The H Street Farmers Market is Back this Saturday

The H Street NE farmers market reopens this Saturday (April 7th) for its 15th season. As in previous years, you'll find the local FRESHFARM outpost just off 13th & H Street NE.  Most vendors are returning, and you'll also notice some new additions.


The folks from Timber Pizza (you may have seen their mobile wood fired oven around town) are opening a deli named Call Your Mother. Their deli isn't open yet (plus it's it's going to require you to schlep all the way over to NW), but you'll still be able to enjoy their fresh bagels Saturday mornings at the market. These are no ordinary bagels either. They're wood fired. Think of these bagels as a sort of hybrid offspring of the iconic New York bagel, and its slightly sweeter northern cousin from Montreal.

H Street restaurant Sospeso (1344 H St. NE) will be there with build-your-own salad platters. New vendor Steve Mushroom Farm will also be a regular fixture. They won't be around for the season's opening, but eventually Ivy City based distiller Republic Restoratives (1369 New York Avenue NE) and local brewer Right Proper will be at the market on alternating weeks.

The H Street NE market is one of the FRESHFARM Share locations, so if you are a subscriber you can pick up your bag of pre-selected fresh produce for the week (FRESHFARM provides recipe suggestions). It's similar to a CSA, but they explain the distinction on their website:

While a CSA is the closest analogy, it's not exactly accurate to call what we do a CSA program. In a traditional CSA (which stands for Community Supported Agriculture), subscribers pay an individual farmer up front for the entire growing season. This provides the financial security that farmers need to have a successful season, regardless of what might happen with weather or crops, and provides the capital to invest in improvements to the farm. What we do is pretty different, but in the same spirit as a CSA. At each of our participating markets, our staff curates a bag of produce and other local goods from multiple farmers and producers that sell at those markets. This provides our farmers with a guaranteed revenue stream no matter the weather, turnout, or sales at market and spreads the benefit across all the farmers.

Subscriptions for shares run for half a season (mid-May through early August and early August through the end of Oct.), and come in two sizes. It's useful if you perhaps don't have a lot of time to shop or dive into full scale meal planning. Or if you just are sure what to do with some of the less familiar vegetables you might encounter at the market.

This year's market hours are 9am–12:30pm on Saturdays. If you want to celebrate the opening of the market season this Saturday, you can join others at the corner of 13th & H Street NE starting at 8:45am. At exactly 9am they'll ring the bell to open the market.

Please note that FRESHFARM will also open a new Sunday morning farmers market in NoMa starting in June at 1100 First Street NE.