The Famer's Market

By Sally Pollak
Free Press Staff Writer

The Burlington Farmers' Market, which ended its last season, in October, in a hard and cold rain, will reopen today under skies predicted to be sunny.

The market in the heart of downtown is one of dozens around the state that offer local produce, baked goods, and crafts. Oversized muffins and elegant fruit tarts are for sale alongside produce trucked to College Street by area farmers. The produce, conventional and organic, is in season and freshly harvested.

If potential vendors had their way, the Burlington Farmers' Market would offer many other things, as well.

"Some vendor will come up and say, 'My daughter wants to sell wrapping paper here,' " manager Susan Johnson said, "and someone will say, 'I'm a peace-rally person, and I want to set up a booth.' And then the flea market people want to come in."

The wrapping paper is out, but you will find a smorgasbord of ethnic cuisine, with ready-to-eat food concessions selling Jamaican and Nepalese fare, and recipes from the Congo.

As market-goers know, among the 48 vendors lining College Street and spilling into City Hall Park, you can find tie-dye T-shirts, homemade salsa, organic garlic, ceramic mugs, cut flowers, and varieties of vegetables -- organic and conventional.

Johnson is a sheep farmer in Hinesburg. She sells yarn and fleece -- the old-fashioned kind of fleece that comes straight from the animal's back.

"People will come by and say, 'That's not fleece,'" said Johnson, because her product is not purple and is not in the shape of a jacket.

Those people looking for the synthetic kind of fleece need only move farther down the vendor line, where they'll spot a jacket hanging by asparagus stalks and basil bunches.

About half the vendors sell agricultural products, Johnson said. In all, the Burlington Farmers' Market grosses about $300,000 a season, from mid-May to late October, Johnson said.