Scroll-stopping Beauty In Every Bite
Admit it, a well framed Insta image of pints upon pints of fresh cherries, blueberries and grapes makes you slow your scroll. The same goes for an arc of fire-engine red tomatoes, especially when you can see a tear of fresh morning dew cascading toward the earthy linen it sits on.
We all do it. Heck, it’s likely you took a pic or two that complemented this description. How can you not? Farmers markets are the community soul that makes everyone want to reach out their hand and say, “you’ve GOT to try this.” And whether it’s your best friend or a stranger standing next to you, they always do.
More Than Just Produce
A Catskills farmers market isn’t just a place to purchase produce; it’s a gathering place where longtime friends and neighbors meet new friends and neighbors while tasting homemade jams and cheeses. Children run laps through the tent rows, and no one worries about them because everyone at the market is a parent, either of one or more of the kids or of the stack of freshly picked cucumbers.
The Sullivan Catskills are a place where people look out for each other. A place where farmers market purchases are often gifts for someone who did you a solid but expected nothing in return. The kind of place where the loaf of fresh sourdough will be shared later in the backyard of someone other than the person who bought it.
Dirt Church: Sunday Devotion to Freshness
On Sunday in Livingston Manor, for example, you’ll find fresh cut flowers, rich smelling breads and pastries, and tubs of sweet corn stacked right in front of the truck that transported them directly from the field. Red radishes speckled with Catskills dirt sharing display space with potted basil. A tent or two over will have coolers full of fresh caught trout and homemade ice cream.
The local pork, poultry and beef purveyor can tell you which of his chickens are laying by using their names. They’ll describe the color of the yolks that week and tell you which will make a good omelet. The next morning, you’ll push your plate across the table and say, “you’ve got to try this.” It’s that good.
Small But Mighty
There may only be a dozen vendors at each community market, but for some reason they always seem to be the right size. Small, but robust. Full of life with sounds, smells, tastes and hometown laughter pickled into all the senses.
This week, it might be blueberries. The next will be red and black raspberries, husk cherries or strawberries. The selection changes with the weather, but the quality and conversation remain the same. Warm, inviting and without agenda, no matter what the season. Each grower is a customer of the other through product purchases, borrowed tools and the kind of mutual sweat equity you get from pushing a busted tractor.
Rooted in Catskill Earth
You won’t find a straight carrot here. You will find scraggly purple, yellow and orange ones that taste better than anything you’ve ever had before because homegrown food doesn’t enter beauty pageants. Just don’t tell that to the tomatoes.
Catskills farmers markets are the kind of place where you can purchase a cutting board crafted from hardwood felled to fuel a winter woodstove or a double boiler that helped produce the sweet natural amber that tastes just as good in your coffee as it does on your pancakes.
Farm to Table, the Local Way
Here, farm-to-table means farm to your table, but also to the tables of local restaurants and cafes where the chefs regularly do their grocery shopping at a Catskills farmers market. You know because they incorporate the farm names into each dish on their menu. The DeBruce in Livingston Manor, for example, has a Farm Tasting Menu where you learn about each dish, and everything that went into it, while relaxing in a jewel-box dining room that offers sweeping views of the farms that star in each story.
It’s a story that starts at the farm and continues at the farmers market and then flows into kitchens across the Catskills. Sunday is the biggest market day, but you can find that story every day. There is at least one farmers’ market or mobile market stop open every day of the week in the Sullivan Catskills.
Markets That Dot the Week
- The communities of Callicoon, Jeffersonville, Livingston Manor and Roscoe are Sunday farmers markets.
- Barryville, Kauneonga, Narrowsburg and Rock Hill have Saturday covered.
- On Friday, you’ll find fresh produce in Liberty, while Monticello and Wurtsboro take care of Thursday.
Faces Behind the Fresh
At each, you’ll meet guys like Ryan from Fare View Gardens who grows organic root vegetables, leafy greens, peppers, melons and even figs. At Four Story Hill Farm, Steven and Sylvia offer eggs from free range chickens, but they also have fresh poultry, beef and pork direct from the USDA Certified Humane Slaughterhouse they established on their property in 2010.
Little Pebble, a woman-powered farm has 50-plus acres of woodlands, natural springs and streams, but they only grow on a quarter acre where Kelly uses hand-powered no- till techniques to grow fresh cut flowers.
At Majestic Farm in Mountain Dale, Brett and Sara run an animal welfare approved, biodynamic organic farm that grows some of the most delicious apples you’ll find anywhere in the East.
Mountain Ash in Callicoon is a fourth-generation farm that has been around since 1932. If it’s handcrafted small batch jams and jellies you’ve got a hankering for, Reggie and Alberta Hillriegel and Jenny and Kirt Phelps will get you set up. But just try and get out of there without grabbing some honey and a baked good.
After a conversation with Erica at Winterton Farms, you’ll know which stand of their 350 maples produced the most sap this year. You’ll also know why natural homemade soaps and hand creams are simply better for you. The smell of her 14 varieties of lavender will pull you in, but the effortless chat will have you signing up for a craft class during the fall harvest season.
Blueberries, Cherries and Barn Doors
Farmers in the Sullivan Catskills are the kind of people who have jars full of bolts and screws because they never know what they’ll need to fix a barn door or a neighbor’s bike. Everything has a place and purpose and if it isn’t used today, it will be tomorrow.
Sure, the blueberries and cherries look delicious on Instagram, but they’re the family photos that hang in the hall and under refrigerator magnets that tell the story. This is a place of generational grit and humor. The kind that makes the hardest days the ones that you belly laugh at years later while remembering something that began when the first acre was cleared decades earlier.
Oftentimes, those stories come up at a Catskills farmers market when a newcomer asks, “How do you get such wonderful potatoes in this soil?” The answer will involve the farmer, their family, neighbors and likely a little bit of earth from every farm in the community.
Hand-built Traditions and New Growth
The crop rows weren’t always there. Miles of hand-stacked stone walls are a dead giveaway of that. So are the historic farmhouses that now sit next to state-of-the-art high tunnels that help extend the growing season so the seeds planted in March can get all grown up for a Catskills farmers market in summer.
Pick up a pint of berries. Better yet, pick two. One for you and one for whoever you happen to meet at the market.