This past Saturday, Oak and I went to the Durham Farmer’s market, and from there ended up visiting various places in Durham. We decided after the market that we had to go buy a headlight for Oak’s car, so Lola (our trusty GPS) took us to a very ghetto Autozone. Luckily, a Biscuitville was right next door that lightened our mood about the shady AutoZone experience.

Anyway, at breakfast we decided we’d take a walk around Duke Gardens. However, along the way we found the Durham Visitors Center. We picked up a few brochures for some places we’ve been meaning to visit, when we saw a poster for an herb, garden, and craft festival at the Duke Homestead. So, we went there instead. It was pretty neat. One of the Durham tobacco growers from back in the day, Washington Duke, had this house and tobacco farm on this site. They have it all restored to what it looked like “back in the day”, and there were a bunch of people re-enacting activities like candle making, etc. The festival had a variety of herbs for sale, and some old style handmade crafts, like old dolls, homemade jams and jellies, etc.

We went on an “edible plant nature walk.” It was pretty interesting. The guy that led the walk is a part of this club, I guess, that collects plants, etc. from nature and gets together to make a meal. Of course, I’m pretty sure they supplement it with other stuff. I can’t imagine getting full off of clovers and honeysuckle. The guy seemed impressed with Oak’s knowledge of edible plants.

By then we realized that we could go to the Art grows in Durham at SEEDS. There was a sign up at the DIG tent at the farmers market about it. DIGS (Durham Inner-City Gardeners) is this program for urban kids in Durham, and they run this huge garden and sell the produce at the farmers market. It’s pretty neat. We got to tour their huge garden/farm, and see the community gardens too. The kids were very enthusiastic about their garden, and they were growing a good variety of stuff! We’ll have to make some effort to take a look at their stuff at the farmers market more often. We also got a locopop and a delicious macaroon cookie. Yum!

Posted by Carrie on Monday, June 4, 2007
Categories: weekend · 1 Comment »