After checking out a preview of Atherton Market in Southend on CLT Blog the other day, my wife Christy and I took the trip ourselves on Saturday morning. We have to say we were quite pleased with the purchases we got. We walked in and immediately sampled a carrot cake cookie, which was our first buy of the day (from Crumbs – NY Style Baked Goods).

Next booth down we got some sugar snap peas from Cold Water Creek Farms – a 100% organic farm. Looking forward to putting them in a tasty asian dish this week.

While we didn’t buy anything at Savory Moments, we did sample their pimento cheese. They had fresh salads for sale that looked excellent.

Our third purchase of the day was at Pickleville, where we got..yeah you guessed it…pickles! $5 for a big tub of garlic pickles. We also sampled pickled hot peppers – tasty but hot!

$3 got us a parsley plant at Jean’s Beans and $4 or $5 for a loaf of rosemary bread at Duke’s Bread rounded out the trip.

It’s nice to go to a place where it feels like a community. There are a lot of farmer’s markets in the area, but most have vendors who all offer the same produce and not much else. At Atherton, you can purchase seafood, meat, vegetarian, fresh herbs, jewelry, baked goods and I’m sure much more that I’m forgetting to mention. We look forward to seeing what else is added.

If you want to visit Atherton Market – hours are currently Tuesday 11:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. As the market grows, Lynn Caldwell, market manager, plans to add more days.

We live in Union County – a good 25 minute drive from the market, but know we’ll be back. Check ’em out on Facebook!