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New Rochelle Grand Market Opens For Season

NEW ROCHELE, N.Y. -- Kaajia and Chris Cassin of Pelham came to the recent opening of the downtown New Rochelle Grand Market because they heard there would be more this year – and they weren’t disappointed.

The New Rochelle Grand Market will be open on Saturdays until Oct. 29.

The New Rochelle Grand Market will be open on Saturdays until Oct. 29.

Photo Credit: Filed

Featuring foods, entertainment and events for children and families, the market is open Saturdays through Oct. 29, from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. in Ruby Dee Park at the Library Green on Huguenot Street.

The venue began its season offering hard ciders, French guinea fowl, meats, sausages and cheeses from farms and craft food makers in the Catskills.

“We love that the foods are raised sustainably,” Kaajia Cassin said.

The kids activities were most important, though, she added, as her husband held their 19-month-old daughter, Lila, so she could drop a yellow disk the size of a dessert plate into the giant Connect Four grid.

The Catskill vendors practice farming methods designed to be easy on the environment and preserve the purity of the water in the region’s six reservoirs.

That water serves 10 million people, including customers in Westchester and New York City.

Jennifer Grossman, who helped coordinate the Catskill vendors, brought the French guinea hens she raises on her Mauer’s Mountain Farms, along with a basket of beige-colored eggs still holding their “bloom,” a natural protective coating that gets washed off mass-produced eggs before they reach the grocery store.

“The yolk is a more vivid color, too,” she said. “When you see a bright yellow or an orange yolk, those birds have been eating well.”

Deacon Weeks, who runs a family farm in Milford with his wife, said his pigs are raised in a pasture, and his cows are mostly grass-fed.

Maud McClay of New Rochelle, who came with her husband and son, took the opportunity to not only buy sustainable foods but to talk to the farmers who produce them.

“They always have the best ideas how to cook their foods,” she said.

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