Local Organic Market

Driving by you would never know that this is a thriving organic farm. Every Saturday they open up their gates and sell fresh, local, organic produce and some other items. Honestly, we don't live too far away, and we never would have known. In fact, we were told about the market and googled it. Someone who blogs had recdently been there on a trip here and blogged about it. She posted a similar pic to this one and I immediately recognized the house. Yes, this is someone's house. They have property on the side with 5 greenhouses. They set up tables in the garage area. It was surreal.

Once we entered the "market" we found that they had a lot to offer. They had bins filled with produce. In the room back towards the left they were preparing the BioFontinhas salad (which we saw on the menu at O Pescador). Here they have grapvines covering the garage area. This is a common practice, although I have never seen anyone turn it into a produce stand. We learned that if it is not out front and they have it, they will get it for you. Many locals showed up and the older gentleman from this family would go into another room and bring it to them.
Here is a view inside one of the greenhouses. They had 5 nicely placed on the side of their home. You could tell they rotated the crops since some greenhouses were emptying or just being replanted.

Here are the ladies making the organic salads. These are sold for 3.50 euro, but it is my understanding that the 0.50 euro is a deposit on the reusable plastic containers. When you bring them back you get a discount on the salad the next time. We decided to order 2 salads, which are cleaned and made fresh for you as you wait. The wait was about 10-15 minutes and they encourage you to walk around the greenhouses and see what they have.

Here are some bins with apples, plums, and the grapes are in the bin under the newspapers.

Here is a close up of the grapevines. These grapes taste so different from what we are used to. These have a jelly consistency on the inside and the have seeds (which I should have suspected). I think it will take some getting used to.

Here you can see that not only did they have produce, but that had some other foods to offer as well. There was honey, eggs and a whole wheat bread with sunflower seeds. It looked too good to pass up so we bought a loaf and some honey. The owner of this farm (or the father of the owner) explained to us that the honey comes from a farm that is the only one of it's kind. The bee keeper allows some of the bees honey to remain with them for food during the winter months, where other honey producers take all of the honey away and feed the bees sugar water. It sounds like it is better for the bees this way, and boy is the honey delicious. We were told to try it out on the bread.

Here I am in one of the green houses, checking out some of the leafy greens while we wait for our salads.

Here is the finished product.

Then when we got home our landlord stopped by as arranged to pick up the rent. So we paid our rent and we were given a fresh loaf of bread. That is a new practice for me, my landlord in Vegas never gave me anything. This was not only a huge loaf of bread, it was slightly warm too. Our landlords actually own a grocery store in another village nearby, so I assume it came from there. Oops, now we have 2 loaves of bread. This was pao dolce, or a sweet bread. It is really good, and yes, it is sweet. I think this is the same bread that we were served at O Pescador the other night.

Now this is the reason why we did not need to buy fresh eggs from the market. Our next door neighbor left these fresh eggs on our doorstep while we were at dinner the other night. These came straight from the chicken in his yard. I love getting super fresh eggs. It is so neat.

He also brought us this big bag of onions and potatoes from his garden.

After we returned home from the market, and ate a lot of bread, we did need to decide on dinner. The field greens from the market came as just greens, so we added a little bit of chopped tomato to it. I haven't started my salad dressing making venture yet, so the only we had in the house was fat free ranch (from when we have the Morningstar Farms Veggie Nuggets). We made do with this.

We had tons of bread now and we really weren't sure what to do with it all. Then Ryan had a great idea. The sweet bread from our landlord would be great toasted for bruschetta. Friday night was taco night and we had plenty of left over, already chopped tomatoes. We also like our bruschetta when it has large thin slices pieces of parmesean cheese on top, so we prepared it this way. It was delicious and a great use of the leftovers.

Here is the complete view of our dinner from Saturday night. It may look small, but we were stuffed (probably since we had eaten so much bread all day long, LOL).

The next morning we had breakfast, which was comprised of mostly local foods. The eggs were from the chicken next door, the bread from the organic market, the honey we purchased at the market, and local plums. The only things from somewhere else were the kiwis and parmesean cheese, which we shredded over the scambled eggs. This was a great way to start the day!

QUESTION: Do you have a local organic market near you? Have you ever been to an organic market at someone's house?