Navan’s Little Market well-stocked for summer

“My father-in-law has always bought here, so he introduced us to it,” said Pam Britt recently. A frequent customer, the Orléans resident was at the stand with her five-year-old daughter Madison to pick up fresh produce. “The kids love them,” she said of the vegetables and fruit on display – everything from Quebec strawberries to baby carrots, potatoes, lettuce and beans freshly harvested by Sylvain “Tom” Wilson and Denise Robinson from their own land a short distance away on Tenth Line Road.

The couple has been operating Navan’s Little Market for the past six years. They rent the space from the owner. During the winter, the hard-working couple, who live in Plantaganet and have three older children, runs a snow plowing business.

The market stall operates seven days a week, July to Thanksgiving. It opens at 8 a.m. every day and closes 6 p.m. on weekdays, 5:30 p.m. on Saturdays and 5 p.m. on Sundays. “Sometimes I take Wednesday off,” said Robinson with a shrug and a smile.

She is no stranger to hard work. As a child, she often helped in her grandfather’s vegetable stand at the Parkdale Market; the stand, which opened in the early 1950s, was one of the market’s first. Robinson's father also grew market vegetables on land close to her grandfather’s. It was her father’s land that Robinson and her husband, who used to operate a dairy farm in Chute-á-Blondeau, Que., took over when they decided to continue the family market garden tradition. “Dairy farming is the same as growing vegetables,” said Wilson. “You work very hard for the money and you don’t count the hours.” He spends much of the summer in the fields, where crops are grown from seed. It’s a seven-day-a-week, 12-hour-a-day job cultivating, fertilizing and picking the vegetables on 12 acres of land.

Like Pam Britt, many of the customers at Navan’s Little Market are regulars. Iryna Azarova drives from Blossom Park to shop for meat at Lavergne’s meat market and pops across the road to stock up on fruit and vegetables. “It’s convenient, and the price is right,” she said.

Tomatoes from the Tenth Line farm are still two or three weeks away, but come August the only vegetables not grown by the stand’s owners will be corn. That comes fresh-picked every morning from a farm in nearby Embrun. “We already have people asking us when the yellow corn (the tastiest variety) will be ready,” said Ginette Sauvé. The Navan resident is Denise’s cousin and has worked at the stand for the past three years. “My dad was a market gardener, and I like the contact with the people,” she added.

Along with corn, folks are thinking ahead to pickling time, said Robinson. “People already gave us orders for their bushel of pickling beets and cucumbers.”