Market Stories: Lake Oswego Farmers Market

It’s not like there’s any surprise that the open-air Lake Oswego Farmers Market features vendors showing off amazing locally grown produce. Oregon’s northern Willamette Valley is known internationally for its vast farms and high quality agricultural products.

So on any given Saturday at the market, you see nearly every shopper clinging to bags of vegetables, boxes of berries and heavy sacks of fruits. Many of the more serious shoppers pull their kids’ Radio Flyer wagons piled with produce containers. Apparently in LO, wagons are the SUVs of market shopping. Kids have to walk. Maybe that’s the parental strategy to make them burn off calories from the icing drenched cinnamon roll and cookie samples they inhaled near the market’s entrance.

Unless you march into the market with a laser focus to reach the artichoke stand before the large ones are sold out, you can’t miss one peculiar scene. It’s the scores of shoppers proudly grasping enormous and vibrantly colored flower bouquets. These are really, really big arrangements and sort of the unofficial symbol of this market. I’ve heard that these flowers are very reasonably priced, which partly explains their popularity.

Each bouquet is securely wrapped in paper. That may be so it can survive minor collisions with kids darting about in the aisles, powered by those previously mentioned sugary samples. Certainly a contributing factor to this darting behavior is the fact that these kids are not riding in the wagons, properly weighted down by bags of produce.

The bouquets are from the standout flower vendor by the name of Vang’s Garden. It’s about the largest stall around. Imagine a wholesaler pointing its fleet of delivery trucks to this spot and ordering delivery specialists to keep piling up every imaginable type of flower there until the flower arrangers are completely hidden. Vendor visibility is as reasonable a measure for capacity as anything else. After all, the quantity doesn’t matter much because the stall is virtually a floral wasteland by the end of the day. Lake Oswegans (or LOagans?) may very well have a policy of leaving no flowers un-purchased.

Vang’s is a family operation. Luckily, they have a decent size family to handle the pressure of creating made-to-order bouquets live and in person. It appears that everyone in the family helps out at this stand. That includes the family’s little girl, who appears to lend a hand when the inspiration strikes. This girl has got serious skills. She constructs arrangements that are truly impressive. Flower sizes and complimentary colors are right on. And she’s able to maintain an absolutely adorable look while delicately pulling flowers from containers filled above her height.

There’s always a long line of eager buyers waiting for custom arrangements and to purchase ready-made bouquets. The entire Vang team stays focused, even when working with distracted customers. I am oddly impressed by shoppers with the multi-tasking skills to hold a couple bags of produce, conduct an important phone call, eat a gyros and discuss flower options simultaneously.

LO’s market also features astonishingly courteous shoppers. Orderly lines form spontaneously at stalls. Think of the opposite of an extremely crowded Northwest Portland pub with the noise level of yell-versations, smartphone ringtones and alerts, and music reaching 15.6 gazillion decibels and trying to order one of those microbrews that Oregon’s so famous for. Anyway, people wait their turn and even tolerate co-shoppers who step away from the payment spot to get that bunch of kale they forgot.

I shouldn’t make it sound like kids are the only ones loading up on delicious samples at the market. Step within sample tray range of fruit vendors’ stalls and you’ll be offered a taste of their products. Hungry shoppers can’t resist chunks of peaches, nectarines, apples, pears and melons, along with berries and cherries. And you don’t have to walk around for the next 10 minutes with a pit or rind in your hand. This is LO… there are proper receptacles conveniently located nearby sample prone stalls.

There you have the snapshot of the Lake Oswego Farmer’s Market. It’s certainly worth a visit if you have a Saturday morning free and happen to be in the neighborhood. There shouldn’t be any problem fitting in, even if you aren’t wearing a LO or Lakeridge high school t-shirt, sporting an Oregon university’s cap, or pulling a red wagon.

Doug and MacKenzie Freeman, founders of Imaginexxus LLC, are writing a book about their experiences visiting farmers and public markets around the world. The book will be published in 2017 by their company Imaginexxus LLC.