Unique items available at the Annandale Farmers Market

White peppers from the 78 Acres Farm.

 You can find things at the Annandale Farmers Market you’re not likely to find anywhere else around here.

And while summer is nearly over, the Annandale market, at Mason District Park, will be running for another two months. It’s open Thursdays, 8 a.m.-noon through Nov. 12.

Maura Niland of Twin Springs Farm.

At a recent visit to the market, the 78 Acres Farm in Smithsburg, Md., had white and purple bell peppers and tiny purple “fairytale” eggplants, as well as more common items like red peppers, tomatoes, and squash.

The Westmoreland Farm in Montross, Va., had sweet, light-green “ishtar” zucchini. Twin Springs Fruit Farm near Gettysburg, Pa., had purplish “purple haze” carrots and sweet, intense yellow and green “Christmas” melons and was giving out samples of white “zephyr” nectarines as sweet as candy.

Miller Valentine serves up bacon from his farm in Orange, Va.

At the Valentine’s Bakery & Meats booth, Miller Valentine was serving samples of bacon from a farm in Orange, Va., that’s been in his family for four generations. They mostly raise grass-fed, free-range animals and on Sept. 3, had coolers full of Angus beef, lamb, pork, and chicken, as well as a table full of homemade baked goods, including pumpkin whoopee pies, coffee cakes, cookies, and peach, cherry, and blueberry pies, plus several types of gluten-free cakes.

Ingy Wekil serves up samples of exotic homemade jams.

Ingy Wekil’s Jammerie booth was selling unusual jams – like cranberry onion, organic fig whiskey, Rapidan River wine raspberry chocolate, smoked spicy pineapple, peach chipotle, and grapefruit jalapeno – made in her tiny kitchen in Alexandria.

“I wanted to bring back the art of preservations,” Wekil says. The more savory varieties go well with meats or cocktails, she says, and any of them would make a nice hostess gift as an alternative to wine.

Natasha Potoreiko (left) describes the varieties of Naughty Girl donuts.

Several vendors have bakery items, but if you’re going to break your diet, you might as well go all the way – with something exotic like a peanut butter donut with Reese’s Pieces topping or a raspberry donut with Cap’n Crunch topping – from the Naughty Girl Donut Shop in Front Royal, Va. 

The other Fairfax County Farmers Market in Annandale is in the parking lot near the baseball field at Wakefield Park. It’s open Wednesdays, 2-6 p.m., through Oct. 28. Also nearby is the farmers market at the Mosaic District in Merrifield, open on Sundays, 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. through Nov. 22.