CSAs in Indianapolis 2014

Today's Indianapolis Star features a list of CSAs in Indianapolis as well as information on a new farmers market on the Indianapolis northside. If you have an Indianapolis area or Bloomington CSA that wasn't featured in the Star article, please share your information below!

Indianapolis Area Farmers Market Dates

There's no excuse not to eat fresh! Indianapolis boasts farmers markets six days a week. Check out the many markets, including:

Tuesdays:

• Stadium Market: 4 to 7 p.m., May 17 to Sept. 27

Wednesdays:

• City Market: 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and Saturdays, 9:30 to 1 p.m., May to October

Thursdays:

• 38th and Meridian Farmers' Market North United Methodist Church: 4 to 6:30 p.m. June 2 to Oct. 27

Fridays:

• Traders Point Creamery, 4 to 8 p.m. through October (Items go fast, though!)

Saturdays:

• Bloomington Farmers Market: 8 to 1 p.m. at the City Hall-Showers Building



• Broad Ripple Farmers' Market: 8 a.m. to noon through Nov. 19



• City Market: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 21 to Sept. 24



• Fishers Farmers Market: 8 a.m. to noon May 28 to Sept. 24



• Greenwood Farmers Market: 8 a.m. to noon, Greenwood Public Library



• Zionsville Farmers' Market: 8 to 11 a.m., parking lot on Main (brick) Street near Dairy Queen, May 14 thru Sept. 24

Sundays:

• Irvington Farmers' Market: North side of Ellenberger Park, noon to 3 p.m. second Sunday of the month, June through October

Hunter's Honey Farm photos

From our weekend trip to Hunter's Honey Farm:

Some bees were in a tent, which had smoke to hide phermones.

Newly hatched bees were starting to come out, and a mom was able to feed one for the very first time. The new bees eat honey with their little red tongues. (Go figure.)

Pointing out where a bee was emerging. The girls were excited to be the first person to ever see that bee.

Inside, the girls got to fill their own honey bears. (Ours already has been well used!)

Pouring beeswax candles. (Visitors can roll their own candle.) Beeswax is smokeless when it burns!

Hunter's Honey Farm

Honeybees and Daisies. It's a good mix.

Today, our Daisy Girl Scout troop visited Hunter's Honey Farm in Martinsville, Ind., a drive but one well worth it. The 100-year-old honey farm had a Girl Scout day, where the Daisies could visit, see the bees in action, see how the honey gets from the comb to the table, make their own honey bear and create their own beeswax candle.

The girls were amazed to watch bees in action, see tiny bees emerge from the hive and see a young bee lick - yes, lick, fresh honey off a mom's finger. (I didn't realize bees ate honey as well as produce it.)

They learned that smoke staves off the honeybees, that the "boy bees" don't sting people, and that honey has lots of health benefits. I'm interested in testing out the theory that local honey can actually help people with allergies, any idea that sounds much better than giving my allergy-prone child a shot of Claritin every day.

It was a great afternoon, and the activities were able to entertain both my 3 year old and a friend's younger children, who have all had the chance now to make their own honey bears (a source of pride for my little guy) and candles (which were amazingly easy to make.) The honey farm offers these tours and activities on a regular basis, and the price is no worse than an afternoon at the movie or Children's Museum. They have some seasonal activities as well, like a forestry tour and a beehive tour as well.

Indy winter markets coming soon!

Sadly, our favorite local market closes this weekend. The good news is alternatives will be open soon.

Here are a few Indianapolis and Bloomington-area winter markets opening up:

The Indianapolis Winter Farmers Market is moving this year to The Maxwell, 530 East Ohio St. It will be open Satrudays beginning Nov. 13 through April 30. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

The Traders Point Creamery Winter Green Market opens Nov. 6 through April, from 9 a.m. to noon on the northwest side of Indy, near Zionsville.

The Bloomington Winter Farmers Market is back at Harmony School Gym. Dates are Satrudays, Dec. 4 to March 29, from 9 a.m. to noon.

Happy shopping!

Gardening giveaway: Calling all brown thumbs!

Are you a brown thumb? Do you swear you can't grow a thing?

Can you look at a plant and make it wilt?

Relax...we all have those days. I'll be honest and confess that I killed every single one of the seeds I started this spring when I got a little overzealous in transporting them outdoors.

But I'm trying again. And if you are too, I've got a giveaway for you.

Next week, I'm giving away the Black Thumb Seed Collection from Nature's Crossroads, a Bloomington, Ind.-based seed company. The set includes one packet each of pea, radish, lettuce, flower, and kale seeds plus detailed instructions.

You can enter these ways:

1. Post a comment with your worst gardening mishap.
2. Sign up for the RSS feed.
3. Tweet about it.
4. Blog about it.
5. Promote it on Facebook.

The contest ends May 2 at midnight EDT, and I'll announce the winner soon after. Good luck!

Bloomington Winter Market

It may techincally be spring, but winter markets are in full swing. If you're missing your springtime fix of plant starts and produce, look no further!

A few weeks ago, we finally had the chance to check out the Bloomington Winter Market . If you've ever had visions of a winter market being baked goods and canned veggies from the previous fall, think again.


We were impressed with the variety we found. Plant starts - something I'd written off in Indiana as being unavailable until Mother's Day. Produce. Eggs and cheeses. Herbal teas and yarn. Even salmon, our big splurge for the weekend.

The Bloomington Winter Market is smaller than the one in downtown Indy but worth the drive if you're looking for something a little less crowded. This is the last weekend for Bloomington; it's open until noon at Harmony School. If you're headed south this weekend, check it out!

Full of $^!+

This weekend, we took advantage of the warmer weather and drove to Bloomington. There we checked out the winter market (more on that later), got down and dirty in a park and visited an organic gardening store.

You would have thought my kids had died and gone to heaven. No, it wasn't because of the plants to explore, because there weren't any offered for sale.

Instead, it was all about the poop.

My daughter's been obsessed with the idea of worm poop as fertilizer ever since we experimented with some last year. (No, worm castings don't smell, it's a dark-brown consistency, and truthfully looks like a heavier (but not clayish) dirt.) In the height of her curiousity, she even asked a poor worm on our driveway after a rain, "Hey worm, did you poop?" I'm not sure why she wanted to know. I don't know that I want to know.

So at the garden store, she flocked to the gardening "enhancements" area, and proudly pointed out the worm poop to her toddler brother. They mushed the bag and looked at the sample baggie of worm castings. They banged on the different packages of enhancements and noted which were softer and which were not.

But the highlight of our excursion was learning that there just wasn't worm poop in this world. Oh yes, variety is the spice of life, and you can have it in your castoffs too. Chicken. Seabirds. Bat guanos from around the world. (The garden catalog even had a world sampler!) But in the end, we stuck with the garden-variety earthworm castoffs, which worked for us last year quite well.

At an age where you're already dealing with the "shock value" of potty talk, poop is all the rage. And they love getting away with discussing it in the context of gardening. It's quite impressive to a four-year-old. Days later, my kiddos are still talking about the trip.

Bloomington Winter Market opens this weekend

The Bloomington Winter Farmers Market opens this Saturday and runs through March 26. Hours are 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays. It's being held at the Harmony School Gymnasium located at 909 E. 2nd Street in Bloomington.

The site promises a wide variety of meats and produce - including onions, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, arugula, kale, chard, spinach, mustard greens, watercress, potatoes, winter squash, sweet potatoes, apples and herbs. In other words, don't think that just because it's January you're doomed to eat canned or frozen veggies.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's checked out this market in the past. Is it worth the drive?

Seasonal shopping still in full swing

Winters markets are hot, even when it's brutally cold outdoors.

We hit the first farmers market of 2010 last weekend, and remained pleasantly surprised by what we found at the Indianapolis Winter Market. The building was packed with vendors and shoppers alike, even as the shopping hours came to a close. (So busy, in fact, the Star reported Sunday that the market's averaging 1,500 visitors in its second season!)

We came home with a bagful of apples, a huge glass jar of honey, seed packets (for those dreams of warmer weather someday) and more. We checked out apalca yarn, tasted freshly toasted marshmellows and would have lingered longer had the little guy hadn't had an unfortunate event outside.

Winter markets are definitely worth checking out. It's a great alternative for seasonal shopping, and one small way to beat the winter blues. If you're living around Indy, you have quite a few options--and they're growing every year:

• Indianapolis Winter Farmers Market, (downtown Indy)
• Bloomington Winter Farmers Market
• Hancock County Winter Market,
• Hummel Park in Plainfield
• Pendleton Winter Farmers Market
• Traders Point Winter Green Market, (northeast Indy, technically Zionsville)

Indiana Living Green this month lists other markets outside of the Indianapolis metropolitan area. Check out its list here.

Electronic waste recycling this weekend in Indy, Bloomington

It's time to finally do your spring cleaning!

IUPUI and IU Bloomington are hosting "e-Waste Recycle Days" this week, and are opening drop-off sites to the public this Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Drop-off locations are IU Bloomington at N. Dunn and E. 17th St. and the Indiana State Fairgrounds.

There is no fee to drop off materials (see list of what's accepted below), and you are not limited on quantity. (Read FAQs here.)

According to the site:

130 million mobile phones alone were discarded in 2005. The National Safety
Council projects that nearly 250 million computers will become obsolete in the
next 5 years, amounting to an estimated 3.2 million tons of eWaste. Researchers
have estimated that nearly 75 percent of eWaste is in storage.

MATERIALS ACCEPTED AT THE EVENT:

Computer Systems and Accessories

• CRT Monitors
• LCD Displays
• CPUs
• All-in-Ones
• Laptops
• Servers
• Switches
• Hubs
• UPS Systems
• Keyboards & Mice
• Speakers
• Hard Drives
• Optical Drives
• Wires and Cables

Handheld Devices

• Cell Phones
• Pagers
• PDAs
• Two-Way Radios

Home Electronics:

• Microwaves
• Audio & Video Equipment
• Televisions
• DVDs
• VCRs
• Stereos
• Camcorders
• Cameras
• Radios
• Games Systems

Office Equipment

• Fax Machines
• Photo Copiers
• Printers
• Scanners
• Surge Protectors
• Telephones
• Typewriters
• Adding Machines

MATERIALS NOT ACCEPTED:

• Hazardous Materials of any type
• Batteries not Integral to Computer Systems
• Contaminated Equipment of any type
• Cracked or Broken CRT Screens
• Smoke Detectors
• Household Appliances
• Hairdryers
• Styrofoam
• Cardboard
• Paper
• Light Bulbs

Learn more by visiting http://indiana.poweron.com/p/default.

First Farmers Market of the Season opens (Bloomington)

Spring is here, which means six or so weeks of waiting for farmer's markets to open in the Indianapolis area.

If you're up for a quiet drive down SR 37, though, I thoroughly recommend a Saturday-morning drive to the Bloomington Farmers Market.

I've learned to settle for staring at starts and a few lone packages of lettuce in the May months, so I was surprised to find in Bloomington three rows of stands - in April, no less! - and little room to roam despite the wide berths between the vendors's rows. It was a visual feast of colors - rows of plants in bloom, a huge variety of produce, and locally produced foods from eggs to granola.

My 3 year old was thrilled to buy blueberry bushes to add to her strawberries at home. We were able to score semi-dwarf blueberry plants (which have just beautiful leaves and flowers!) from Backyard Berry Plants, a local producer of organically grown blueberry, raspberry and blackberry plants. The couple was extremely friendly and extremely knowlegable, and we were thrilled that they held back the last two of the particular variety for us, since we'd called ahead to let them know we'd be at the market. It's great to be able to have a resource that really understands what it's like to cope with this crazy Indiana weather!

I'm sure we'll make the occasional commute to Bloomington this summer, and I can't wait to see what's in store. The Bloomington market's hours are 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays through October. You can get directions here.

As one market opens, another sets to close. The Indy Winter's Market's last weekend is this Saturday. Hours are 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Stop by and show your support!