I was always fascinated by the term farmers’ market, having seen it in movies & TV shows. It was the first of a series of lovely surprises planned by my daughter.

The market is located at 401 N. Morton Street Next to City Hall – Shower building. We walked along a beautiful old railway line that is now converted to a walkway, called B-Line Trail, to get there. The Bloomington community farmers’ market is open every Saturday from April through November. I did not know what to expect till I landed there. Only locally grown organic products of Indiana are sold there. It was pretty & colourful, with very friendly vendors. I am gradually getting to notice that Midwestern people are genuinely nice- always smiling & wishing you as you pass by. I did end-up buying blueberries, black walnut, Chanterelle (mushrooms) a.k.a Golden Chanterelle & greens. They had prepared specialty foods, nuts, fruits, honey & wax products, fruits & vegetables, annual & perennial plants, etc. The tantalizing smell & colours made me want to stay longer but we had to head back fast. Hope I can visit the place once again sometime.

Touching, seeing & eating fresh wild chanterelle was in my bucket list. It’s pretty expensive & the lady who was selling it was handling it like gold!! But it was really tasty & the irony was that I ended up sharing it with so many youngsters & I am not even sure they realized what it was!

I also tasted the Japanese cucumber which tasted so good… almost like the summer country cucumber grown in paddy fields back home!!

I never knew there was such a thing called black walnut. The shell was so hard & different from the Asian walnut. The nut & its hull reminded me of a nut that we used to eat from the trees back home. The tree used to ooze out a red resin that eventually became Amber. Come to think of it, I have not eaten it in ages. The strangest thing was that there were very few nuts costing a fortune in a zipper bag & the vendor showed me a bigger bag with plenty of nuts in their shell for a cheaper price. He also meticulously explained how hard it is to cut & separate the nuts. I bought the ones with the shells wondering how hard it could possibly be but I ended spending so much time separating them! Finally my husband made me throw half of it!! The nut is more flavourful & a little heavier on the tongue than the Asian walnut.

There were large tomatoes in pink, yellow & red colour arranged side by side, gleaming in the beautiful morning sunlight.

The candles from the bee wax were crafted into so many different shapes.. including birds & animals.. so beautiful… I was tempted to buy them all! But sadly never bought any…

I had the privilege of meeting a lovely young Amish couple too, which was another first for me.

I went to most of the shops asking if I could take pictures & all the friendly, stunned vendors were more than happy to allow me to photograph their products& them.

Like I said earlier, I hope I can head back there soon! Despite having seen so much, I feel like I barely spent any time there. I must make this a weekly plan when I come back to Bloomington next year.