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The following article was first
published in The Providence Journal-Bulletin on 7/25/07.
Doesn’t Come Fresher
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
By Donita Naylor
Journal Staff Writer
WESTERLY Going to the Westerly-Pawcatuck Farmers Market is like
visiting the garden to see what’s ready to pick.
Except there are six farms, no weeds, and two of the crops
always at peak season are Caboose Kettle Korn and Mary’s
Portuguese sweet bread.
“It’s a surprise each week,” said Kelly Presley, of the Westerly
Land Trust, which now co-sponsors the market with the Ocean
Community YMCA.
Each Thursday, from noon to 4 p.m., farmers from Rhode Island
and Connecticut bring their herbs, flowers, berries and
vegetables, most of them picked that day, to 85 Main St., on the
Rhode Island side of the Pawcatuck River.
Last year the market was on the Connecticut side, but this year
the Pawcatuck Park site was closed for construction.
“A lot of people were sweating it out,” Presley said.
The land trust acquired the lot last July from the federal
government, which seized Renskip Motor Sales to shut down a
money-laundering operation. The YMCA signed on as co-sponsor in
time for the market to start July 12.
Early tomatoes, blueberries and the first ears of sweet corn
came in last week, joining the cucumbers, basil, radishes,
lettuces, summer squash, broccoli and zucchini. Still ahead is a
whole summer’s worth of beans, peas, herbs, many varieties of
tomato, squash, melons, sweet peppers in unusual colors, Swiss
chard, cabbage, cauliflower and the Thanksgiving turnips,
carrots, beets, pumpkins, decorative corn and bird-house squash.
“I WAS JUST down there weeding the okra,” said Lou Ann Healey-Rippin,
53, of the Healey Farm in North Kingstown yesterday. Okra isn’t
expected until August, but tomorrow she’s bringing sweet corn
(50 cents an ear), as well as tomatoes, cut-flower bouquets, cut
basil, hanging plants, Swiss chard, summer squash and potted
rosemary, oregano and thyme.
Healey-Rippen farms 30 to 35 acres, mostly by herself. Her
theory is that standard vegetables are available everywhere, so
she likes to try unusual varieties.
Among her tomatoes is a large one with dark skin and red flesh,
called the Black Prince, a tomato “berry” that grows in
clusters, and a yellow brandywine tomato, which has a lower acid
content.
One of her favorite specialties is an elongated, thumb-size
“fairy tale” eggplant that is lilac in color and can be roasted
whole or grilled, and a round “eight-ball” zuchinni that she
says is perfect for stuffing. White eggplant with purple
stripes? Patty-pan squash with scalloped edges? They might turn
up, and probably before the turnips, which she just planted.
With watermelon, however, she sticks with the regular, seeded,
round kind. The seedless ones, she says, aren’t as sweet.
“I’m working to get people really interactive and take notice
that fresh vegetables from your local farm are the way to go,”
she said. “Buy local. At least you know where it’s grown, what
soil it’s grown in and what chemicals are being used.”
Healey Farm, she said, isn’t certified organic, because she uses
a commercial 10-10-10 fertilizer and sprays the corn to keep out
those unappealing little bugs.
HIDDEN BROOK GARDENS in Ledyard, Conn., however, is certified
organic, and corn isn’t one of their offerings. “Corn’s hard
with an organic farm,” said Anita Kopchinski, 42, who escaped,
along with Bill Sokol, 57, from corporate America for a greener
life. They grow food with a focus on heirloom varieties to
encourage biodiversity and flavor, their Web site says.
Kopchinski said their cherry tomatoes and an early tomato are
ready, and they bring their lettuce as a salad mix. One variety
in the mix is an Asian green called mizuna.
A farmers’ market is good for the bottom line, Kopchinski said.
“It’s hard, I think, to sell all your stuff on your farm.” The
Westerly site has high visibility, she said, and draws a variety
of beachgoers, summer people and locals looking for the
treasured flavors of summer.
This summer is the first at the market for Smith Flower Shop,
store manager Mark Messier, 52, said. He said produce is
relatively new at his store on 136 Beach St., Westerly, “so this
is a way of introducing our new product line.”
Smith Flowers’ association with Schartner Farms brings
blueberries and sweet corn to the table. Everything is grown in
Westerly or Exeter, he said, except the Schartner-label Grammy
Schartner’s Jams in flavors that include strawberry, blueberry,
rhubarb and peach.
Hybrid lilies are a specialty at Smith Flowers. The Smith
cutting garden can be seen at Hubbard and Beach streets, and at
the market he’ll be selling Oriental lilies in pots and mixed
bouquets.
There’s an advantage to being the home team. “We did have to run
back and cut more lettuce last week,” Messier said.
ACROSS THE RIVER, on the Connecticut side, is a farm that played
a role in the Revolutionary War.
John Whitman Davis, 83, known as Whit, works the farm that was
established by Thomas Stanton in 1654. Stanton and the early
settlers relied on wild hay in the salt marshes to keep their
animals alive. Generations of laborers on the Stanton Davis farm
used to cut the salt hay by hand with scythes, pitch it onto a
wagon, haul it back to the farm and stack it in haystacks.
Davis tells how George Washington’s army would send a scout to
say they’d need fodder for, say, 100 oxen, and that guards would
be posted to keep the British troops from setting the haystacks
on fire.
If the weather cooperates and he’s feeling well, Davis may show
up at the market one Thursday.
Other participants are the Highland Thistle Farm of Canterbury,
Conn., and Fenner Ridge Farm of Hope Valley, where Ken Mott
grows blueberries, tomatoes and just enough corn for his family
— and the raccoons, which polish off “about a dozen a night.”
Mott has moved with the Westerly market to all its different
locations since it started. He also participates in a market at
Goddard Park on Friday mornings and is helping start one at the
Pastore Complex in Cranston. Markets help the farmer survive, he
said.
MARY SOARES, 58, of Pawcatuck, brings her Portuguese sweet
bread, her helpful grandson, James, 10, and bushels of life
experience.
“When I started this, I never expected it to go this far,” she
said. “Every time a new challenge comes, yeah, my knees are
knocking, but I’m the only one who knows it.”
She said that although she makes her bread from the same recipe
her siblings use, hers comes out better. She thinks it’s because
she does it to honor her mother and grandmothers “and all the
work they did that went unnoticed.”
“I work my brains off in summer,” she said, “but if you’re doing
what you like, it’s not work.”
Since starting her business, she was instrumental in changing
the law that denied development grants to entrepreneurs in
Connecticut’s wealthy communities.
She finds inspiration in Oprah Winfrey, the world’s wealthiest
female entertainer. “Oprah — She can’t sing, she can’t dance,
she can’t make Portuguese sweet bread.”
The market will continue on Thursdays into October.
Messier, from Smith’s Flowers, expressed a farmer’s optimism:
“Hopefully, it will grow.”
dnaylor@projo.com
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