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HomeNewsArchivesFarmers Market Offers Abundance of Choices at VI Bush Tea Garden

Farmers Market Offers Abundance of Choices at VI Bush Tea Garden

The Sunday Farmers Market is held in memory of a farmer who relentlessly strived for agricultural development in the territory, the late Edith Quetel Bryan. A farmers market will be held every Saturday and Sunday beginning the weekend of Oct 17-18, at the VI Bush Tea Garden, the site of the former mini golf course in Smith Bay across from the Smith Bay Ball Field.

The market opens at 8 a.m. with a traditional VI Bush Tea breakfast featuring boiled eggs, saltfish, spinach, cucumbers, avocado and the famous butter bread for only $10. Vendors will have an array of botanicals that include incense, oils, soaps and local lotions derived from the Virgin Islands own flora. It will feature the traditional packs of seasonings, plants, seedlings, fruits, gardening tips and literature, vegetables and, of course, bush tea from a number of farmers such as simba, eroll, kitnurse, glorybloom, ras jomo I and sagp. In addition to the common flowers, the market will offer horticultural delicacies such as African mint, levatera-mallows,. 4-O’clocks, dwarf ruellia, Hawaiian frangipani, sweet tamon and the newly acclaimed soursop trees. This market will present long-time fruits and vegetables that are slowly diminishing in V.I. culinary culture in the hope that it will revive some of the V.I. historical and culinary art pieces that are fading with time. A fruit tree display was donated for exhibit by the former Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture Elvette Elliott.
The market also features non-traditional items such as books by Dr. Anita DeFoe, fashion handbags by Paulita Andrew, cheesecake by Vernon Evans, carved calabashes, Aneckworks Design Jewelry, oil, incense, soaps, massages by Nefertiti, braiding by Penny Hilaire, Bush Bath, clothing, music, honey, soaps by Mary Mercer, toys, tarts, museum quality woodwork, award-winning hot sauces and other fine cultural gifts. The market offers a working community an old fashion foot rub. To enhance your health, there are tasty dishes, regular and vegetarian, prepared by The Bush Tea Café. Every hour there will be yet another prize to be given away, ranging from design jewelry to hot pepper bottles, to a young Guavaberry tree.
Shop to the soothing sounds of gospel music until 3 p.m. For those not shopping, they can view movies, play a number of games or simply sip on the tea of the day and just take in the ambience. Jacquel Dawson, the Bush Tea Lady, will give her 15-minute High Tea Bush Tea Presentation at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. They detail the medicinal qualities inherent in the phyto-chemistry of V.I. tea leaves. There will be 15-minute bush tea samplings and a question and answer period.
At sunset, a live band opens up the Night Market on Saturdays to entertain customers as they shop all the way to midnight. Sunday audiences are serenaded with Virgin Islands music on steel pan, saxophone or ukulele.
For more information, call the Bush Tea Lady at the VI Bush Tea Garden at 227-3396 or e-mail: vibushtea@yahoo.com.
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