We’re impassioned for pumpkins this Saturday at the Franklin Farmers Market. Our local farmers are harvesting the best of these fall squashes in every shape, color and size of your imagination for your jack-o-lanterns, home decorations, arrangements, and freshly-baked creations. Don’t simply get excited, get impassioned for pumpkins this Saturday at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Cinderella pumpkins are piled-high on the King Farm pumpkin truck bed.

Though the typical jack-o-lantern variety is a tried-and-true classic, our farmers like to flaunt their pumpkin growing talents with unique heirloom varieties great for baking or front porch displays. These spectacular cucurbits come in colors like deep sunset red, ice blue, ghost white, speckled, striped, green and gold, and every size from the smallest miniature variety to the largest of the giants. They can be baked in pies, breads, muffins, or cakes or mixed with other fall squashes and mums available at our market for a autumnal home display. Get impassioned for pumpkins, too, and make your next made-from-scratch pie with a freshly-harvest heirloom pumpkin grown by your local farmers.

Pie pumpkins grown by Colbert Farm make delicious fall pies and sweets.

Finding these impressive heirloom pumpkins is easy at the Franklin Farmers Market, especially if you arrive early this Saturday! At the entrance of our market this week, you’ll find a truck bed piled high of Kinf pumpkins— King’s Farm, pumpkins, that is, and the sight is something to see! King Farm along with Purple Tree Farm,  Kirkview Farm, and Evans Produce will be arriving with every pumpkin variety imaginable, from Cinderella to Cushaw to Long Island Cheese to interesting French pie varieties and everything in between. You’ll be impassioned for pumpkins, too, once you get an eyeful of the selection this week at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Purple Tree Farm displays stacks of heirloom pumpkins and squashes.

With the Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival kicking off in Franklin, TN, this weekend, we’re urging our customers to avoid traffic and arrive early this Saturday, September 26, 2015. This festival is predicted to draw over 30,000 people to Franklin over the weekend, and we don’t want our shoppers inconvenienced by the vehicular overflow. So go ahead and arrive early this Saturday for prompt market perusing! You’ll find  hot hand-poured coffee, fresh donuts, fluffy biscuits, crepes, and even King Farm’s great-big pumpkin truck overflowing with an incomparable pumpkin selection to greet you.

Grab a hot cup of Eighth and Roast hand-poured coffee with a friend to get your early morning started right this Saturday.

Our little town certainly will be bustling this Saturday, no doubt about it! The Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival lineup includes big names in music such as Wilco, Willie Nelson, and Sheryl Crow, and is estimated to draw more than 30,000 people to Harlinsdale Farm—less than a quarter-mile from the Franklin Farmers Market! With such high attendance and festival gates set to open at 10am Saturday morning, our roads could easily become a bit congested. Therefore, avoid any uncomfortable vehicular gridlocks and arrive early this Saturday to market.

Freshly-baked breakfast biscuits await your early morning arrival this Saturday at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Parking is another important topic this week! The Factory parking lot will be leased for this weekend’s Pilgrimage Festival beginning at 1:30pm this Saturday September 26, 2015. Any cars left in the Factory parking lot after 1:30pm on Saturday September 26, 2015, will be towed. This means that our market shoppers cannot park at the Factory and walk to the Pilgrimage Festival, and that all cars must be removed from our parking lot no later than 1:30pm. So avoid towing and traffic, arrive early this Saturday, grab a cup of Joe and a donut, and get busy picking out a jack-o-lantern pumpkin at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Arrive early so the kids can have the first pick of pumpkins this Saturday at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Get your last taste of summer this week at the Franklin Farmers Market. That’s right, the last summer market day is upon us, and we want to celebrate the changing of the season with you, our market shoppers. To ensure you optimize your last experience this week, we’ve made a quick and simple guide to get your last taste of summer flavors, fruits, and vegetables. Enjoy!

Freshly-picked pickling cucumbers from Colbert Farm are still available for snacking and canning,

Put Some Ice in That Coffee! Get your morning started right at the Franklin Farmers Market with a nice cup of joe–iced! Pretty soon, mornings will be too chilly to enjoy a cool morning pick-me-up, so opt for an iced coffee this Saturday—our vendors are happy to oblige! 8th and Roast brings a fresh “keg” of iced coffee on tap every morning to our market, so stop by their tent to grab one last iced coffee of the year.

Eighth and Roast supplies our market with iced coffee all summer long.

Blueberries All Year Long. Who says you can’t enjoy blueberries all year long?? At the Franklin Farmers Market, we enjoy these summer berries before, during, and even after their season ends by snagging a jar of blueberry preserves from one of our vendors. Grab a classic jar of preserves from Kelley’s Berry Farm for your hot buttered biscuits or one of many delicious concoctions such as Blueberry-Jalapeno Jam from Blue Honey Farms for your cream cheese and cracker plates.

Blue Honey Farms has many flavors of their tasty blueberry jam.

Have a Barbecue. Nothing feels more like summer than a backyard barbecue with friends and family, and the Franklin Farmers Market is the place to find all your locally-raised beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and bison. You can find every cut of meat, from filet mignon to rib-eye to whole chickens and lamb chops. So get the best quality cuts from your local farmers this Saturday at our farmers’ market.

Bear Creek Farm offers locally-raised all-natural hormone-free beef at our market.

Juice! Fresh-pressed, please. One way to get your last taste of summer fruits and vegetables is in a refreshing, fresh-pressed juice from one of our local juice vendors. Both Franklin Juice Company and Juice Nashville provide our shoppers with fresh flavor combinations that really capture the essence of summer. So grab a bottle or two while you can.

Franklin Juice Co. shows off their summer favorite watermelon juice.

Produce, produce, produce! Finally, the very best way to get your last taste of summer at the Franklin Farmers Market is to stock-up on all the amazing summer produce our local farmers are still bringing to market. Tomatoes, eggplant, squash, zucchini, okra and more are ripe and abundant for ratatouille, sautés, pasta dishes, and purees. So grab a stash of your favorite summer veggies and taste the flavors of summer while you still can.

Summer produce is still in abundance at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Find the first glimpses of fall this week at the Franklin Farmers Market. Our local farmers are still bringing truckloads of all of your favorite summer vegetables, but fall staples such as mini and heirloom pumpkins, fall squashes, mums, and more are beginning to trickle in, too. Tables covered in freshly-baked breads, biscuits, muffins, and more are available to take home as a sweat treat or enjoy at our market with a hot cup of hand-dripped coffee. And don’t forget to take home locally-raised beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and bison to toss on the grill as you watch the game. Shop fresh, seasonally, and locally and find the first glimpses of fall this week at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Mini heirloom pumpkins have arrived for autumnal displays.

Last week, our farmers were still bringing truckloads of everyone’s favorite summer vegetables. Evans produce featured beautiful heirloom tomatoes and eggplant, Beaverdam Creek Farm displayed a gorgeous array of sweet and hot peppers, Kirkview Farm’s okra is still going strong, along with butterbeans, field peas, and much more. This week, look for our market stalls to debut some fall favorites including acorn and butternut squashes, heirloom pumpkins, and new varieties of apples arriving fresh from the orchard.  Plus, get your autumnal home décor items, such as mini heirloom pumpkins and mums. It won’t be difficult to find the first glimpses of fall this week at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Summer favorites such as Delvin Farms’ amethyst-hued organic Japanese eggplant is still available at the Franklin Farmers Market

In addition to fresh produce, our market is featuring scores of freshly-baked breads and goodies for you to take home or enjoy with a hot cup of hand-poured 8th and Roast coffee.  Jones Mill Farm is featuring Orange-Zested Cookies with Orange-Liquor Glaze for all you UT football fans out there! Lucy’s hot biscuits and fresh muffins always make for a tasty market breakfast. Or, unwrap a decadent brownie or dessert bar from Norton Family Farms or Flying S Farm to enjoy with your coffee. So come hungry, stay and shop for your weekly groceries, and find the first glimpses of fall this week at the Franklin Farmers Market.

Gameday Orange-Zested Cookies with Orange-Liquor Glaze from Jones Mill Farm

We’ve reached the final week of watermelons at the Franklin Farmers Market, so be sure to make it out this Saturday to grab one more for the family before they’re all gone. Our farmers have been bringing truckloads of sun-soaked varieties to our market all season long, but this week will be the last week our shoppers will get to experience their sweetness. Snagging one last watermelon is the best way to savor the flavors of summer, so come to the Franklin Farmers Market for the final week of watermelons and take home one last juicy sweet summer treat.

A variety of melons from Evans Produce.

Last week, our farmers market celebrated our annual Watermelon Festival and our shoppers sure did have a great time. Our younger customers enjoyed both the Watermelon Seed Spitting Contest and the Watermelon Eating Contest, and the adults did, too! Our farmers passed out free slices to our crowd and sold pallets upon pallets of fresh summer melons. And we have you all to thank! Thank you so much for making the Franklin Farmers Market’s Watermelon Festival such a hit year after year.

Hank Delvin, Sr, of Delvin Farms sliced watermelon for our shoppers at the Watermelon Festival 2015.

This Saturday, we want to equip you with the best information needed to select a supreme melon, so take a look at our Guide to Choosing the Best Watermelon before you visit market this weekend. After you’ve made your final selection during the final week of watermelons, why not try your hand at one of our farmers market recipes like our Watermelon, Basil, and Feta Salad? If you like the peppery bite of arugula, try the Watermelon Salad with Arugula and Feta from our recipe blog. Watermelon adds juicy crunchiness to salsas, pickles, and is perfect whirled into a fresh juice.

Sweet watermelon can be used in a number of recipes such as salads, salsas, and juices.

Finally, if you’re simply meloned-out this weekend, don’t be discouraged! It may be the final week of watermelons at the Franklin Farmers Market, but it’s certainly not the final week of all your locally-grown favorites. Our farmers are still bringing loads of summer veggies to market such as tomatoes, peppers, squash, and zucchini. Look for more flavors of fall arriving such as baby greens and sweet potatoes, too.

A mixture of tomato and pepper varieties at the Bloomsbury Farm booth.

Improve your odds of scoring the sweetest melon this Saturday at the Franklin Farmers market by following our simple guide to choosing the best watermelon. Our crackerjack team of market experts has pulled together research, observations, and experience from farmers and other agricultural experts to ensure your selection is juicy, ripe, and sweet.  Watermelon season maybe waning at the Franklin Farmers Market this week, but there’s no reason to not be equipped with the most accurate information on how to choose the best.

Another satisfied market shopper showing off a supreme watermelon selection.

To thump or not to thump? Watermelon season at the Franklin Farmers Market can sound something like a drum circle with all the thumping, knocking, and rind-tapping our shoppers are doing to find the perfect one. But do all these percussive measures matter when it comes to choosing the best watermelon? It depends, experts say. A heavy watermelon filled with juice is certainly an indicator of ripeness, but since determining deep or hollow sounds can be difficult, go with the heaviness test, instead, and give that puppy a lift! A watermelon that is heavy for its size is a more effective way of determining whether you’ve got a juicy, ripe specimen or a less-than-stellar dud.

Our farmers know when to harvest watermelon at the appropriate time to ensure sweetness and ripeness.

The uglier the yellow-spot, the better. It’s true! The creamy-yellow “belly spot” or “field spot” on the underside is a great indicator of ripeness when it comes to choosing the best watermelon. This yellow blotch is caused from having direct contact with the soil as the watermelon ripened in the field. In other words, watermelons with gnarly yellow bellies were vine-ripened and not prematurely harvest, which is exactly what you’re looking for when determining a sweet melon over a bland one. FYI: A watermelon harvested at the appropriate time can be matured or ripened for a few days at room temperature, but if the watermelon was picked from the vine too early, it may never fully ripen.

A nice, ripe watermelon is symmetrical with dark green stripes.

Symmetry is Supreme. This is not only how humans determine beauty in faces, but how to determine a supreme melon over a shoddy one. When choosing the best watermelon, selections should be symmetrical and blunt on both ends, not pointy or misshapen. A pointed-end or irregularly shaped watermelon could be the result of poor pollination and may not have fully matured.  Tip: Also choose a melon with a smooth, dark green, dull rind.

Our farmers can help you make the right choice when selecting a deliciously sweet, ripe watermelon.

Farmers Know Best. Finally, ask your farmer! Our farmers are the agriculture experts at the Franklin Farmers Market and are pleased to answer any questions you may have. Plus, shopping at the Franklin Farmers Market takes a lot of the mystery out of choosing a ripe watermelon, since our farmers harvest watermelons at the appropriate time to ensure high-quality and ripeness. So come out to the market for the final week of watermelon season and taste the sweetness of summer one last time.