Photo By Alistair Burke

This Saturday at Watauga County Farmers' Market Reba Green and Cindy Blake will have potatoes, cukes, squash, blackberries, ferns and potted hens and chicks. Tumbling Shoals Farm will have Japanese eggplant, mini-white, green slicer, and soyu long cucumbers, zephyr squash, zucchini, potatoes of all colors, sweet onions, and a variety of flowers. Matt Cooper will have Dino Kale, Rainbow Swiss Chard and Broccoli. Jon and VJ Bost will have blueberries, blueberries and more blueberries. They hope to have some new tables and maybe a quilt chest. Zydeco Moon Organic Farm will have squash, blueberries, tomatoes, beets and lettuce.

The Lowrances of Poppy's Knob Farm will have two new varieties of pork sausage: mild Italian and hot Italian. They will also have breakfast sausage, chops, roasts and ribs from their locally raised pastured pigs. Come by their booth for a free sample of sausage. The Pasta Wench will have eggplant, gorgonzola and shallot ravioli and also special pasta this week featuring local ingredients from other farm vendors at the WCFM. These include Fog Likely ravioli with rocambole garlic and baby portobello, Tumbling Shoals Farm ravioli with Zephyr squash and Candy onion and Ripshin Goat Dairy ravioli with goat cheese, sun dried tomato and scallion. Ripshin Goat Dairy will have goat milk feta this Saturday, a good hard cheese for crumbling. Jay Parr will be selling Parr Barrs: all natural, organic, vegetarian whole food energy bars made without sugar or preservatives.

Shady Grove Gardens and Nursery will have pink 'Ascari' Oriental lilies, lavender 'Grosso', large dug daylily clumps, Helenium 'Mardi Gras' and cut flowers to make your own beautiful arrangements.

Becki Henderson-Gow will have a selection of new Raku vases in a range of colors and textures perfect for decorating your home. Harmony Acres Soap Company will have wonderful handmade, natural soaps, lotions, lip balms and joint & muscle creams made from lemongrass, lavender, patchouli and sandalwood-citrus.

NC Cooperative Extension will offer its second free Plant Clinic at the Watauga County Farmers Market on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 29 2009. The clinic will run from 4:00 – 6:00 PM, and will be staffed by Watauga County Extension Agents Meghan Baker and Richard Boylan. Home gardeners and commercial growers alike are welcome to bring samples of plants they have questions about. Extension agents Baker and Boylan will have reference materials on plant identification, diseases, and insects available at the clinic, plus soil sample boxes and other materials to assist growers in diagnostics and management. Growers wishing to bring samples to the clinic should pack them in plastic bags, to minimize the chance that any fungal spores or plant viruses could contaminate other plants at the Market. For more information, call Watauga Cooperative Extension at 828-264-3061.

Wednesday afternoon markets are a great option for those who can not come out on Saturdays. We have been averaging almost 20 vendors on Wednesday with a great selection of produce, garden plants, foods and great hand crafts. There will be no sales allowed before 4PM to give our vendors time to set up properly.

Find us every Saturday morning and on Wednesday afternoons from 4-7 at the Horn in the West in Boone. Turn next to First Citizens Bank on Highway 105 Extension and go to the top of the hill. Call WCFM manager Karen Bauman at 1-828-355-4918 for more information. We will be there rain or shine!