[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n a recent Saturday morning at the Mamaroneck Winter Farmers Market, a little girl came to visit Allan Cohen at his Orwasher’s Bakery stand. She waited patiently while he talked to another customer. Her eyes lit up when he finally turned to her and said, “Good morning! Would you like your cinnamon roll?”
“Yes,” she exclaimed with her arms outstretched. As she ran back to her mother, her words, “Thank you, Allan!” filled the air. Cohen turned to his customers in line and said, “I remember when her mother was pregnant with her. They come to the market every week, and now she’s 5 years old.”
The Mamaroneck Winter Farmers Market takes place on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, located at 168 W. Boston Post Road. It’s right off of Mount Pleasant Avenue, just two blocks away from downtown Mamaroneck Avenue. All the vendors are local farmers and food companies that travel to market and back in a day. They sell fresh fish, pastureraised meat, chicken, eggs, delicious local produce, artisanal cheese, hummus varieties, savory yogurt, breads, pickles, locally roasted coffee, baked goods, prepared foods to go and more.
Farmers market shopping is also known as “direct marketing” or “relationship agriculture.” There are no middle distributors at the market. Customers buy directly from the producers.
For Ed Trotta of Trotta Foods, he sells his family’s Italian specialties here because the experience goes back to his childhood when one knew the store owner. Today, he brings fresh and smoked mozzarella, a wide variety of pastas and sauces and more. He sources his ingredients locally whenever possible and offers seasonal products, such as spring pea and goat cheese ravioli and arugula pesto.
Trotta grew up in his family’s food business, but for the entrepreneur next to him, Sean Carmody of Taiim Shack Mobile, growing a small food company is a brand-new adventure. Carmody got his start as a line cook at a busy Middle Eastern restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island. When he moved back home to Westchester County, he discovered Taiim Falafel Shack in Hastings-on-Hudson. He worked for the owner, Zamir Iosepovici, until Iosepovici was ready to sell the business. Carmody was first in line to buy Taiim’s hummus line, and now he builds upon Taiim’s wellloved varieties.
In discussing his plans for spring, Carmody looked across the market to the bountiful produce at Lani’s Farm stand. “I’m starting to see the sorrel come in over at Lani’s. I’m eager tosee what I can create with it,” he said.
Lani’s Farm is one of the most renowned farms in the region for their unique and incredible produce. Owned by farmer Steve Yoo, they currently bring 30 varieties of greens alone to Mamaroneck. They also have root vegetables, spring flowers, dried bean varieties, frozen vegetables and more.
Yoo was inspired by his father to begin farming. “My father always loved to do anything related to the dirt,” he explained.
Raised on a farm in Korea, his father immigrated to America as an adult in the late 1970s. While living in the Bronx, the elder Yoo would find abandoned lots to cultivate. “Wherever he found a place to grow, he’d go there, clean it up, and start planting,” he said.
This is the first season Lani’s Farm has participated in the Mamaroneck Winter Farmers Market. They are known as a longstanding vendor at the Larchmont Farmers Market, and celebrated for their produce—and their sampling station.
Another new addition in Mamaroneck is Go-Go Pops from Cold Spring, New York. They make delicious popsicles, as well as prepared salads and soups to eat on site or carry out. “Everything we make is all-natural. Any produce we can buy from local vendors, we do,” said chef and owner Greg Miller.
Not only are there several new vendors in Mamaroneck, the returning favorites keep introducing new products.
Sohha Savory Yogurt just launched a drink made from yogurt and sea salt called aryan or doogh in the Middle East, depending on the region. They also started selling soap at the suggestion of one of their customers. Sohha co-founder, John Fout, explained that a regular customer said, “I’m going to eat half of this yogurt and put the other half on my face.” Fout was amazed, and it gave them the idea to make yogurt whey soap. “Now I have people telling me that they’ve stopped buying body creams because this soap is so regenerative,” Fout said.
The Mamaroneck Winter Farmers Market runs through Saturday, April 16. The following Saturday, April 23, the Larchmont Farmers Market will open for the 2016 season in the Metro-North parking lot off of Chatsworth Avenue. Both farmers markets are managed by Down to Earth Markets.
