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Naperville farmers markets gearing up for a new season

LAND O’ PLENTY

These weekly Naperville farmers markets will be open through the growing season.

Riverview Farmstead Market — Book Road between 111th and 119th Streets. Thursdays, June 2 through September, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.; www.connectwithnature.org or 815-886-1467.

Naperville Farmer’s Market Association — Fifth Avenue Station parking lot. Saturdays, June through October, 7 a.m. - noon; www.naperville.il.us/farmersmarket.aspx or 630-369-5638.

Freedom Commons Summer Market — Freedom Drive and Diehl Road. Saturdays, mid-May through October, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.; www.freedomcommons.com or 630-527-0900, Ext. 106.

For a complete list of the area’s farmers markets, visit www.napersun.com.

You might have to wait a few days longer for that sublime first bite of just-picked sweet corn. Area farmers are seeing slight delays in the season’s planting, but they’re not too worried.

“It’s not been too bad. It started out cool and wet, but it got better,” said Steve Theis, a Yorkville grower whose Evergreen Farm raises vegetables, fruit and flowers sold at the venue hosted by the Naperville Farmers Market Association.

The weekly venue for locally grown goods will return to the parking lot of the Fifth Avenue Station at 7 a.m. Saturday, continuing through the last week of October.

The season typically starts small, with only spring’s most cold-tolerant crops initially coming to market. Theis and his crew of employees and family members will be bringing asparagus, sugar snaps, radishes, rhubarb and flowers. Strawberries will lag by a week or so, he said, and the sweet corn also is likely to be a little behind last year’s first picking, which happened around the Fourth of July.

More than two dozen growers and food producers turn out for the weekend market. This year, nearly all of the faces will look familiar to patrons who have shopped there before.

“All of the farmers are making it back, which is good,” market manager Kathy Mortensen said. “We always like to see that, that we didn’t lose anybody.”

Just one new vendor is on tap, a seller of coffee and tea drinks who snapped up the sole available spot that opened when a grower from the Dubuque area retired.

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