CARLSBORG – Parrot tulips, mizuna and a midwife are gathering along U.S. Highway 101 weekly, in an effort to grow a new community market.
“We’ve planted the seed, and now we’re watering it,” said Michelle Wilson, whose Lost Mountain Surf Co. parking lot is the venue for the Midway Market each Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
A few sprinkles and some wind befell the event during its first couple of outings, but last Wednesday, shoppers and a half-dozen vendors enjoyed comparatively warm, calm conditions.
This is just the start, Wilson said.
She hopes to enlarge the market to include more produce, art and prepared foods, and even open it two days a week.
“If we get a good turnout, we’ll grow,” she said.
“Come see what’s fresh in Carlsborg.”
Even before the Peninsula’s produce season peaks, the Midway Market is laying out a diverse salad of goods and services.
Sequim midwife Carol Gautschi, who specializes in home and water births, has an information table next to the buxom bouquets of spinach and mizuna – a leafy green grown in the Dungeness Valley – at the Nash’s Organic Produce booth.
Then there are the natural cleaners and fragrances from the Lily Cupboard, a Port Angeles essential-oils company, and tulips and candytuft from Plant-It Earth, an organic flower and herb farm near Salt Creek.
This week’s market was the busiest yet, said Elissa Buttocolla, co-owner of Plant-It Earth.
“People are hungry for colors,” after the long winter, Buttocolla said as Gautschi hovered around her deep-purple tulips.
