Kelly McKeown started the manager’s job last week, and met this year’s vendors during sign-up market day on March 25. McKeown is assisting Laura Reilly, who oversees the market as part of her job as the City of Salem’s Horticulturist.
The first few weeks of market will feature vendors with vegetable plants and early greens such as kale, eggs and grassfed beef from Sparks Family Farm in Stuart and for those customers who have been hungering for fresh feta, that and other goat cheeses from Cindy and Michael Curtin’s Curtin’s Dairy.
There will also be baked goods such as sourdough breads from Betty Bowles of Goodview who will have honey later and who has been coming to market for four years. Longtime vendor Greenwood Farm in Copper Hill will have plants at the corner of the Academy Street drive into the market. Other vendors, plants, vegetables, fruits, baked goods, meats and more will come each week as the season progresses and crops develop. Check the Salem Farmers Market Facebook site for more updates.
New vendors signing up on Friday included Ricky and Angie Crandall family-run Stump Ridge Farm LLC in Pulaski, which specializes in all sorts of fresh pork products including pork chops.
New manager McKeown is an agricultural grower herself. With her fiancé, Daniel Key, she grows a garden plot at the Catawba Sustainability Center where they raise summer and fall vegetables which she sells to Local Roots restaurant in Grandin Village, McKeown said. She also works part-time at Local Roots as a server, manager and bartender.
She is a native of River Falls, Wisconsin, who has lived in the Roanoke Valley for two years.
The Salem Farmers Market opens on Saturday officially at 6:30 a.m. with most vendors coming in place around 8 a.m. During the vegetable and fruit season later in June, July and August, vendors will have stalls and tables overflowing with meats, eggs, vegetables and fruits, pastured chicken and scrumptious baked goods of all kinds.
The market is located at the corner of Main Street and Academy in downtown Salem.