Coastside Farmers Market Opens This Weekend

On Saturday, May 4, when the clock strikes 9 a.m., the Coastside Farmers Market opens in Half Moon Bay.

The opening of this market heralds the beginning of the abundant season, when local fields and gardens are flush with a bountiful harvest of high-quality and high-flavor fresh produce.

Shoppers on Saturday can expect to find plenty that's in season — cherries, artichokes, new potatoes, onions, leafy greens, farm fresh eggs, and flowers. They will also find beets, kale, potatoes, leeks, fava beans, and spinach at Farmer John's and Eda Muller's booth.

The market's founder-manager Erin Tormey, who is also a first-generation farmer, raising a flock of chickens, also runs the market in Pacifica, which opened Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.

The Coastside Farmers Market is the winner of the coveted "Best Bay Area Farmers Market" in the 2013 BEST of Bay Area A-list. It's known for being a farmer-directed Certifed Market designed to link Coastside residents, from Pacifica to Pescadero, with their neighbors — the Coastside farmers, ranchers, fishermen and culinary artisans producing some of the most nutritious and creative food around.

"What we have here is not a food fair," Tormey said in a Pacifica Tribune article. "It is a community-based farmers market, with locally grown products, that is attended by people who are really connected to their community. Our products are based on what is seasonal, what is grown in our local communities, not what is findable faraway. In Pacifica and Half Moon Bay, it is neighbors buying from neighbors."

The Coastside Farmers Markets, www.coastsidefarmersmarket.org, run through Dec. 21. In Pacifica, Wednesdays, 2:30 to 6:30 p.m., in Rockaway Beach. In Half Moon Bay, Saturday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Shoreline Station.

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• Coastside Earth Day Celebration Events
• ‘Bee’ware: It’s Bee Swarm Season in Half Moon Bay
• Welcoming the Tom Lantos Tunnels to the Coast [PHOTOS/VIDEO]
• Half Moon Bay History Quiz: What’s This Photo?