Northampton Winter Market

I promised you a visit to Northampton’s unique shopping plaza, Thorne’s Market, and we’re way overdue because it’s been overrun with Christmas shoppers and hustle and bustle. So we’re sneaking in today by way of the basement, where on Saturday mornings you’ll find the Northampton Winter Market. It’s kind of chilly and kind of bare, but you’ll still find the local farmers and local shoppers mixing it up here:

This is the stand of Atlas Farms, from Deerfield, and here’s what’s in some of what their baskets:

Have you ever seen a watermelon radish before? I hadn’t! They look remarkably like their namesake, and are milder tasting than you might expect a radish to be, more like a turnip, in fact, of which there are plenty at the market:

These radishes were grown at  Town Farms, which, as the name promises, grows its crops in an area called The Meadows, right in the heart of the city of Northampton. (To see my intensely green discovery, the incredible tatsoi, also grown at Town Farms, click here on A View from the Woods —)

There are plenty of greens for sale, in fact, because rather than killing, frost more often nips their toes lovingly. Wild Sky Farm in Easthampton produced the “frost-sweetened” spinach here —

Potatoes are keepers all winter, and I was overwhelmed with the choice at this stand:

They’re grown at Twin Oaks Farm, in Agawam, and the farmer here is John Spineti:

Our region is blessedly fertile, but not heavily populated, which creates too much of a good thing, perhaps. John was quoted in the New York Times this summer about the resulting glut of farmers’ markets, with serious economic effects for local farmers. But farming’s always been like that. Weather, economic conditions, nothing’s ever certain —

Except that farmers love what they do, and fight to the last breath to be able to go on doing it. Luckily for us — So let’s hear it for John and all the farmers of the Northampton Winter Market:

THANK YOU

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