It looks to be another glorious weekend in beautiful Walla Walla and what better time to begin the Farmer's Market season. Fort Walla Walla Museum will have a presence there every weekend from May 2 through October 31.
If you've looked around, this is most definitely an agricultural community, with deep roots in the theory and practice of farming. The first Euro-Americans who settled here ... Hudson's Bay Company retirees in the Frenchtown area near today's Whitman Mission National Historic Site ... brought the modern equivalent of farming with them. There is some evidence that local Indian people engaged in pre-agriculture activities, knowing which plants to harvest in which season, and it is also true that they were in contact via trade with North American Indian societies that actively engaged in a sowing/tending/harvesting cycle. When the pioneers began to arrive, things really got underway.
The first serious endeavors had to do with serving the miners of the gold fields of the Boise Basin and up on the Colville. It may not be as romantic as swirling a pan in a cold stream looking for 'color,' but it is far more effective at both paying the bills and amassing an inheritence for one's progeny. Prices for staples in the remote gold camps ranged between exorbitant and astronomical and a far-seeing farmer could plan on a crop to make himself a tidy profit.
A harsh winter along the way put a damper on prospects, especially animal husbandry, but farming recovered and soon prevailed. A look at the fine homes on Palouse, Catherine, and Boyer streets in Walla Walla tells a quiet tale of when 'wheat was king.'
Little has changed in the intervening years as a tour of the Palouse region will show. We still have our wheat and sweet onions, even if asparagus, peas, and orcharding have peaked and waned. Grapes get the bulk of our agricultural panache these days and that ties in to the upcoming barrel-sampling weekends, another celebration of agricultural production.
In any event the Farmer's Market has become a Walla Walla institution and a good place to snag one of the Museum's "$1 off all adults in group" coupons. Saving a little money hasn't gone out of style around here, either.
Today's photos show my pal Deeson from Zerba Farms and the lovely young lady is my charming wife Celia. In the meantime, check out the Famer's market web site ... and see y'all on Saturday! http://www.gowallawallafarmersmarket.com/
Another Museum outreach occurs this afternoon at 12:30 in Heritage Park where ArtWalla unveils its 'windows to the past' project. Collections Manager Laura will be speaking to the assembled. heritage Park is the alcove-like area along East Main Street just north of the old Sears building where the Sew 'n Vac Center is today. Ya gotta love a town that takes its heritage this seriously!
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