cup Coffee
Herr's Family Farm
Linda Brand Crab
Meadow Harvest
Naked Acres Farm
Olympic Provisions
Pine Mountain Ranch
Rick Steffen Farm
Savory et Sweet
The Smokery
Souper Natural, LLC
Springwater Farm
Sun Gold Farm, LLC
Tastebud
Wild Oregon

Upcoming Events

Community Recycling
Saturday, April 13 9:00am-12:00pm
Location: St. Luke Lutheran Church, SW 46th & SW Vermont St Portland OR 97219
For items you can't take to the Southwest Neighborhoods, Inc. Spring Cleanup event or place in curbside recycling. Items must be clean and sorted by category: Soft plastics, rigid plastics, light bulbs, batteries, metal, electronics, small appliances, styrofoam, corks, printer cartridges. $2 donation requested. See website for details: www.community-recycling.org

Rieke Art Fair
Sunday, May 5 10:00am-4:00pm
The fifth annual Rieke Art Fair on Sunday May 5 is a chance to buy paintings, photography, jewelry, clothing, stationary and more from local, professional artists including Elita Hill of Ginza Girl Designs, paintings by Carolyn Holman and Siri Schillios, and Pacific Northwest nature designs by Jill Bliss. This year we are excited to announce that Rieke is partnering with Cesar Chavez K-8 School in North Portland to turn the fair into a Cinco de Mayo celebration. The Chavez PTA will cook food traditional to this celebration of Mexican heritage and contribute artist vendors and musicians. Visit riekeartfair.com for more information.

The Fat of The Land

The Ephemerals

Quietly from the rich, soggy duff, trilliums rise. The forest floor is still sparse this time of year—young shoots so slight and new they do not yet push against each other. There is room for Claytonia to spread its candelabra form, offering humble blossoms on succulent green platters, for Anemone to blush, painted trout lily leaves to suggest patches of dappled summer shade, fringecup to build its petaline towers and showy Cardamine blooms to bow, faint and pink, at ferns uncoiling nearby.

Like an idea springing forth, a melody filling its season, in some way they have agreed on this arrangement, each moment conspiring with its species. The ephemerals appear from thin air and stay only a twinkling breath. Many emerge, bloom and vanish (leaves and all) within a couple of weeks, exploiting the time it takes neighboring flora to stretch out of winter. They represent one of the cleverest biological strategies, winning the right to reproduce through haste rather than muscle or cunning. And by doing so, they enchant.

We are busy creatures, spending our days barely aware of the passing minutes, sighing often that time has lost its heft, floats weightless as foam atop our ambitions and fears. Like a sentence relinquished of its punctuation, we ramble. But there on the forest floor, displaying their fleeting fragility, wildflowers speak. Time requires neither weight nor leisure to hold value. One afternoon among these transient beings may be all you will see of them until next year.

Since my first encounter, the ephemerals captured me. I love nothing more than an afternoon in a rich alpine meadow or rock garden lazing in the sun, hopping from plant to plant, field guide and camera in hand, to study. Being small and often close to the ground, they have an almost private beauty I must lean into, a reserved complexity that aspires no farther than a few inches. Looking up from a wildflower, the world seems so civilized, so clearly beautiful. In the garden I follow along.

As much as I lust after summer harvests or find solace in autumn color and crispness, spring arrives like a slow gong. I have always enjoyed waking more than falling asleep, so it is fitting that this season moves me. I can barely contain the muffled thrill of spring’s first buds—a tulip bulb crawling to the surface, the first green narcissus fingers, fritillaria’s observant crawl, the push of green onto a world grown tired of its resting.

Spring mornings I am eager to step outside, take stock of what has changed overnight. Sometimes I find the sweet-scented starflower has opened, others an electric blue gentian trumpet or pink shooting star. In a morning of spring weeding, the wild tulips might yawn themselves awake while I’m not looking. And suddenly, the whole vegetable patch will be covered in yellow kale and mustard blooms, burgundy-veined arugula petals, like suspended confetti. One comes as if to celebrate the other’s passing and each day is truly different from the next. It’s like a game to come looking, to stay awake to its subtlety.

And even though I coddle these plants, watering and feeding them, mulching and weeding out competitors, I know they would still be here if the garden went wild. Amid a tangle of weeds, the Ipomopsis and Camas know their way. The wild buckwheat and alliums will stand the summer drought. Unlike many flowers in the garden, beefy visions of their feral ancestors, the ephemerals have not changed their ways in our company. They do not grow because of me.

Sarah West is a gardener, eater and admirer of the agricultural arts. She gladly spends her Sundays as assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, basking in the richness of its producers’ bounty and its community’s energy. Find archives and more at http://thefatofthelandblog.wordpress.com.