AROUND RESTON | HOT SPOTS | LOCAL INTEREST | TRENDING
All Local, All Fresh, Best in Fairfax A BY JOHN LOVAAS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN LOVAAS
t 8 a.m. sharp, on Saturday, April 20, we’ll ring the cowbell to signal the start of the 22nd season of the Reston Farmers Market at Lake Anne. Once again the market will host 30 farmers/vendors, making it the largest farmers market in Fairfax County sponsored by the Fairfax County Park Authority. The market is a produceronly market, and everything you see is grown or made within 125 miles of Reston. The food you buy at the Reston Farmers Market is the freshest, and you’re buying it directly from the people who produced it. Thus, you get premium taste, and there is minimal environmental impact in getting it to you! When the Reston Farmers Market opened in May 1998, with Reston founder Robert Simon present, there were just 12 farm stands and basically a modest variety of fruits and vegetables, a baker, a plant vendor and a flower vendor. In 2019, you will find an exponentially greater product selection. Vegetables and fruits are still the heart of the market, but the kinds and varieties have increased each year. For example, when the market began, it offered three kinds of tomatoes and five or six kinds of apples. Now, you’ll find 20 or 30 varieties of each! This year we count 10 fruit and vegetable
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vendors, nine of whom have been with the market 20 years or more. Their stands, however, now hold a far greater product variety. Instead of 100 square feet per stand, they have 200300 square feet of an amazing array of varieties that didn’t exist 20 years ago. What else will you find? Instead of one baker, you’ll find six purveyors of bakery items like breads, pastries, cakes and pies, and homemade goods including savory meat pies and pasta. There is also a world class plant vendor (May to July), an impressive new cut flowers vendor as well as flowers for sale in several stands. Over the years Fairfax County has expanded the list of products eligible for sale
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to include meats, seafood, dairy and certain prepared foods. In addition to chicken, beef, and pork in the Reston Farmers Market you’ll find rabbit and real Asian water buffalo! In the dairy area, the market features fresh milk and ice cream plus cow and goat cheeses. And don’t forget jellies, honey, fresh chicken eggs and occasional goose and duck eggs! As you stroll through the market, you’ll hear community musicians. You’ll notice the Master Gardeners stand, where you can get expert advice on growing in your own garden, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), managed by Cornerstones to help lower-income families purchase fresh, nutritious
The Market will be open April 20 to December 7 every Saturday, 8 a.m. until noon (except Sept. 28) Stop by the market and say hello! farmers market foods. Fairfax County recently chose the Reston Farmers Market for a pilot project to reduce the use of plastics, especially single-use plastic bags in the market. Plastic is a cheap, convenient material for bagging small purchases, but it never biodegrades and is omnipresent in huge volumes around the world. In oceans and fresh waters there is so much plastic waste that it is present in fish as micro plastic in our food chain. To date, the best alternative to single-use bags is reuseable bags. Our goal is to reduce use to as close to zero as possible. A nonprofit called Clean Fairfax will work with the Market Managers to encourage shoppers to BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag, reuseable, of course) and to encourage vendors to use alternatives to single-use plastic bags, such as cloth, paper or (higher cost) compostable/ biodegradable plastic. The Market Managers will have space to donate reuseable bags and/or pick up a reuseable bag by their table. Community support and suggestions for moving toward the goal are appreciated. See www. restonfarmersmarket.com for more information. John Lovaas (Founder of the Market), Fran Lovaas and Keith Strange are the volunteer Market Managers for the 2019 Reston Farmers Market.