Amish Markets

On a wonderful late Spring day, my daughter and I headed to the country to see what we could find at all of the Amish markets.  We came home with the car loaded and a lot of prep work ahead.  Look at the purple asparagus we bought.

 Local strawberries are available at all of the markets.

 Blackberries too.

 Lettuce and green onions. The purple asparagus is new to the market scene.  It is huge and thick, not fibrous at all and rather sweet.

Rhubarb and beets.

 Most of the markets have their own nurseries too.

 Many of them sell things for fairy gardens.

The prices are at least half of what I would pay in the city.

 Plus, the scenery isn't too bad either.  All of the animals are out grazing.

 The fields are newly plowed and planted.

There are about 5 of these markets within a few miles of each other.

 They all sell their home baked goods.

 The down side to finding all of these fresh berries is that they need to be transformed quickly while they are still fresh.  As soon as I got home I turned the berries into jam.

 I made rhubarb sauce.

 I froze most of the strawberry jam.  I make mine with just a little bit of sugar and lemon zest and juice so I freeze it rather than can it.

 I froze my rhubarb sauce too.

 There's nothing like having fresh berries in the middle of winter.

 And I had to make biscuits to eat with the jam I didn't freeze.

 I gave my friends fresh biscuits and jam too.  They love this time of year.

The Blog Tech and his wife got some along with sausage gravy that I made for them to eat with the biscuits for dinner. This is such a fun time of the year.