Walking through the aisles of the JFX Farmers’ Market on an early Sunday morning, the air was thick with a scent of sizzling masa, savory meats, and sweet spices. Between rows of fresh produce and goods were two stands serving warm, golden empanadas and hot, freshly made pupusas.

The market is more than just a place to shop for fresh produce; it’s a gathering spot where cultures meet and stories are shared through food. The empanada and pupusa stands bring authentic flavors to the community while highlighting the traditions and pride of the people who make them.

DMV Empanadas is run by Luis Alberto, who started bringing his products to the market about 10 years ago.

“We bring the flavor from our countries, and from there I saw that the farmers’ market let us sell empanadas,” he explained.

Alberto smiled as he worked behind the counter. He said his empanadas have a simple recipe, “A lot of love first, then the dough, then the ingredients, chicken, meat.”

At the pupusa stand, Abraham Mendez and Heydy Solis have been selling their Salvadoran specialty for three years. They were inspired by a former coworker at another job.

“A Salvadoran lady who worked with us, she was the one who told us to sell pupusas,” said Mendez.

Solis said the pupusa revuelta, with a masa dough, is their most popular version.

“For the revueltas, we use pork with cheese. The pork is mixed with cheese, then the dough is prepared and ready to cook the pupusa,” she explained.

Mendez added that autumn is the busiest season for their pupusas, when cooler weather draws in more customers craving the warm, hearty dish.

Baltimore’s JFX Farmers’ Market is a chance for customers to pick up locally grown and farmed groceries, a treat for their families, and a quick coffee, all while taking a nice walk and visiting with friends. For local farmers and businesses, like Jesse Albright from Albright Farms, the market is an essential amenity to city living. 

Albright said the JFX Farmers’ Market missed one weekend due to Artscape taking up the space under the I-83 Expressway in June. That left many in the neighborhood without access to fresh produce.

“When we have an interruption, it’s not as big a deal for us. I mean, sure, I do not like not being able to sell my product,” Albright said. “It’s a bigger deal for the people that are just trying to feed their families and rely on us as a food hub in a city.” 

Albright said that prices of products at the market can be cheaper than a regular grocery store, so it is both accessible and affordable for people to be able to get their meats, vegetables, fruits and dairy.

Albright has been coming to the market since he was a small child. He said the market is a great opportunity for Albright Farms to sell their products.

“For the financial side of it, it’s a great single-day location and an abbreviated time frame in which we get to sell a large volume of product in a short manner,” Albright said.

Albright said it’s a “mutually beneficial relationship” for both his family’s business and for customers. He said weekly interaction with customers brings products straight to the consumer, while allowing the consumer to give him, and other vendors, feedback in person. 

Albright Farms is a family-owned agriculture business located in Baltimore County. They sell meat, vegetables, fruit, dairy and plants. 

While you might come to the Baltimore Farmers’ Market for the food, crafts, and clothing, every once in a while you’ll also find an author. Today, it’s USA Today best seller N.D. Jones. 

Jones is the author of 20 fantasy novels that center Black culture and Black experiences. Additionally, she has a collection of coloring books and notebooks that fit into the worlds she has created with her books and the themes they explore. Jones goes to a lot of book and cultural festivals to promote her work but made her farmer’s market debut this year. 

Over the years, the farmer’s market director Deleaney Cate has had a handful of authors utilize the market to promote their books but never as a weekly staple of the market. 

“There’s several ways that artisans can schedule their time here. Some of them are all season, some only do a trimester or a combo of trimesters, or are occasional Sunday vendors,” Cate said.  

Each week occasional Sunday vendors will apply for a spot at the market online and be assigned a spot among the other vendors. Usually, they will fill where someone has called out. 

Jones fills in as an occasional Sunday vendor at the market, but has also found herself filling a gap in the fiction market. 

“I started reading comics and I was watching anime and reading manga, and it’s not a lot of African Americans in either of those things or any of those things. Not to the point where I think they should be,” Jones said.

Until this year, local author N.D. Jones hadn’t even come to the market to shop, but since promoting her work here, she has become a fan. 

“It’s a wonderful resource for the city, and so now I’ve found myself getting up a couple times to come down and do personal shopping here. And it’s, you know, it’s homegrown. It’s good to support local people, especially when they have really awesome things to sell,” Jones said. 

“I started doing this this year because my attitude is you can find readers any and everywhere and I’ve done exactly that,” she said. 

Interacting face to face with her readers and customers has allowed her to see the impact of her work in real time. 

“I have those conversations with people, you can see their faces, when they come up and they’re like ‘Oh, I’m not used to seeing this. Oh, this is great. It affirms the need for this and beyond that, you know, they enjoy the stories which is what you want.” 

Every Sunday, dozens of sellers unpack their cars and trucks in the dark hours of the morning underneath I-83 in downtown Baltimore for the weekly JFX Farmers’ Market. Nestled underneath the roaring highway sit Norma Green and Paula Darby, expert jewelry crafters who build community, one bracelet at a time.

For years, the two women have had their individual stands situated next to each other where customers choose from an array of jewelry between their two tables. Norma Green’s business is Verde Beads, an homage to her name, featuring handcrafted beaded and gemstone jewelry. Green has been selling her jewelry at flea and farmers’ markets for 21 years, and has been at the JFX Farmers’ Market on most Sundays for 15 years. 

Next door sits Paula Darby and her business Wyldwood Designs. Since 2017, Darby has made Wyldwood Designs her full-time gig. Darby retired early because she was ready to pursue her art. 

“I knew there was something I really enjoyed doing, and I found that it was being creative, doing my craft, and meeting new people,” Darby said. 

Green and Darby might seem like competitors with their similar merchandise, but they have formed a close working and personal relationship. 

“We both have jewelry, but we have different items. We refer people to each other because there is plenty to go around for everybody. We’ve really built our businesses by helping each other,” Green said.

Their community expands to other vendors at the market, too. They describe all of their neighboring stall owners as good friends who have each other’s back. The community that has been built around endless folding tables is special, and Green and Darby seem to be at the helm of it. 

Darby said the support she received from Green and others when she had a stressful day a couple weeks prior were acts of pure kindness. 

“Kind is a four letter word and it is so underrated. When people exercise kindness, it is just so big,” Darby said. 

Just getting a stall at the JFX Market is competitive, so it is easy to imagine a world where the competition amongst vendors is also fierce. Green and Darby said that is far from their experience. 

“We look out for each other!” 

Every Sunday morning, you can find kids and adults alike stepping into giant black, blue, orange,  and green hula hoop and giving it a spin.  

Founded in 2010, Baltimore Hoop Love, a Baltimore-based performance and interactive entertainment group that has been at the farmers’ market for the past 15 seasons.

When asked what drew Sully to his love of hula hoops and creating them, he shared a rather unique answer.

He said, “I didn’t learn to hula hoop until I was 39, so it was kind of like a mid-life crisis. I ended up learning how to hula hoop at a contest on Georgia Avenue.”

Spilly explained how slowly, but surely, he began to realize how much of an impact hula hooping had on his life.  He attributed much of this new found passion to his daughters.

“My daughters wanted more hula hoops and they were so expensive. There were a couple of local people making them, and I realized that I could start making them myself,” Spilly said.

He was eager to share the process of what it takes to make the hula hoops. 

“It’s a PVC irrigation tubing usually used for plumbing or farming. How much of it you use really depends on the size of the hoops.”

Spilly uses big plumbing scissors to cut the hula hoops into different sections. He then boils the ends for a while, and  then uses a plumbing connector to connect them. That is the part that makes the hula hoops stay together permanently.

If you want your own custom design, he will make you a custom  hula-hoops on the spot in about 10 minutes. A table across from Spilly’s hula hoops is filled with duct and electrical tape, along with a variety of colors and patterns, for people to make their design choices.  The pricing of each hoop is based on the thickness of tubing, and not necessarily the circumference of the circle.  Or you can pick among the various selection of pre-made hoops. 

For more information, head to Baltimore Hoop Love. 

Richfield Farms of Manchester, Maryland, has been a part of the JFX Farmers’ Market for more than 40 years. Founded by Richard Seletzky, this family-owned farm has been in business since 1986. The operation is now run by Richard’s son Ian Seletzky. 

While their market stand has tons of fresh produce, the main attraction is their flowers. Richfield Farm has plenty of bouquets depending on the season, ranging from bright purples and pinks. They are most famous for their sunflowers.

Richfield Farms takes family-owned to a whole new level as Jack Richard, son of Ian Seletzky, tells the story of how his parents got engaged. 

“He took her on her first tractor ride through the fields of our farm, and that’s where he proposed to her,” Richard said.

For the past year, Maryland has been in a drought. Thankfully, according to Richard, their farm has good resources to help get them through.

“It hasn’t affected us. We have an underground river that we tap into, which is two wells… and if we were really desperate, we also have a stream that we have a dam for,” Richard said.

For more information about Richfield Farms, head to their website https://www.richfieldfarm.com/. 

The looming threat of price increases and shipping issues is continuing to occupy space in the small business psyche at the JFX Baltimore Farmers Market. 

The local vendors, like many small business owners, are struggling with uncertainty, price increase, and customer backlash as a result of the tariffs. This is because 97% of all imports come from small businesses, leaving them susceptible to President Trump’s trade war.

Tibet Sky Emporium is a clothing vendor at JFX, owned by Dolkhar Garrett. Their colorful clothing from the Himalayas, handcrafted by refugees and Nepali women, has run into delivery issues amidst the confusion surrounding the tariffs. 

“It has just been chaos. Now, I have shipment stuck in London, and I talk to the shipper everyday overseas in London and they don’t even have an answer,” she said. 

Garrett expressed that she is frustrated by how difficult all of the issues caused by the tariffs have made running her business. On top of shipping delays, there has been an additional financial costs, 

“We have to pay the tariff, the customer is not willing to pay the tariff, ‘oh! Your prices went up,’ I have to increase the price, as a small business it’s very hard,” she said. 

Some businesses haven’t felt the hit yet. Baskit Don’t Bag It owner George Frazier sells fair trade baskets primarily from Africa. While he personally has not been impacted by tariff’s,  he does not think that will last. 

“I think we’re going to feel a little bump, as time goes on, the bump is going to be more severe and in time, we will feel it more dramatically,” he said. 

They are around 4 inches long, with light green skin and the shape of a mango. 

Two Boots Farm in Hampstead, is one of the few farms that harvests and sells pawpaws at the Baltimore JFX Farmers Market. Farm Market Manager, David Doyle, describes the pawpaw as the fruit that nobody knows anything about.

The fruit is grown on trees in the Mid-Atlantic area, with its harvest time from August to October. Although the taste is similar to a crossover between a banana and mango, the pawpaw is actually a part of the apple custard family. 

“Just like an apple or anything else, there’s a lot of like, found select varieties. People have found some and called them things like Shenandoah or Susquehanna or Allegheny,” Doyle said. 

They vary in sweetness and firmness, some having a sugar cane taste, others having a musky melon flavor. Their flesh color ranges from pale yellow, dark yellow, to orange. 

The history of the pawpaw is rich. Doyle explained that in the mid to late 1700s, there were huge pawpaw orchards across the coast. At the time, people enjoyed and relied heavily on pawpaws, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and abolitionists. 

“The Underground Railroad knew to follow the riverways along the way in the fall and they planned their trips during that time so they could sustain themselves off of pawpaws,” he said. 

The trees can take 5 to 8 years to grow fruit, and are known as an understory plant, meaning they thrive in partial shade under other trees. 

“When we grow them in the orchard we try to protect them the first year or two because they’re kind of a little bit sensitive, and then after that, they love full sun and just kind of go crazy,” Doyle said. 

On their largest harvest days, Two Boots Farm harvested up to 150 pounds of pawpaws and sell them across the Baltimore-D.C. area. 

But not all Marylanders need to travel for their daily dose of pawpaws. Emily and David Markovitz, Maryland residents, planted a pawpaw tree in their backyard. 

Emily first heard of pawpaws in popular folk songs that reference them. It wasn’t until coming to the JFX Framers market where she was truly introduced to the versatile fruit. 

“I have heard of them because they’re in the songs. But you know, I had never really seen one until like maybe six years ago,” Emily said. 

The couple planted the seeds around 5 years ago and are just now reaping the fruit. 

“We could see the progress, we could see the hope year after year. And this year we got the fruit. I wanted to grow the trees because they’re native…this year we got the pawpaws and they were amazing,” David said. 

The JFX Baltimore Farmers’ Market wakes the city up on Sunday mornings. Local farmers arrive early to set up their stands in hopes of selling all their food. But what happens to all the left over produce if they do not sell out?

Martin Farm’s Harvest based out of Perry Hall, Maryland cracked the code. They partner with Baltimore Community Fridge Network to donate their leftover produce to community fridges across Baltimore. 

Nick Martin from Martin Farm’s Harvest said, “I would much rather see it go somewhere else and that somebody actually eats it and enjoys it than it getting thrown in a landfill.” 

Farm fresh food does not contain the same amount of preservatives as grocery store produce. Vegetables and greens wilt if they sit out an extra week, so farmers can’t resell the same produce from week to week. Many farmers choose to feed their communities rather than take their produce to other markets in the surrounding areas. 

Bartenfelder Farms also donates to the Baltimore Community Fridge Network.

Farmer Joey Bartenfelder said, “I’d rather donate it and it goes to good use instead of going home and it going to waste.”

You can visit the JFX Baltimore Farmers’ Market April through December from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. every Sunday. 

As the scent of pumpkin and pine fills the Baltimore air, JFX vendors are shifting into late fall crops. While some farmers are counting on different crops to generate income during this time, others resort to value-added products that can be produced any time of year.

One trickier aspect of being a produce reliant vendor is strategizing how to respond to weather during the smaller crop yielding months, when crowds and crops both shrink. To consumers, the transition marks a shift from summer salads to autumn stews. However for farmers the adjustment is tactical, requiring a unique perception of the food market within Baltimore.

Rachel Eck from Green View Hydroponics has been selling her produce under the JFX since 2022, in the farming business with her husband for over five years. 

“It’s been a lot of trial and error, a lot of challenges, a lot of opportunities. But that’s also part of it right? Not everything’s always consistent or stays the same,” Eck said.

Their produce is primarily lettuce and herbs, which they make and sell year round. In order to do so, she said they grow their produce hydrochronically, meaning produce is made in water without soil. During the wintertime, they supplement with growth lights to continue production.

“We try to make sure we have everything each week that we have a variety of lettuce and herbs and we try to have that. But sometimes depending on the demand for the week we might just be limited. We might have an influx. So it just kind of varies week by week,” Eck said.

The JFX Market runs through December before shutting down for the winter, giving consumers a few more months to delight in local produce. By the time it reopens in April the cycle will begin anew, and rain or shine, Green View Hydroponics intends to be there.