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VALLEY — Friday, August 30th will be the final day for the summer season portion of the Valley Farmer’s Market, and a special event will mark the closing out of the 2024 session. A Free Slice of Watermelon Day will be taking place.

Walter Pulliam of LaFayette and Matthew Steele of Shorter, Alabama will be bringing some of the prize melons they have been growing on their farms this summer.

Pulliam, who’s been farming for close to 50 years now, is really good at growing Jubilees and Crimson Sweets. Steele has had a good crop of Starbrights and Estrella watermelons this summer.

Free slices of those delicious-tasting watermelons will be available at this coming week’s 3 to 6 p.m. EDT session.

“We’ve had a pretty good year,” Pulliam said. “It’s been off and on, some days you get too much rain and then you’ll go several days with no rain, but all in all it has been okay. I’m pleased with what we have been able to grow this year.”

Along with some of his Jubilee watermelons, Pulliam also had some purple hull peas, beans, okra and peaches at his table on Friday.

Steele and sister Andrea Guyton of Montgomery loaded down a pickup truck with the produce they’ve grown this summer on Steele Farms. Along with lots of watermelons he also had some cantaloupes, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, okra, beans, potatoes and even some tangerines (he admits he didn’t grow them but they tasted great).

Other participants in Friday’s session of the Valley Farmers’ Market were Randall and Laura McClellan of Fredonia, Kim Rager of Oak Bowery, Mary Finley of Camp Hill, John Carson of Wadley and Denise and Kevin Bibb of Five Points.

The McClellans grow tomatoes and blueberries on Circle M Farm in Fredonia. Laura makes really great pepper jelly along with other jams and jellies made from muscadines, grapes and plums. She also makes fig and pear preserves, blueberry jam and apple butter in her kitchen.

Rager said she’s had a good year of making honey in Oak Bowery. Of course, the wildflowers and the bees played a pretty big part in it, too. She was selling four-ounce jars of her sweet tasting honey for $4 and the big 32-ounce jars for $25. Comb honey was going for $10 a jar and a dozen eggs for $3.

One of the more popular stopping places was the table of Mary Finley, “the cake lady.” Each slice of her cake was safely wrapped and looked absolutely scrumptious.

She had slices of key lime, strawberry, caramel, carrot and German chocolate cake along with fried apple pies and lemon-blueberry loaf bread. Finley is from the Camp Hill area and is carrying on a long family tradition of being a good cook.

Another popular place to stop was Denise Bibb’s table. She had fresh-baked goods for sale including sandwich and sourdough bread, lemon-zucchini bread and her superb homemade cookies.

John Carson of Wadley had a table filled with tomatoes, squash and beans. Like other farmers present at Friday’s market, he said he’d like to see a little more in the way of rain than what we have been getting lately.

While the summer season of the Farmers’ Market is coming to a close, there will be at least one session for fall gardeners. It will be taking place on the Friday before Thanksgiving and will give local people a chance to purchase such fall garden crops as collards, turnip greens and kale at very low prices.