Hampton Township Farmer’s Market opens for season

You don’t really need a farm to be a farmers’ market vendor.

“We decided to start our own little thing called Hugh’s Heirloom Herbs,” Stacey Gray said, with the venture being named after her son. “We got this herb catalogue and picked out some thymes and basils that we’d never seen before.

“And we started to grow them in our living room by the windows.”

Now that the weather is cooperating, Hugh’s gardening has moved outside their Indiana Township home. And the culinary delights he grows will be available at the Hampton Township Farmer’s Market, scheduled from 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays through mid-October in the township’s Community Park.

As far as space for his agricultural pursuits, Gabriel Pawloski of Sarver, Butler County, has an acre of land for his Gabriel’s Gardens. Plus a friendly neighbor lets him use an adjacent piece of property that may be on the small side, but it comes in handy.

“That’s like 3,000 tomatoes right there,” Pawloski said.

Although it’s not quite tomato season, he brought a variety of produce including cucumbers, peppers, lettuce and herbs — flower-filled hanging baskets, too — for the season opening of the Hampton market on June 1, offering what he calls “the most nutrient-dense, the most flavorful and the biggest variety that we can.”

Speaking of flavor and variety, they’re among the top priorities for Don Cunningham with regard to Cunning House Supply Co., the Lower Burrell-based coffee-roasting business he runs with his wife, Alex. He was happy to provide samples while manning his stand in Hampton.

“I really like focusing on a lot of single-origin coffees, and we turn over our stock very frequently now. So if you stick with Cunning House,” he said, exhibiting a healthy pitchman’s flair, “you can get a real exploration of what the specialty coffee world has to offer.”

A self-professed coffee fiend since his college days studying civil engineering, he found the time to embark on a hobby of brewing beer.

“That got me very enthusiastic about the beverage world. And pretty much since my first days in the engineering world, I knew I wanted to do something else,” Cunningham said. “After I started roasting coffee for myself at home, I realized just how great fresh-roasted, well-sourced coffee could be. And it really didn’t make any sense not to do this.”

As for Pawloski, his progression into the produce business also started on a small scale.

“I was gardening, and I just got into it more and more,” he said. “I saw an opportunity in the neighborhood, and I went for it.”

Gabriel’s Gardens is helping to fill in some of the gap created by farmers who have retired without interest from the next generation in continuing such operations. Pawloski keeps the tradition alive in what he intends as a healthy and tasty manner, compared with the priorities of some larger-scale producers.

“Dealing with flavor instead of shelf life has a big difference,” he said. “A lot times, the colors and the vitamins in the food and the minerals in there are under competition from other things. We need to eat them first before they rot. They’ll rot so fast because there’s such a demand for those nutrients.”

Regarding a demand for homegrown herbs, Gray hopes that Hugh’s gardening provides plenty of people with palate-pleasing options. At Hampton this season, she also is selling crafts made by her mother, Sally Affinito, including sunglass kits, petite pillows and temperature-maintaining “mug rugs.”

“It’s been fun,” Gray said. “It’s keeping us busy.”

This is their first year at the market.

“We came here last year in the middle of a storm,” she said. “We bought something from every stand and went home, and I said, ‘You know, let’s try it.’”

Other vendors for 2022 at the Hampton Township Farmer’s Market are listed as Bates & Hayes Concessions, Carlos Aviles Farms, Cindy’s Munchies, Halal Gyro Guys, Loafers Bread Co., Mazzotta Winery, Olive & Marlowe, Russellton Bee Works, Saylor’s Farm Products and Sweetwater Farms.

For more information, visit www.hampton-pa.org/316/Farmers-Market.