'It's the first day of a brand new market'

I'm a photographer at the News Leader and a professional sightseer. Being a recent transplant to the Shenandoah Valley, the sights are yet to be seen. Contact me if you think there's something I can't miss on my continuous tour of the area.

Name: Pat Jarrett

Position: Staff photographer

Hometown: Stow, Ohio

Favorite color: 'Local'

Contact: pjarrett@newsleader.com or 540 255 9983

The farm is all over his face—the leathery skin curls up in a half-sneer, half-smile that creates deep grooves running into a thick crop of white facial hair covering the lower portion of Nathan Showalter's face.

Showalter is quietly milling about on Wednesday afternoon, eventually planting himself on a folding chair, sun at his back, sitting directly across from Meats 4 U. His son Jamie and granddaughter Sarah kick back laughing as the crowd thins out between the four other vendors at the Farmers' Market in Waynesboro.

"It's the first day of a brand new market," says Jamie as he scans the vendors parked on the cement floor of the pavilion at Constitution Park in Waynesboro. "I didn't know what to expect . . . but we brought bread, we brought our baked goods, and we sold out in the first hour."

Jamie has been involved in retail farming for seven years, but the farm has been in the family for generations. When asked how long he has been farming, Nathan quips "Well, soon after 1926," and then looks toward his son and shares a hearty laugh, "That's when I was born."

While the Showalters' farm is an institution, and their booth is a familiar sight at the farmers' markets in the area selling free-range chicken and seasonal vegetables, the Waynesboro farmers' market is the new kid on the block.

Jim Nichols, market committee chair for the Waynesboro market, says that this is the first market in almost four years.

"The secret to running a market is two-fold," says Nichols. "You have to have a strong board of oversight, and you have to have a good market manager. Those are the two basic ingredients, so it was my objective to get those two entities together."

Nichols says he has support from the community to continue this weekly event. He says also that there are plans for expansion if it becomes necessary.

"The market at Nellysford is full; they aren't taking any more vendors. The market in Staunton is full. The market in Harrisonburg is full, and with that many folks that are doing business with those markets we feel like the word's going to get around and someone's going to show up to our market as well because another source of income is what these guys are looking for," says Nichols.

The Showalters see growth in the future as Jamie explains the trend toward locally produced food.

"People are interested in where their food is coming from ... I guess people are having trouble trusting where their food is coming from and how it's been grown, and it gives them a degree of security that they don't have in other places to be able to look the farmer in the eye and relate to the farmer that grew it — the food that they put in their mouth, they know the top man."

If you want to meet the top man at the Waynesboro farmer's market go to the pavilion at Constitution Park in Waynesboro between 3 and 7 p.m. Wednesdays for local produce, meat, face painting and barbecue sandwiches.

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