A Trip to the Farmers Market

It was cold and rainy this past Saturday morning. But we trudged out in the weather anyway to have a look at the. My car wound its way through the old-town area and finally into the parking lot of the . For a minute,
we thought we were at the wrong location, but down in the corner were a few tents. So we parked the car and stepped out into the cold, wet rain.

Only four vendors braved the weather on the second day of the 2011 Wentzville Farmers
Market season. The first vendor that we went to was Linda’s Produce. Having remembered Linda’s quote in last week’s Patch article about her produce coming from local farms from  Missouri, I was immediately interested in speaking to her about the origin of her fruits and vegetables. 

When I spied the mangos and pineapple, I began to internally dispute the validity of all her produce being local. And it turns out that my suspicions were correct. She told me that nothing on her tables on this particular Saturday were grown locally. In fact, none were even from the state of Missouri. The most local item was strawberries from Illinois. When I asked where the rest of the fruits and vegetables were from, she said they were mostly from
Florida. However, she did say that she will have some items from a Washington Missouri farm later in the season. And in case you were wondering, none of her produce is organic. 

Being disappointed, I moved to the next vendor. Mr. John Swoboda greeted me with a warm smile. Before Mr. Swoboda were a menagerie of jars full of canned fruits and vegetables. When I asked him where he got his produce, I was very pleased to hear that they are mostly grown in his and his wife’s garden. His wife, Tracy McCuskey, told me that they did get some pears from a friend’s tree in town, and the apples were from her workplace, and the peaches are from Calhoun County, but everything else was out of their own garden. Well, that is, except the blueberries. They have tried to grow blueberries without luck, so their blueberry products are from store bought blueberries.

You will not find the “Certified Organic” label on any of Swoboda and McCuskey’s
products, but if you are willing to believe these seemingly fine people, they
do not use any pesticides or herbicides in their garden. 

Some of their wares are quite ordinary, such as apple pie filling, apple preserves, bread and butter pickles, canned okra, and peach butter. But you will find other items that are a bit
more out of the ordinary, such as carrot cake jam, mint jelly, peach poppy dressing, and Chow Chow relish.

Chow Chow relish? I’ve never heard of such a thing. It is made with green tomatoes,
green bell peppers, onions, jalapeños, vinegar, cloves, and salt. Mrs. McCuskey tells me that her grandfather used to put in on his meat. She states it is an acquired taste. 

They also sell a hot pepper sauce. The ingredients include a couple of varieties of habanero chili peppers. Mr. Swoboda told me about an incident they had with this pepper batch when they first attempted to make it. A jar of the stuff exploded inside of their canner during the canning process and when they opened the canner, the vapor from the hot sauce infiltrated the entire house. It was so bad their eyes were watering no matter where they went.

Well, we did walk away with a jar of apple pie filling, bruschetta, and raspberry preserves. I can tell you that the raspberry preserves are delicious. I had some on my toast this morning.

So thanks Mr. Swoboda and Mrs. McCuskey. I will be back for more. Maybe next time we will have better weather.