News From SKY Farmers Market

We hope you'll come out and enjoy the crisp clear air, the warm light of fall, and the colors on the trees with us this Saturday. It's the perfect time to pick up your halloween pumpkins from the local growers at the SKY Farmers Market, as well as a few more for pies and baking.

• Hot Breakfast
• Farm Fresh Meat, Milk, Eggs, Cheese
• Coffee and Baked Goods
• Melons, Strawberries, Apples, and Pears
• Home Made Jam

The SKY Market is your best source for farm fresh, seasonal, locally grown food in Bowling Green, KY with summer's bounty of beans, tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers as well as fall crops including pumpkins, squash and sweet potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and greens, pansies and mums.

100% locally grown, 100% of the time.

See you there!

SKY Market News

Call for Submissions

Next year marks the 10 year anniversary of SKY Farmers Market. To kick off the celebration we are putting together a calendar for 2013. Since the success of the market has been due to the dedication of it's customers as much as to the integrity of its farmers and artisans, we'd very much like the calendar to reflect this community that we have built together.

If you have any photos, artwork, stories, recipes, poems, etc. relating to your SKY Farmers Market experience during these last 10 years that you'd like to share and include in this calendar we'd love to have them. All ages are encouraged to participate. Please send submissions by November 10 either by e-mail, mail or in person. Contact information is available on our website, www.skyfarmersmarket.com.

Be sure to include your name and a phone number or e-mail address in case we have a question, as well as a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you'd like your work returned.

Customer Appreciation Day
Saturday, October 27

To show our tremendous appreciation for our customers, the SKY Farmers Market will hold its annual Customer Appreciation Day on Saturday, October 27.

Come join us for a fun-filled morning with great food and friends. Vendors will be bringing some of their favorite seasonal dishes to share.

Closing Day
Saturday, November 10

With more and more farms growing protected and cool season crops, the SKY Farmers market will be extending it's fall season. The last market of the season will be on Saturday, November 10.

Grower Profile: Frint's Nursery and Landscaping

It's pansy season! Together with their cousins, violas and violets, these beautiful, vividly-colored flowers with the face-like markings are a cheery addition to the riot of fall hues. Not just a pretty face, pansies are hardy plants with nutritious edible flowers containing Vitamin C and A. They make great additions to that fall salad or dessert.

These popular cool weather favorites are making a big show now at Frint's Nursery and Landscaping of Bowling Green. A longtime member of the SKY Farmers Market, Carolyn Frint has been growing plants for commercial and residential use for over 40 years. Her love of gardening and passion for flowers really shines in the high quality of her plants.

This KY Proud business specializes in wholesale landscape plants, trees and shrubs as well as bedding plants, vegetable plants and annual flowers. They also offer landscape design services and installation. Come and get to know the Frints at the SKY Farmers Market.

Dancing With Microbes

One of the most exciting and active fields in biology today is the study of microbial ecology. Scientists are developing the tools and methods for studying microbial habitats with the same depth of detail that we're able to observe life in the visible world. The importance of microscopic organisms to all facets of life on earth is well understood. As scientists learn to count and survey microbial populations, the intimacy of our relationship with these microorganisms becomes clearer.

A team of researchers at the NIH has just completed a preliminary survey of the microbial communities that exist within the human body. Their findings begin to put the importance of our bodies' population of microbes into perspective.

The survey finds that the human cells in our bodies are out numbered 10-1 by microbes. The mass of these microbes can be about 2-5 pounds in a normal healthy adult - about the size of any of our internal organs. The human microbiome is not unlike an organ, with important regulatory functions in our bodies that are crucial to maintaining health.

To a single-celled organism, the human body is a vast landscape with a great variety of specialized niches and unique habitats. All of the different areas of the body have their own unique endemic populations and microbial ecosystems, and all sorts of species find specialized niches within our body. Our teeth are like chains of mountains that offer a range of different habitats from below the gum line to their lofty peaks.

Among other things, our endemic microbial populations play a critical role in our bodies' immune response. Native microbes are the body's first line of defense against pathogens. They populate the body's surfaces and cooperate with our immune systems to prevent pathogens from getting established. Our body's microbes are also involved in training the immune system to mount a defense.

Healthy microbial ecosystems in the body promote overall health and resistance to disease. With the cold and flu season ahead, it's a good time to look to the health of your microbes. There are many ways that you can improve and maintain the health of your personal microbiome.

Eat whole foods. The complex carbohydrates, fiber, enzymes, minerals and vitamins in fresh vegetables and other whole foods promote a diverse and vigorous population of intestinal life. The simple starches and sugars so prevalent in processed foods can promote an unhealthy proliferation of opportunistic bacteria.

Stay hydrated. Your great appeal to the microbes inside you is that you're a warm, moist environment. Many people are chronically dehydrated, effectively providing sustained drought conditions for the biome.

Wash your hands. We get sick when we receive a high enough inoculation of pathogens that they overwhelm our ability to resist them. Regular hand washing can greatly lower your exposure to pathogens.

Sleep well. Your microbes are only as healthy as you are. Fatigue, stress, dehydration, and poor nutrition lower their vigor, creating opportunities for disease organisms.

Tim Brelig and Kellie Diamond of Falling Springs Flower Farm edit the SKY Farmers Market Newsletter. You'll find them at the market every Saturday.