Morningside Farmer's Market

Morningside Farmer’s Market sets up every Saturday from 7:30am – 11:30am in a parking lot on Virginia Highlands Ave, and has been in operation for fifteen years. It started as a place where local organic farmers could offer their excess produce to the general public. There are about 10 or 12 farms that come from no more than two hours distance with bushels of assorted, seasonal vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers. There is a guy there that does knife sharpening, and someone who sells homemade soaps and lotions.

Any vendor at Morningside Farmer’s Market has to be certified organic. The market is situated in a kind of bohem neighborhood, where the clientel is relative affluent, but socially conscious. It has a comfortable, relaxed pace, and you can find people walking their dogs, having coffee with friends at the local coffee shops, jogging, or just out with their canvas grocery bags and hemp sandals, purchasing bruised, bug-nibbled, and knobby fruits and vegetables.

I went around to all the stalls and observed that everyone had a lot of the same stuff. I think the trick is to arrive early, as early as 7am, to get the choicest selections. I arrived just after 9:30 and a lot of stuff seemed picked over. I bought some red baby carrots, some lumpy “True Blue” potatoes, a bunch of basil, and a loaf of whole grain sourdough bread from the Magnolia Bread Company. I admit I felt a little compelled to buy the bread, since they are a vendor we use where I work, and I have eaten tons of their breads for free. They are a wholly organic and local bakery owned by a very nice woman who used to be a nurse. All their bread comes from one master sourdough, and all loaves are shaped by hand and baked in a wood-fired hearth. It is awesome, delicious bread.

Across the street from the farmer’s market is a bakery-market called Alon’s. I stopped in and bought some Vermont cream artisan’s butter to go with my bread. The clerk gave me the eye for coming in with someone else’s bread.

By complete contrast I then went to the new Super H Mart that opened a couple of weeks ago. I have a Super H Mart near where I live, and it has never impressed me that much. It is not my “go-to” place for unique and interesting foods. For that I still go to the Buford Farmer’s Market and Dekalb International Market. But everyone at work has been going on with much gusto about how great this market was, so I decided to check it out. It is a good place to save money on seasonal items: $2.99 for big, seedless red watermelons and quarts of strawberries, and $1.49/pound for brilliantly red vine-ripe tomatoes. Otherwise, I was not particulally impressed. Seeing their piles of produce, knowing only a small percentage was local and nearly none raised organically, drew a sharp line between the market I had just come from, where you could ask the man or woman who actually grew the vegetables to tell you about them, and this place, where the origin and treatment of the food was difficult to determine. I did buy a piece of sashimi salmon and a whole red snapper, thinking of ways to marry my market purchases.

The Morningside market is small and doesn’t take long to go through, but they are busy and have a dedicated client base. Being as they are local and organic, it is even more important for the community to support them where it can.