Shop Local, Eat Fresh at the Saratoga Farmers' Market | Food, Crafts, Music in Saratoga Springs

Shop Local, Eat Fresh

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Shop Local, Eat Fresh, Stay Safe!

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Curbside pickup location, photo by Emily Meagher

By Emily Meagher

The winter season of cold weather and lots of snow has come, and the farmers’ market is feeling grateful for our indoor home at the Wilton Mall. Since November, indoor markets have been running safely and smoothly every Saturday. Still, many customers who would like to eat fresh food and support local farms and producers understandably do not feel safe shopping indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Produce from Echo Creek Farm, photo by Emily Meagher

While our vendors can’t be outside in the cold anymore (frozen vegetables don’t taste so fresh!), we can bring fresh products to our customers. We have launched a new online ordering platform with contact-free curbside pickup every Saturday morning.

The platform currently offers various products from about 20 winter season vendors, though more products and producers are added weekly based on customer requests and community needs. Available products will also change weekly due to local food seasonality, ensuring the freshest products are listed every week.

Screenshot of Local Line Ordering Platform

The online storefront is open weekly from Monday evenings until Thursday nights at 9 pm. Between these times, customers can navigate to the store using the link below. Products from multiple vendors can be added to a virtual shopping cart, with just one credit or debit card payment required at checkout. SNAP/EBT customers may defer payment until they pick up their order, and deferred credit/debit and cash payments are accepted on-site as well. The minimum order amount is $15, and there is a $3 flat fee per order to cover the time and money spent by the market to run the online system and prepare orders.

On Saturday mornings, customers may park in reserved curbside pickup spots located right outside the Bow Tie Cinemas entrance to the Wilton Mall and receive prompt delivery to their vehicles. This service is also available to pedestrians and those taking public transportation.

The farmers’ market’s mission is to provide access to fresh, healthy, and locally produced food to everyone in our community; thus, the market hopes this contact-free curbside pickup program will provide another way to help meet this goal during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Access SFM2GO here. Customers can sign up there to receive a weekly email update about new products offered and other curbside pickup news.

This week’s recipe: Mushroom Quiche

Quarantine Cooking with Kids

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By Julia Howard

With schools closed and many of us working from home, parents are desperately looking for ways to keep their children occupied. Food provides many opportunities for learning and play as well as nourishing our bodies and teaching important life skills. Here are 5 simple ways to use food and our local food system as learning tools for young children:

1. Cooking and Baking
Cooking and baking offer many learning opportunities for children; organizational skills, counting, measuring ingredients, team work, even writing out a grocery list. Cooking can be as simple as a smoothie, a salad, no-bake cookies, or assembling a picnic. Offering choices and presenting the activity as a game can be helpful in keeping the attention of your little ones.

2. Crafts and Games
The internet is peppered with DIY crafts and games to keep kids entertained, but look no farther than your fridge for real fun. Making fruit and vegetable prints with discarded stalks, cores, and stems is a creative, no-waste activity for little ones. Building constructions or creating a piece of art from cut fruit and vegetable pieces can make a tasty snack much more entertaining.

3. Planting Activities
If you want to garden with your kids but you’re not quite ready to dig out a space in your yard, here are some ideas that provide opportunities to grow on a small scale. Herbs, leafy vegetables, and celery may simply grow in water by cutting the plant at its base and placing it in water. An indoor herb garden or an outdoor container garden offers the full gardening experience. If you don’t have time to plant seeds, contact your local nursery as many are offering curbside pickup for plants.

4. STEM Activities
Whether your child is learning about taste vs. smell or the phases of the moon, food can be used for countless STEM experiments to stimulate higher thinking and problem solving. Try shaking heavy cream to make butter, experiment with the many ways to bake a potato, or make ice cream with salt, ice, and cream.

5. Driving Farm Tour or Virtual Tour
For families itching to get out of the house, a short drive through farm country can lift spirits during this difficult time. Make a map of your local producers, roll down the car windows, and take in the beauty that the area has to offer. Nettle Meadow and the Kemp Sanctuary even offer a virtual tour of their farm with opportunities to meet their famous rescue animals.

This week’s recipe: Apple & Carrot “Superhero” Muffins

Amid pandemic, farmers create more options for obtaining fresh food

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By Himanee Gupta-Carlson

Pleasant Valley Farm, photo by Pattie Garrett

These days leading up to Easter have presented many unprecedented challenges. As a community, we’ve grappled with job losses, pay cuts, shortages of basic goods, fears of the spreading Coronavirus, and in some cases, illness itself.

Farmers, too, face such challenges. Yet, as histories of droughts, hurricanes, floods, crop failures, and climate change show, farmers can adapt innovatively to crises. Many who bring their goods weekly to the Saratoga Farmers’ Market are creating others ways to connect with customers and make their products available in a safe, wholesome manner.

“It is vital that we keep the farmers market running during this time of crisis,” says market manager Emily Meagher. “Because of that, we want to make sure we offer the community as many options as possible to obtain fresh, local food.”

Eggs, photo by Pattie Garrett

Most of the Saratoga Farmers’ Market vendors are continuing to bring their products to market each Saturday from 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Tomorrow’s market will feature many of the fresh, healing foods of Easter. Look, for instance, for freshly cut lettuce, spinach, and other greens from Pleasant Valley and Green Jeans, lamb from Elihu, duck and goose eggs from Squashville, and maple treats from Slate Valley farms, among others.

Vendors who are not attending the market are inviting shoppers to contact them directly to preorder such items as Mangiamo’s pasta and Lewis Waite meats. Other vendors are offering delivery and/or curbside pickup services at other locations or suggest looking for their items in local specialty stores. A spreadsheet on the farmers’ market website at www.saratogafarmersmarket.org lists the various options available.

Mrs. London’s, photo by Pattie Garrett

The market is following the social distance protocols established by the state’s federation of farmers’ markets. Vendors are spaced several feet apart and have sanitizers, disinfectant wipes, and gloves at their tables. The market is asking shoppers to not crowd around vendor tables and has established a curbside pickup service for preordered items near the mall entrance. Look for the red tent.

“We want our market to be a safe space,” Meagher says. “We might not be able to gather socially as we normally do, but we can still offer our community fresh and wholesome foods from our local farms.”

 

This week’s recipe: Grilled lamb chops