Postcards from the Rogue Valley

Farmers’ markets are the fasting growing segment of the U.S. food marketplace, with over 8,000 nationwide. USA Today just named the Rogue Valley Growers & Crafters Market, “our” market, one of the ten best in the country.

I was brought up believing fresh vegetables were sacred, and I’ve always tended a vegetable garden. Just before my husband and I impulsively sold our house of 25 years in Rhode Island and moved to Brooklyn, we’d spent a small fortune cutting several trees in the forest that encroached on our yard, determined to bring sun back to our raised beds.  In Brooklyn, I had to settle for growing a cherry tomato plant on the fire escape of our fourth-floor apartment. 

The first Tuesday after Tony and I landed in Ashland, we headed to the weekly Rogue Valley Growers & Market (RVGCM) a mile from our new house. With more than 150 vendors, the RVGCM also hosts a second weekly market in Ashland’s downtown and one in Medford, 15 miles to the north.

It was early April and asparagus, kale, and ramps were the stars. Foraging on his own, Tony found a cache of shiitake mushrooms that joined risotto on the dinner table. I discovered Early Purple Sprouting broccoli, a delicacy whose season came and went in a snap.

“Better than broccolini,” my Italian husband admitted.

We became regulars. As spring ceded to summer, the weekly bounty grew larger and more colorful. Tony and the mushroom man became good friends and I got to know Red Russian kale and Mustard spinach. Smoke and heat dimmed the market for several weeks in mid-summer, but as soon as it cleared, the market sprang back. Tables filled with tomatoes, eggplant, and pears shared the runway with humanely raised beef, goats’ milk, honey and more. Locally sourced tacos and empanadas vanished by noon.

One day at the Growers’ Market, the customer ahead of me was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Keep your friends close and your farmers closer.”

When winter set in, we bought “shares” in a local farm and in exchange received a box of fresh, seasonal produce directly from the farm. Called a CSA, it is part of a national program (Community Supported Agriculture).

This year, when the outdoor market opened for the 2019 season, I knew what to look for. I snatched up as much Early Purple Sprouting broccoli as I could from my favorite vendor, Barking Moon Farm, along with the can’t-be-beat small sweet carrots that followed. 

Tony pushed against my tendency to elevate one or two farmers over others. “They all deserve our business,” he said, and he made a practice of buying zucchini from one vendor tomatoes from another, and beets from a third.

Rogue Valley’s farmers are small farmers—in a state where 97 percent of the farms and ranches are family-owned and 1,100 farms have been operated in the same family for over 100 years; where agriculture is a top economic driver; where 80 percent of the Oregon’s agricultural production leaves the state and 40 percent leaves the country. Mirroring national trends, the average age of a farmer in Oregon has risen from 50 in 1982 to 60 in 2012. In the next two decades, two-thirds of agriculture property will be transferred from its current owners to someone new, with no guarantee the land will remain as farmland. (Hemp farms are sprouting up across the Rogue Valley.) 

This summer, we explored the Pacific Northwest and missed the Tuesday Growers’ Market many weeks. I gave up on my plan to create a vegetable garden in the raised beds that came with our new house; tree growth had hijacked the sun and the deer lay in wait.

In September and October, when the market became part of our weekly routine again , I discovered a treat I’d underappreciated the summer before: the freshest blackberries and raspberries on the planet, courtesy of Pennington Farms nestled in Southern Oregon’s fertile “Applegate.” I’d go through three pints in as many days, forcing me to double up and go to the Saturday market in downtown Ashland, too.

With the falling leaves, the crowds have thinned (though they remain remarkable) and the winds have picked up. Always a public square around local, organic food and artisans, the market has a different feel.

Cabbage, cauliflower, squash, and garlic anchor the vegetable stands, which are now fewer in number and shrunk in size. Vendors I overlooked in my pursuit of the perfect tomato in August catch my attention: the bakers, a purveyor of local smoked and canned fish, an artisanal cheese maker, a natural cattle rancher, Heavenly Fire Salsa.

“It’s been a good run,” Mike of Mike’s Local Fish tells me. “The only problem has been the shortage of lung cod.”

“We’re going to give half our herd a rest now,” says By George Farm’s Tyson Fehrman, who is known for putting as much care into his grass-fed Jersey cows as his cheese. (By George Farm just won three huge awards with the American Cheese Society) 

“Every season is a blessing,” the young woman tending the Rise Up! artisanal bread stand tells me. “We mix Zen and sustainability with our dough.”

Meanwhile, the blackberries and raspberries that spilled from cardboard cartons a month ago fill glass jars now. A vendor selling cranberries from the Southern Oregon coastal town of Bandon—which produces 95 percent of the state’s cranberries, thanks to its bogs and mild autumns—joins the lineup. 

“Most of Bandon’s cranberries are sold to a major corporation,” says Rick Halliburton. He is one of a few local farms that remain independent. “My cranberries are one hundred percent organic.” 

Tony and I have not eaten from the food trucks that spread through the market, but shivering and watching beef sizzling on the grill at Caba’s Authentic Argentine Empanadas, I succumb. Nearby, a mother feeds her toddler warm noodles with chopsticks from Daddy Ramen. At Sultan’s Delight, an older couple downs falafel plates under the noon sun. 

The thinner crowds and cooler temperatures also yield unusual visitors who like it that way. A miniature pony on a leash (a registered service animal) makes friends with everyone. “When it’s hot and packed, this is no place for a pony,” his young owner explains.

Come Thanksgiving, the vendors and food trucks will take their final bow and the market will close for the outdoor season. Some will head to the RVGCM’s indoor winter market held 10 miles north in Phoenix.

“We are grateful—and ready for a winter rest,” says RVGCM’s executive director, Daria Land.

I am grateful, too. In a world where Amazon promises to deliver fresh vegetables “straight to your door,” public squares built around local, organic food seem more necessary than ever. We must keep both our farmers and neighbors close. 

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