Downtown Market

 

If you haven’t checked out the Saturday morning market in downtown Elizabeth City, you’re missing a delightful experience.  Between May and October, white tents adorn the waterfront lawn on Water Street at the city docks.   Local farmers and bakers tantalize our senses with a plethora of selections.  The current season defines the bounty…..spring offers up asparagus and lettuce while we patiently await the season’s first berries.  As soon as the strawberries are gone, we’re getting  blueberries.  And everyone waits for the summer’s first vine grown tomato.  Good-bye to hot-house, cardboard, no color, no taste tomatoes.  Hello Better Boys!  There’s squash, corn, green beans, butter beans, zucchini too.  One booth sells herbs for “grow your own.”  Do you like lavender or mint in your tea?  Try sprouting it yourself.

The best chocolate chip cookies I have ever eaten are offered at Sydney’s Café, table.  They' re a tad pricey, but I am known to splurge on occasion.  Those cookies just flat out beg.  I usually  buy one for now and another for later.  The bread and baguettes are baked fresh on market day  as well. 

Other vendors are offering up jams and jellies, cucumber pickles, watermelons and cantaloupes, cakes and pies.  You can even buy a necklace or pair of handmade earrings.  Some Saturdays, John Peel sets up shop and sells his top shelf pottery, and the SPCA often brings the “puppy of the week” hoping it will find its new owner. 

The scene is friendly and just plain wholesome.  Folks mill around with their babies in backpacks and their dogs on leashes.   In a few scarce weeks, fall will be upon us and the bounty will change again. Pumpkins will replace watermelons.  It’s a social event.  Everyone’s invited.

 Come one, come all, come often.

There’s something for everyone.