Sustainable Saturday - Good King Henry at the Market

I am starting a new feature this Saturday - I may only run it for a month or two.  The outdoor Farmers Market season is upon us, as spring progresses here in upstate New York.  I am more out and about, and I find, enough times, that I am writing about farmers markets, or other sustainability type issues, on enough Saturdays anyway.

So maybe my inner muse is taking a hint.

Today, spouse and I traveled to Elmira (about an hour away) for a Civil War reenactment, so we decided to combine the trip with a trip to Ithaca, New York.  Ithaca is the home of Cornell University and Ithaca College, and their Saturday farmers market is a marvel of organic produce, local cheese, handcrafts, free range meat and eggs, food vendors including a very popular macrobiotic eatery, and practices that are adopted with a keen eye towards environmental impact.

The entrance is so inviting. (Full disclosure- this particular picture and the pansy picture were taken in a previous visit right before Earth Day in April.)

One of the many fine vendors - who can resist this name?

Pansies in April have progressed to....

...a beautiful show of rainbow chard and red and white radishes.

Veggies for sale included everything from the normal spring greens (spinach, mesclun, lettuce) to wild ramps and fiddleheads. 

One vendor was selling plants of Good-King-Henry, but we were unsure enough about it, despite its historical origins, to buy it.  It sounds like it is only edible in the early spring, so for us it may be more of a curiosity than a real help on our very small urban plot.  We did buy a sorrel plant from the vendor.  Sorrel is gourmet food for Japanese beetles but (knock on wood) it seems we have fewer of those beetles lately than in past years.


Have you grown Good-King-Henry?  I'd love to hear from you.

Join me tomorrow, please, for Civil War Sunday.