Jackson Heights Life

Opening Day for the Jackson Heights Greenmarket will be this coming Sunday, June 8th.  The Greenmarket runs Sundays, 8 am - 3 pm, June through November, on 34th Ave & 78th Street (at Travers Park).

The Greenmarket is sponsored by the Council on the Environment in New York City.  According to their website, "Greenmarket promotes regional agriculture and ensures a continuing supply of fresh, local produce for New Yorkers. Greenmarket has organized and managed open-air farmers markets in NYC since 1976. Greenmarket supports farmers and preserves farmland for the future by providing regional small family farmers with opportunities to sell their fruits, vegetables and other farm products to New Yorkers."

Starting this year, the Jackson Heights Greenmarket will accept credit cards.

CENYC has a helpful calendar of what tends to be available when.

It usually is much better than that.  Perhaps vendors didn't show because of the heat?  I'll try to find out.

I love rugelach too, lol!  It's just on a 95 degree day I was dying to make a tomato salad with some fresh heirlooms from the market and some buffalo mozz. cheese I got the other day.  Oh well, I'll give it another shot if I see more vendors show up.  Thanks!

Don't worry - I'm sure there will be more vendors eventually (although I don't think any of them are farmers who have greenhouse/hothouse tomatoes, which is all you'd get at this time of year - it's a while yet (5-6 weeks maybe?) until even the earliest South Jersey field tomatoes will be ripe and my memory of the farmers we had last year was that most of them were Hudson Valley.).  As farmers have more produce, more of them will show up and have more tables every week.

I will say that although the quantity of vendors will go up, I was disappointed weekly last summer with the quality of produce -fine for things like cucumbers or lettuce but corn, peaches, tomatoes, etc. were all pretty sad.  I ended up still shlepping home produce from various Manhattan greenmarkets every week.  I still don't understand why the JH greenmarket has such sad produce compared to even other small greenmarkets around the city.

I've been dying to check out Sunnyside's Sat greenmarket since I've read that they have a fishmonger there now!     I'd love to get line-caught local fish without going to Manhattan or out the East End.

Anyone know if the NY Hall of Science will have a farmer's market again?  I only made it there the final weekend last fall when all that was left was one lone stand with apples - luckily that was all I needed as I was in search of apples for pie!  Did anyone go there earlier in the season?  Worth it?

the hall of science will open its farmers market on june 22nd.

I received a partial list of JH Greenmarket farmers from the CENYC.  I'll add more as I learn who the others are.

• Sergio and Paz Nolasco, Nolasco Farm (Hackettstown, NJ) - Vegetables
• Gary Glowaczewski, R & G Produce (Goshen, NY) - Vegetables
• Pedro Rodriguez, La Baraja Farm (Orange County, NY) - Vegetables
• Thomas Halik, Not Just Rugelach (Kearny, NJ) - Baked Goods
• Nestor and Alejandra Tello, Tello's Green Farm (Dutchess County, NY) - Poultry

Are they looking for volunteers here in JH?  I might be interested in doing some demos.  When I lived in Astoria I almost started giving private lessons, but then I started looking at coops and that consumed all my time.  This might be a good way to get back into that here in JH. 

Thanks, Jenn, for the Hall of Science info, and thanks, Todd, for the farmer's list!!

I shouldn't have been so down on the market a few posts above - I'm super grateful for the greenmarket we have, just wish it could be even better!  I think I was just super disappointed that the farmer with peaches last summer had very sad peaches and the farmer with corn had very sad corn, and those are two things I spend all year looking forward to having.  Peaches, corn, and tomatoes - three of my favorite foods and three things I basically only eat in season fresh from a local farm.

As far as comparative prices  at different greenmarkets, I'm sure there's an element of what the market will bear.  On the other hand, the prices for comparable items don't seem so different to me here than, say, Union Square - but there are a lot more expensive options at Union Square.  Even there, different vendors will vary greatly in price, sometimes because the produce is grown differently with different care or similar items are actually different varieties, and sometimes for no reason that I can tell except that some people don't pay attention to the prices . . .