Farmers Market

The Bel Air farmers' market has opened for the season in the District Courthouse parking lot at the Mary E. Risteau State Office Building off Bond Street. The Bel Air market operates from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Saturdays through November. The Bel Air market is the first of four such markets to open in the county this season. Edgewood's farmers' market will be open from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays from May 8 through Oct. 30, next to the MARC train station on Edgewood Road.

After just two months of operation, the Harper's Choice farmers' market is pumping new life into an aging village center hurt in recent years by the loss of merchants and customer concerns about security.Open Tuesdays since June, the market is behind the McDonald's in the Harper's Choice Village Center. Operated by Columbia Management Inc., the farmers' market has steadily increased its traffic flow each week, market officials said.That's good news for the 25-year-old village center."We're thrilled," said Wendy Tzuker, Harper's Choice village manager, who visits the market weekly to buy fruit, vegetables, baked goods and flowers.

Downtown Westminster's first farmers market is tentatively scheduled to open July 10 on part of the Sherwood Square parking lot on Railroad Avenue.The City Council agreed to sponsor the market after hearing from a farmer, an Agricultural Extension Service agent and a state Department of Agriculture marketing specialist at last night's meeting.The market will be strictly fresh produce and meats, not craft or flea market items, said Councilwoman Rebecca A. Orenstein, who proposed the market several months ago as a way to bring people downtown on Saturday mornings.

Farmers and crafts people offer local produce, baked goods and handmade crafts for sale weekly at Mount Airy Farmers' Market. The market, in its third year, is open from 4: 30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays at the F & M Bank upper parking lot, Main Street and Prospect Road.The market was started in 1995, with 12 local growers, after Darryl Becker, a Monrovia resident who grows hot peppers, tomatoes and onions, proposed the idea to Mount Airy Economic Development Commission.Information: 301-829-1478.

Ellicott City won't get a farmers market this summer, but the prognosis looks good for 1999.The county had planned to open a market there in July after the Dobbin Center farmers market -- a merger of last year's Dobbin and Oakland Mills markets -- debuted last month.But officials decided it was too late in the season to make a go of it in Ellicott City, according to Philip Gottwals, an agricultural marketing specialist for the Howard County Economic Development Authority."We only got two firm commitments from farmers," Gottwals said.

City Councilwoman Rebecca A. Orenstein has just started the spadework to plant a farmers market in downtown Westminster. But some critics are predicting it won't grow because the area is saturated.Others, including several downtown merchants and county tourism officials, like the idea.Ms. Orenstein suggested a farmers market as a way to bring more people downtown, boosting the city's revitalization effort. The city received a $27,000 state grant last week to apply to revitalization.Local business and government leaders organized under the name Greater Westminster Development Corp.

Frank Kopen, former owner of a Denton livestock auction and farmers' market, died of complications from cancer and heart disease Wednesday at the Annapolitan, an assisted-living facility in Annapolis. He was 86. Mr. Kopen was born and raised in New York City, where he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School and attended City College of New York. He was drafted into the Army in 1944 and was discharged at war's end with the rank of private. In 1943, he married Phyllis Sneider, whose father owned and operated several businesses including the Caroline Sales Co., a livestock auction and farmers' market in Denton.

Less than a year after it opened, the Rouse Co. has decided to close the weekly farmers' market in Harper's Choice Village Center in west Columbia to make way for construction of a new grocery store.Rouse marketing manager Elizabeth Buckley said there would not be enough parking to accommodate the sellers and the buyers at the market when construction of the Safeway store begins in April. The store is expected to open in the spring of 1998."We were there for a year and we said we couldn't make any guarantees that it would be open longer," Buckley said.

It feels like I am the only one not planting a vegetable garden this season. The first lady is. The mayor of Baltimore is. My friend Ron has expanded his vegetable garden, and my friend Jane, whose idea of gardening is walking all 18 holes on a golf course, is lending her yard to someone else so she can plant a vegetable garden. I scattered some lettuce seeds in a pot on the deck. And I will attempt again this year to grow a tomato plant that does not die prematurely from blight. But my idea of vegetable gardening is a regular Saturday morning trip to the farmers' market.

ONCE STRICTLY the realm of local farmers and their produce, Carroll County Farmers' Market now features vendors ranging from authors publicizing their books to demonstrations of health-related products. Even so, the quality and personal touch remain the same, 30 years after former county extension agent Robert L. Jones proposed starting a farmers' market. "Our customers like that," said Elaine Esworthy, a 23-year volunteer at the market who handles publicity. "For our crafts, we don't have flea market things.