If you follow the blog regularly, you'll recall a post I did last month about a first visit here in Raleigh to the State Farmers Market Restaurant (which we followed with a stop at the State Farmers Market's Market Imports store). We enjoyed not only our meal there, but were very curious to return and explore the rest of the daily market there.
That happened this week. We started the trip like we did the one in March -- with a stop at the restaurant, where Lee Ann and I revisited our orders from the first visit. I won't bother to dwell on that since I covered that territory already.
Afterward, we strolled the two main market halls, one of which is actually a pavilion: It's covered, but open to the outdoors on the sides. The other hall, right behind the very long pavilion, is enclosed. I still marvel that these vendors come here to sell every day -- and for regular business hours.
Moreover, there are multiple produce vendors. I react with surprise because of my familiarity with farmers markets in Indiana, where farmers gather once -- and in some cases, twice -- a week, and there are usually only two or three produce vendors.
I didn't count produce vendors at the NC State Farmers Market, but there were at least a half-dozen and possibly more offering a variety of vegetables, including potatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and asparagus.
A separate vendor was selling just strawberries, and we bought a couple of baskets of them. But I didn't learn until reading the daily newspaper here Friday morning -- which was after I'd been to the market -- that the number of strawberry growers in North Carolina is dwindling fast. The past two growing seasons here have been unkind to strawberry crops, which are sensitive to frost once the berries bloom, and early frosts crippled the local berry volumes both seasons. Some vendors who had grown strawberries every year took the hint a year ago and are now either skipping a season or two before trying to grow strawberries again ... or dropping the crop altogether.
The pavilion also had plant vendors selling flowers, bushes and trees, and there was at least one bakery represented there as well.
The enclosed hall had at least one meat vendor (Lee Ann purchased some beef and chicken livers there), another bakery or two, a short-order grill, a novelty shop, a snacks shop (with Amish popcorn), a local spice shop and others.
To view a larger, sharper version of any image in this post, simply click on the image. This is particularly beneficial for visitors accessing the blog on a mobile device. To view a full gallery of images from this shoot, follow the link in this sentence.
Photo geek stuff: All images were taken with a Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens. Each composition was bracketed for three exposures for processing into one frame in Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software. All images in this post were processed in Photomatix.
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