Farmer's Market, Episode 1

Right after we first got married in October, John and I were walking back to our new apartment when we happened upon a farmer's market two blocks from where we had just moved. It looked fantastic (and we got a great Ethan Allen bedside table for $45! I've secretly never taken the price tag off because I'm so proud of what a good deal we got. Don't judge me.)

As we were walking through, John started talking about how fun it would be to have a farmer's market stand. The only trouble was, we didn't know what we would sell. But then, all that changed. We needed a dinning room table, so John decided to build one himself. Then, when I started working at home, he decided I'd better have a desk to work at, so he built this little beauty:

So woodwork it was. He decided to focus primarily on end-grain cutting boards, but he also thought it would be fun to build an old fashioned foot treadle lathe, so that he could turn wood as a demonstration at our market stand.

The lathe took him about a month. He finished it about a week and a half ago and then started making cutting boards like crazy--just in time for last Saturday, our first day at the Fenton Street Market.

 We found these great prints at an estate sale in Alexandria we went to when we were shopping for old wood-working tools for John. So we made some frames for them and set them up at the market, too.

Little kids loved the lathe. Little kids and these three old men, who would stand around talking shop with John about it.

Elderly man: Did you design it yourself?

John: Yeah, well I looked at some other plans and then made my own. The others had this really big pedal like the old sewing machine pedals, and I didn't want that, so I made adjustments.

Elderly man: You know, sometimes these machines have bigger pedals--like the old sewing machines.

John: ...Yeah, I've heard that.

It was really fun.