Summer may be a distant memory, but the Salem Farmers’ Market is still going strong.
While fields at most local farms will have to wait six months before they sprout again, vendors still have unique and delicious items to offer.
“It is the beginning of the offseason for many of the farmers, so we see more vendors along the lines of pickles, nut butters, (and) home and beauty products,” said Kylie Sullivan of Salem Main Streets, who serves on the Salem Farmers’ Market Committee.
But in one notable exception, Chris Grant of Grant Family Farm in Essex said he will have freshly harvested carrots and beets at the market.
“The root vegetables we’ll take today or tomorrow,” he said.
The Salem Farmers’ Market will be held this Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. inside Museum Place Mall. Now 8 years old, its regular season runs from early June to mid-October, and the committee started adding Winter Markets two years ago.
“We hold one Winter Market the weekend before Thanksgiving and another the weekend before Christmas,” Sullivan said. “It’s specifically intended to encourage shopping for the holidays, both for meals and gifts.”
More than 1,600 people turned out for the market in November, she said.
Grant Family Farm, which will also bring eggs, frozen pasture-raised chicken and refrigerated squash, is one of several local farms that will attend this weekend.
There will also be purveyors of seafood, tea, herbs and spices, sweets, jewelry and crafts, wine and hard ciders, and bath and home products.
Visitors looking for prepared foods may want to check out Mandy’s Wicked Chowdah from Fishwives Specialty Foods, which is owned and operated by Mandy Williamson of Marblehead.
“I also make gazpacho, and we call that On The GoSpacho — it’s gazpacho that I put into drinkable bottles,” Williamson said. “Gazpacho is a cold vegetable soup that they make in Portugal and Spain.”
The gazpacho is vegan and can be used as a cocktail sauce, mixed with vodka or served with a dollop of yogurt. Williamson will have holiday recipes for its use at her stand at the Salem Farmers’ Market.
She makes everything in an FDA-registered kitchen and sells her gluten-free clam and fish chowders in two-cup bags, which can be heated in boiling water or frozen for future use.
Her seafood chowder is made with a light, lobster bisque base and includes whole shrimp, scallops, clams and fish, Williamson said.
“Eighty percent of my customers use my chowders as a sauce,” on pasta or fish, she said.
Gloucester-based Bare Cheek Beauty will bring a variety of beauty products to the market, including serums, facial scrubs, body scrubs, candles, face washes, body butters and body lotions.
“It’s handmade,” Haley Allison said. “It’s 100 percent natural and nontoxic. I make it all myself.”
To make a scrub, she mixes a variety of oils and butters with salt or sugar.
“Then you would add the essential oils, some of which have healing properties,” Allison said. “Lavender is very calming.”
Sweets will be available at the Winter Market from Bella and Harvey, a specialty bakery currently based in Rockport that is moving to Peabody in the spring.
“We do mason jar cakes in 21 flavors, cake pops and cake truffles,” said Lisa Lotruglio, who does all the baking.
Cake pops are cakes on a stick, she said, while cake truffles are “the same thing without the stick — like a bonbon.” The flavors include red velvet, salted caramel, triple chocolate and chocolate with peanut butter.
For the mason jar cakes, cake layers are cooked separately, then stacked in the jars with frosting in between.
“The cake is inside of a mason jar, so you open the jar and eat the cake, and it keeps fresh for three weeks,” Lotruglio said.
The flavors include triple-fudge peanut butter chunk, and they have sold thousands of these unique desserts.
“I make everything — everything we produce is handmade by me,” Lotruglio said.
Beckah Restivo from Beverly will be selling her almond butter, Beckah’s Bangin’ Butter, at the farmers market. She makes it with almonds shipped from a small farm in her native California and said the butter is vegan, paleo (or suited to a cave man’s diet) and “whole 30,” which she defined as nonprocessed, or lacking in added sugars, fats or oils.
Almond butter can be used in a lot of the same ways as peanut butter, but where the latter is a legume — and therefore high in carbohydrates — almonds are true nuts and healthier to eat, Restivo said.
“We’ve used it on ice cream and in oatmeal,” she said. “We use it as a marinade for chicken, and we also made a vinaigrette for it, as well. Those recipes are at our website.”
If you go
What: Salem Farmers’ Market Winter Market
When: Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.
Where: Museum Place Mall, 176 Essex St., Salem
More information: www.salemfarmersmarket.org
Another winter market
What: Beverly Farmers’ Market Holiday Market
When: Monday, 3 to 7 p.m.
Where: Cove Community Center, 19 E. Corning St., Beverly
Featuring: Goods from local farmers, food producers and artisans. Children’s crafts table, prepared food, live music. SNAP benefits accepted.
More information: 978-712-9054 or www.facebook.com/beverlyfarmersmarket
If you go
What: Salem Farmers’ Market Winter Market
When: Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.
Where: Museum Place Mall, 176 Essex St., Salem
More information: www.salemfarmersmarket.org
Another winter market
What: Beverly Farmers’ Market Holiday Market
When: Monday, 3 to 7 p.m.
Where: Cove Community Center, 19 E. Corning St., Beverly
Featuring: Goods from local farmers, food producers and artisans. Children’s crafts table, prepared food, live music. SNAP benefits accepted.
More information: 978-712-9054 or www.facebook.com/beverlyfarmersmarket
