Yes! We Have No Bananas: The Takoma Park Farmers' Market
The most comprehensive, reliable, and eclectic farmers’ market in the Washington metro area is the Takoma Park Farmers’ Market. Located just across the D.C.-Maryland border, where Carroll Street NW meets Laurel Avenue, the market surpasses all other local farmers’ markets in quality, variety accessibility, and endurance. Last week my wife and I bought apples, free range pork loin and a beef marrow bone while 20 mph winds and 35 degree temperatures whipped furiously at both the farmers and their produce. Perhaps in recognizance of our hardcore devotion, one vendor invited us to fill, for free, a plastic bag with organic lettuce.
Since the summer of 1983, the Market has been open every Sunday, rain or shine, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Every food item on sale is produced within a 125-mile radius of Takoma Park; for those of you still torturing our ozone layer by buying organic produce from California, here lies your chance to repent. Please note, however, that unless you’re offered free produce during a sleet-storm, the prices are not low at the Farmers’ Market. The good bread will cost you what good bread costs ($3.75 and up for a loaf) but will taste like good bread should taste (airy and grainy but not at all gritty.) The oxtails, cheeses, ciders, lamb shanks, pork shoulders, lettuce, mushrooms, and hummus more than earn out their prices in a well-tended home kitchen. There are no bananas or grapefruits at the Farmers’ Market--125 miles doesn't reach to Florida.
Photo of peppers at the Takoma Park Market courtesy of Carly & Art.
The scene at the Takoma Park Farmers Market is more vibrant than many D.C. happy hours, especially since the crowds have returned with the spring sunshine. When my wife and I paid our weekly visit a couple mornings ago, an almost-not-that-creepy-man played folk songs on his acoustic guitar while a dozen toddlers and their parents sang along.
Besides the aforementioned victuals, the Takoma Park Farmers’ Market offers some of the largest organically grown eggs this reviewer has ever seen. Not unlike Hulk Hogan’s biceps in 1985, these eggs give unabashed American hope to the fretful patriot’s soul: they are, without doubt, The Largest Eggs in The World. They are the Twenty-Four-Inch Pythons. They are the result of several free-range chickens’ adhering to the communist-fighting regimen of The Prayers, The Training and The Vitamins. The eggs hardly fit in their rubber band-strapped cartons. The man selling them appears to suffer from the gout and sells the eggs for $3 a dozen. Not cheap, but, like nearly every item at the Takoma Park Farmers’ Market, they are a bargain nonetheless.