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| St. Augustine’s Lion’s Bridge at dawn from our cockpit. Started my trek to St. Augustine’s Farmer’s Market a little later. |
Some retro revivals rock. When the Sunshine State’s (and country’s) oldest city’s enthusisastically embraces the farm-to-table movement, hooray for oldies that are goodies! Honeybells, satsumas, meyer lemons, Texas flames, sungold tomatoes, corn, kale, kohlrabi and more were among the bountiful bounty at St. Augustine’s Saturday morning Farmer’s Market (click here for St. Augustine’s Farmer’s Market website).
The brisk 45-minute walk (after a short kayak paddle from our boat’s mooring ball to the the dinghy dock) from St. Augustine’s Municipal Marina to St. Augustine’s Farmer’s Market was well worth it.
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| The bridge’s lion. Our boat’s that little white hulled on in the lower left — a short kayak to the dinghy dock. |
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| Meyer lemons at St. Augustine’s Farmer’s Market. |
Just minutes after slipping under St. Augustine’s Lion’s Bridge on our sojourn South, we were savoring sensational satsuma juice from oranges picked and squeezed before sun-up. At $4, I was expecting only a pour; for that we got a whole quart! While not a big juice drinker, the last time I found something that good, a local passion fruit juice in St. Martin a year ago, I walked several miles for it on my last day, carrying back several containers in my pack before leaving St. Martin. That’s slightly less crazy than the bushel of Big Jim peppers from Santa Fe I flew back with and roasted up that same night.
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| Birdhouses made from gourds at St. Augustine’s Farmer’s Market. |
After getting spoiled in Jacksonvile, between the Farmers at Saturday’s River Arts Market (click here for more onJacksonville’s River Arts Market), and my biweekly locally grown VeggieBin (click here for VeggieBin info) boxes, we weren’t sure what we’d get when it comes to fresh fruit and veg. It will be tough to top sweet acres peas (click here to learn about the sweet acre pea recipe I made [less the cheese grits]) as my local favorite veg, and honeybell oranges or satusuma juice as favorite fruit.
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| This St Augustine Farmer’s Market stand carried the widest variety of produce. |
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| More fun arts and crafts at St. Augustine’s Farmer’s Market. |
Once we hit the Bahamas, nearly all our fruit and veg will be canned. We are gorging on every last little bit of Florida’s fabulous fresh fruit and veg while we can. We’re thoroughly enjoying every last bite.
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| Low-key stand… served the best orange juice EVER! |
What’s your local favorite fresh fruit and veg? How far would you walk for it?
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| Jacksonville’s VeggieBin farm-to-table local fruit and veg weekly delivery introduced me to white acres peas. Yum! What a treat! |
Don't you just Love St. Augustine. I do. Been keeping up with ya'll on your site. Hope you had a good trip from St. Augustine to Daytona. That is one long trip via the ICW. Bell wanted me to let you know that she loved Titusville, especially the park which is walking distance from the marina.
Will keep up with you guys via your blog. Keep in touch.
Sorry, Did not sign my post. Michelle / Incommunicado
Thanks, Michelle! We did indeed enjoy St. Augustine! The ICW is indeed slow, though today as we walked from the Vero Beach Muni marina to the crashing Atlantic surf, we were very grateful for the easy-does-it cruising path we chose. We're mostly traveling 30-40 miles daily on the ICW, less some 2-day layovers here and there. We plan to not hop outside until after Fort Worth (or wherever we stop near DelRay Beach to visit Mom).
Today the wind and current were going our way. Sure was nice to hoist a sail after all this time! What little motoring we did was more
about battery maintenance than cruising.
Bell would love the doggie park next to Vero Beach Marina. Lots of happy pooches; a couple wanted to follow us "home" today.
We're still hoping you can join us somewhere along the way this year's cruise!