Portland, Oregon is a Farm Market extravaganza; check out this list of markets in the area. The Thursday afternoon market held in front of Fairview city hall, a suburb of Portland, is small but packs a punch! Only a short three miles from our campground, it was a must see for our first visit to the area. Flower baskets lined streets ushered us to the market consisting of a nearly fifty-fifty split between farmers and artisans.
John and I still on mountain time arrived an hour early to this pacific time zone market. Despite the vendors being in the setting up stage of marketing, they were welcoming and congenial. It was fun to watch them unloading and unfolding, arranging and decorating, prepping and calculating their portable store fronts. We tried to step away and wait til the starting hour, chairs and tables around the bandstand in the park, seemed like a good spot to observe. I couldn’t hold back and began snapping pictures. Everyone was really receptive to me taking photos and asking questions.
One in particular, Chris Winters of Winter Farms generously offered for me to taste before you buy. He pointed to a huge, dark, plump blackberry first, “taste this”, then he pointed to another, “now this one”, between ‘mmms’ and ‘oh i like both’, he points to another. This is when my education began, not all blackberries are created equal. That first extra plump one was in fact a boysenberry. Made famous by Knott’s Berry Farms, boysenberries are a cross between a raspberry and a Pacific blackberry. The next was a marionberry named after Marion county, Oregon and sometimes known as the “Cabernet of Blackberries”. The last a Sylvan berry an Australian cross of the first two types. In the end we bought a half flat and included a quart of Chilliwack raspberries, a mild and sweet melt in your mouth, nearly thornless variety.
We also bought some corn, broccoli, snow peas, bright carrots and green beans. I had a hard time deciding on a bouquet of flowers so i bought two big bouquets, one for me and one for my mom, at $7.00 a piece I felt like it was a bargain. With that and a bag of kettle corn we headed home to make an all farmer market meal again. On the menu, roasted root vegetables, steamed green beans with citrus-dill butter, sliced tomatoes and homemade sourdough bread.
