Gallery • 7 Photos

Maryn Cave

The Staff of Life bakery booth sells a customer a loaf of fresh baked bread. The bakery has a wide variety of breads, pastries and other baked goods.

At the downtown Harrisonburg Farmers Market, local businesses come to sell their unique products. Even though it’s early in the morning and already hot and humid, the market already has customers at its kiosks.

One of the biggest appeals of this farmers market are the promises that the businesses guarantee about their products, such as 100 percent all natural produce, tiny boxes of greens equal to 40 times that amount of full grown plants, bioavailable medicinal mushroom extracts and more.

One of the most commonly sighted products at the farmers market is fresh produce. There are at least three vendors at the farmers market with big displays of different fruits and vegetables, all vibrantly colored.

Curtis Yankey of North Mountain Produce has been selling the crops he harvests on his farm with his wife for nine years. He was drawn to this specific market because “It’s a really nice market. I like the one-on-one interaction with the person buying the product instead of selling it to a store.”

Another produce vendor, Radell Schrock of Season’s Bounty, had just as many items to choose from. Intensely colored tomatoes and carrots were showcased alongside giant cabbages and peppers. Hearty potatoes and corn are just two more of the many options he had for sale.

Schrock said part of the appeal of the market for him was the fact that it’s local. He also added that a big part of his business is that they don’t use pesticides and it is environmentally friendly.

A different booth sold vegetables too, but in a different form – microgreens. Ian Young has only been selling his product for two months. According to Young, microgreens are the baby versions of lots of vegetables and a superfood. The benefits of microgreens are that there are more nutrients packed in a smaller package.

Young stated that one box of his broccoli microgreens has the same amount of nutrients as 40 times that quantity of broccoli. Microgreens are a new trend and hard to find in grocery stores, which is part of why Young is so proud to grow and sell them.

There’s another kiosk that’s selling a product you might not find in the store – Agape Mycology. The owner of this eccentric business, Eric Fisher, extracts medicinal compounds from mushrooms and turmeric. His product is more bioavailable to the human body than pills, powders or multivitamins, because there’s no manufactured materials for it to process. Fisher explained that some of his products have properties that range from antiviral to antioxidant and more. Additionally, he grows and harvests almost all of his mushrooms.

“I think that there’s a whole new wave of natural healing coming,” Fisher said. “And I kind of jumped on it and I’ll see where it takes me.”

The Staff of Life is a bakery booth with a wide range of products, both classic and experimental. Ray Snider, the attendant at the market, explained that their business was unique because they do not have an in-bakery shop. Staff of Life does not have an in-house bakery, so the farmers market provides a location for them to sell their goods.

Nelson Garcia, a chef and entrepreneur, sells Virginia BBQ Chicken with his family at the market, where they’ve been selling their product for two years. Garcia has said that their flavors are delicious and the way they work as a family is as smooth a a well-oiled machine, but the unique aspect of their business is, according to Garcia, “It’s Virginia Style BBQ Chicken, so the recipes are handed down only by making it.”

There were numerous other stands and booths at the farmers market, no doubt with their own individual products and promises. Other goods like candies and syrups, t-shirts, buttons and pins, products of woodworkers, and all-natural drinks were just some of the other attractions that could be found at the downtown market.