Warm May weather helped produce arrive at farmers market

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Pam Lanum stood next to a small stand filled with quarts of plump strawberries and lanky tomato plants at the Delaware Farmers Market while friends and neighbors stopped by for a hug and a chat.

The unseasonably warm May weather — perfect for ripening berries — offset the side effects of a bitter April. • Farmers-market listings | C3

“With it being as cold as it was, stuff hasn’t caught up like it usually does,” said Lanum, of Lanum Farms in Sunbury.

She typically takes beets and greens as well as strawberries to early markets, but the cold delayed the harvest date.

At the opposite end of the market, which drew eight vendors along North Sandusky Street in downtown Delaware for its first Wednesday of the season (a Saturday morning market features between 30 and 45 booths), Grant Kibbey shrugged off the weird weather patterns.

“We take it how it comes,” he said. “There hasn’t been a frost since May 1, so I’ll take it.”

Kibbey started Fulton Creek Organic Farm near Radnor seven years ago, when he was a teacher at the now-shuttered online school ECOT.