Today we made it over to the Norwich, VT Farmers’ Market located on Rt 5 and runs Saturday Mornings from 9a-1p. We spent an hour and about $60. We came home with:

• One braid of Shallots $13 (My indulgence)
• 1/4 lb Welsh-style cheddar cow’s milk cheese. Cobb Hill. $4.50 (Sam’s indulgence)
• Ingredients to make a pot of potatoes and beans for dinner tonight: green beans, potatoes, onion, garlic, carrots and corn. I’d love to have a ham hock or bit of ham to put in the pot. We’ll see what the COOP can do.
• Ingredients to make beans and greens in the rice cooker for dinner tomorrow night. I’ll post details on that later.Read more here…
• Ingredients to make an italian dinner one evening including tomatoes, garlic, bell peppers.
• Some fruit: Apples and a cantelope.
• Edamame
• cucumber, celeriac and hakurei salad turnips

The Norwich farmers’ market is more diverse than many of the small Madison markets. There were plenty of vegetable farms, but few fruit farms. I saw lots of bakeries and jammeries (I just made that word up), plenty of good pastries. There were more herbs for sale here than at any other farmers’ market I have attended, and, in fact, there was an entire herbalist booth. It seems some of the booths are semi-permanent wooden shelters, and other booths are temporary pop-up tents. The market center is a wooden gazebo and today, since the market was celebrating its 35th year, there was a band and a raffle. 35 years is pretty impressive.

I’ll make better measures later, but it seems the average prices are on par with Madison’s markets. Some things, notably sweet corn, were priced a LOT higher. Sweet corn was $0.60/year or $7 for a baker’s dozen. I almost choked. Typically, I buy sweet corn at $2.50/dozen or not at all… We got two good tips on CSA availability. Suzanne at Luna Bleu Farm has chicken/egg shares and Your Farm still has fall and winter CSA shares available.