EVERETT – The Downtown Everett Farmers Market opened Wednesday with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
There was also goat’s milk soap, barbecue-flavored hazelnuts and gardeners wearing umbrella hats selling “kitty crack” – 100 percent organic catnip.
The umbrella-wearing brothers from Arlington, Stu and Ian Bush, also sell fuchsia, heliotrope, hastas and ferns.
Stu Bush, a former bus driver and Ian Bush, a former prison guard, make the rounds to area farmers markets.
It’s a season of hard work and meeting new people.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Stu Bush said. Directly above his head was a homemade sign hanging from the brothers’ van: “Just another day at the plant.”
Unlike the weekend markets, Everett’s 2-year-old urban market lures downtown workers from their offices and cubicles with promises of fresh food and interesting fares.
A group of ladies from the Snohomish County Auditor’s office stepped out Wednesday afternoon, as they did every Wednesday last summer, for some fresh air and fresh produce.
For Jane Forson, who has been with the auditor’s office for more than two years, the parking-lot-turned-produce-aisle was a little bit of heaven.
She hails from Ghana, Africa, where she has worked as a chef. Though now she works in an office instead of a kitchen, she puts her culinary degree to good use on workplace potluck days.
“And you should see the lunches she brings for herself,” said her co-worker Heather Ayers.
Forson needed a box to carry away her purchases. She bought fresh herbs and fuchsia for some hanging baskets.
“I’m very creative,” Forson said. “I can just go in the fridge (for ingredients) and create something.”
Behind a large, hand-painted sign, “Charlie’s Organic Garden,” boxes of produce sat on the tailgate of a Ford pickup truck.
The back of the truck held lettuce, snap peas, carrots and spinach.
Mike and April Bartel grew the vegetables on the 60-acre Snohomish farm they named after their son, Charlie, who is almost 1 year old.
Wednesday marked their first appearance at the downtown farmers market.
Their tailgate fare will evolve over the summer, including potatoes, garlic, sweet corn, pumpkins and squash.
Bartel was raised on a dairy farm and the sunrise to sunset workday. The vegetable stand at the couple’s Old Snohomish Road farm isn’t open yet, so they’re branching out to farmers markets.
Farming and lugging produce to area markets is not a way to make a fortune, Mike Bartel said, but the family enjoys hitting the road and meeting new people.
“It’s about more than money,” Mike Bartel said.
Indeed – last week they gave 150 pounds of spinach to the Edmonds Food Bank.
“It’s all I know,” he said. “It’s a good, decent, honest way of life. It’s real satisfying to know that you’re feeding people.”
It’s too early to say whether Charlie will share his father’s occupation. Maybe by the end of farmers-market season the toddler will have made up his mind.
“I hope so, but it will be up to him,” Mike Bartel said. “He’s got a farm named after him – that’s not a bad start.”
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
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