Smart Markets Lorton Will Open Next Week

We are reopening in Lorton next week at the Workhouse Arts Center, Thursday, March 14. The market will operate from 3–6 p.m. through April, when we will expand our summer season hours to 3–7 p.m. We will welcome Heritage Farm and Kitchen this year, and you can expect to see many of your favorite vendors from last year and from our other markets, including Celtic Pasties, Delicias del Sur, Kylie Carey’s Pop Shop, Gianni Cavanna’s Pasta, Tyson Farms, the Kettle Korn Man, Joie de Vivre Salad Dressings, Kustomcoffee and Valley View Bakery. We will be welcoming back more familiar faces this spring and some new faces, too.

Also, one of our earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, Kimberly Hartke, has asked me to let you know about an event she is helping to sponsor this weekend for anyone interested in eating healthy, buying local and learning more about how to decide what and how to eat. Please check out this event and take your children with you. Bring them along on your journey to better health and involve them in your decision-making and food preparation.

And I want to strongly recommend a recent New York Times magazine article. It’s just the incentive you need heading into market season and hopefully will inspire not only a commitment to personal and family health but a year of living purposefully as an advocate for healthier options for all, including the children in our schools. We pay the salaries of those who decide what these kids eat and bear some responsibility for what they are fed. The obesity epidemic probably more than any other affects all of us not because it is contagious but because it eats away at our general health, our economic health and our environmental health. At some point, we will all be paying for that.

In the meantime, please visit a year-round market near you this weekend or next week and buy whatever you can that is lean and local and luscious.