All your favorite fresh fruits, veggies, and local products. Check back soon for this week's highlights.

At the height of the Midwest's agricultural season, your 61st Street Farmers Market has abundant pleasure in store for you! We encourage you this week to take time to taste, savor, and talk about the flavors and textures of the Market's offerings. We will even give you some opportunities to practice!

Here are some of this week's 61st Street Farmers Market offerings:

Just in case it might have sneaked by you unobserved, we are smack dab in the middle of National Farmers Market Week! Declared by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in a very official proclamation, National Farmers Market Week was invented to raise awareness of the critically important place of America's farmers in our daily life, and of the role that farmers markets play in providing opportunities for small family farmers and consumers to connect with one another.

Whether you are enjoying, or simply surviving, the summer heat, the impact on local agriculture has been intense. The worst drought in 50 years and record heat waves have crippled crops and threaten livestock. And as the planet continues to heat up, droughts will increase in severity in our region.

Yield: Makes 4 first-course servings
Active Time: 20 min
Total Time: 20 min

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 lb tomatoes, chopped (4 cups)
1 lb peaches, pitted and chopped (2 cups)
1/4 cup crushed ice
2 tablespoons chopped shallot (1 medium)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 to 1/2 cup water

PREPARATION

Peppers will be arriving at the Market this week. Here's what else you'll be able to find:

The heat wave is going to break just in time for the market this Saturday. We have all the fruit, veggies, cheese, meat, eggs, popcorn, prepared food, smoothies, and flowers you can handle! Here are some specials:

Here are some highlights of this Independence Day Market:

• Celebrate I-Day with fire works and an equally spectacular salad or dessert made with Mick Klug Orchards' red raspberries, blueberries, sweet cherries, tart cherries, peaches, and apricots. Mick Klug will also be bringing the season's first SWEET CORN! ('knee high on the 4th of July?), as well as green beans, cabbage, green onions, zucchini, yellow squash, patty pan squash, 8-Ball zucchini, Mexican zucchini, pickles,cucumbers....
• Envision will be selling kale, chard, zucchini,arugula, basil, chives, sage, mint.
• Mike & Clare report that they will be bringing snap peas, lettuce, fennel, parsley, kale, chard, beets, zucchini.
• Of course, you can meet all of your I-Day meat needs at the Market. Faith's Farm and Mint Creek Farm offer organic and sustainably raised pork, beef, lamb, goat, and chicken. Also, in addition to your pork brats, pick up some Lovely Lard from Faith's Farm for your perfect holiday fruit pie!
• Spice! will be proudly cooking up carbs, produce & proteins from Faith's Farm, Penny Pastry, Growing Power, Envision, Lange's Farm, and Dotson's Farm. Try out Samm's Egg Taco (shredded mix of zucchini and summer squash/cilantro and onion), his Market Burrito (kale/red potatoes/black beans/brown rice/spicy garlic sauce), the Chicken Taco (grilled chicken/radishes and garlic scapes), and/or the Torta (smoked bacon/pulled chicken/green garlic/pea shoots).
• Sunkissed Organics will be with us this week, bringing sugar snap peas, lettuce greens, new potatoes and farm fresh eggs! Sasha will also be selling shrubs, potted black-eyed susans, and potted herbs.
• From 10am-1pm, stop at the Market School tent to converse and consult with Master Gardener Madiem Kawa who will answer your questions about growing your own food. How's that for independence?!
• Chef Nicholas Daloia from the Washburne Culinary Institue will be making a clafouti with fresh, local fruit from the Market! The Chef Demo takes place at 10:30am.

See you at the Market!

Here are a few additional highlights of this week's Market that we can celebrate:

• Mick Klug Orchards has announced that this week will be the final week for STRAWBERRIES! But it is the start of the red raspberry, sweet cherry, tart cherry, apricot, and (we'll see) blueberry and peach season. Mick Klug will also be bringing shelled peas, sugar snap peas, cabbage, yellow squash, green squash, Mexican Grey squash, Eight-ball squash(!), cucumbers, green onions....

Blackstone Bicycle Works 2012 Summer Program is just around the corner and, as usual, we will be closed the week before in preparation. We've got a lot to clean, and a lot to organize, because this is going to be our best summer yet!

So, Blackstone will be closed from Sunday the 17th through Monday the 25th. We will reopen on Tuesday, the 26th and begin our summer schedule.

Bikes will be available for sale on Saturday, June 23, starting at 10am, at the 61st Street Farmers Market.