Our village’s Farmers’ Market Monday has been a weekly ritual ever since mid May.

Next week is the last market day until Spring 2014…

It will mark the end of a plentiful season of fresh flowers, tomatoes, berries, lettuces, carrots, beets, squash, and endless apples and pumpkins.

We are lucky to have several Michigan farms from which to choose and a smaller farm visits town on Thursdays and Sundays so that there is no excuse to not have fresh produce.

Today, there was a bounty of Fall foods…zucchinis, apples, pumpkins…there were even a few quarts of strawberries and raspberries, which beckoned me to hoard them.

I love to make just a few jars of raspberry and strawberry jam along with a couple of apple crisps.

By the dead of winter I will be longing for the freshness of real berries and tasty tomatoes and will settle for the good looking ones at our local fruit store or succumb to the flat taste of the fruit at the supermarket or worse yet the pesticide laden fruit at our local “big box” store.

Do you long for fresh produce all winter like I do?