Community Corner

The Ambler Farmer's Market is in Full Swing

The local market has colorful local produce, farm-raised meats, Pennsylvania-made hard cider, and more.

The Ambler Farmer’s Market, in its first year, has set off a flurry on the Saturday mornings it has set up shop in the SEPTA parking lot on the corner of Butler Avenue and Maple Avenue, next to Trax Restaurant & Cafe.

The market, which will run June through October or November each Saturday from 9 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon, is the product of the year-long efforts of a steering committee.  “We are building a community through healthy, nutritious food,” said committee member Sara Hertz.

About seven vendors come to the market, and the goods range from black raspberries to Pennsylvania-made hard apple cider, and from fresh-baked croissants to mushrooms hand-picked that morning.

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“Our job is to make people’s eating a pleasant experience,” said farmer Steve Rineer, manning the stand where he and his family sell their own produce, like berries and tiny, colorful tomatoes, as well as their own all-natural chicken, pork, and beef.  His farm, Clay Brick Farms, is in Pequea, Pennsylvania.  When Rineer and his family have extra time they fish for trout, fillet it, and sell it at the market

Chad Langehr, a representative for the stand selling mushrooms from the five-generation family-owned Davidson’s Exotic Mushrooms in Kennel Square, said that some of their mushrooms are grown in natural caves and that each mushroom (oyster, maitake, shiitake, and more) is picked the very day that it is sold.

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Langher likes to talk to people about how mushrooms are grown and how to cook them.  “It’s a great market here,” he said.  “People enjoy food, talking about it, about how to prepare it.”

At the Alice Bakery and Confectionary stand, an offshoot from the bakery’s brick and mortar North Wales location, visitors can choose from a number of fresh-baked goods.  According to owner Dennis Darr, a popular item is their prosciutto and gruyere croissant baked with Plugrá European-style butter.  “Everything is made from scratch, shaped by hand and baked Saturday morning,” said Darr.

 Darr, according to the Alice Website, while attending the French Pastry School, worked under Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef Art Smith at Smith’s restaurant Table 52.

According to Hertz, the market also has educational sessions each week from 10 to 11 in the morning where topics run the gamut from backyard chickens to heirloom tomatoes.  A knife-sharpener is on hand on the first Saturday of each month.

The market also serves another purpose.  After each market session, vendors donate food to Ambler’s Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard, which helps feed needy people in the Ambler area.

For more information about the Ambler Farmer’s Market, click here.

 

 


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