Fall fun to the core

COEUR d'ALENE - Bruce Nordstrom walked along Fifth Street on Saturday afternoon, weaving in and out of crowds of people and carrying a bag of fresh apples.

"I'm really sad to see this is the last farmers' market," said Nordstrom, of Coeur d'Alene. "It's one of the highlights of the week during the summer."

The Kootenai County Farmers' Market celebrated the close of its season in conjunction with the Coeur d'Alene Downtown Association's autumn-appropriate Fall Fest and Apple Palooza, complete with hay rides and harvest produce.

The smells of sweet baked goods, crisp herbs, cinnamon and apple spice were fragrant in the air as market-goers looked over hand-crafted clothes and homegrown produce while munching on crepes or testing samples of fresh, creamy goat cheese or blackberry jam.

"I like seeing the people downtown," Nordstrom said. "It's a social event as much as a place to buy produce."

Loretta Booth of Athol also commented on the social experience of the farmers' market. She has been a vendor at the market for about seven years, selling handmade, colorful aprons and other fabric items. She has been sewing her whole life, a skill her mother taught her. Booth said she really enjoys getting to know the local people.

"You make lifelong friendships with the other vendors," she said.

Across the way from Loretta's Aprons was Audrey Thiesen's booth, Vision Quest Designs. Her potent potions range from the woodsy-smelling "Lumberjack" soap to a winter immune booster concoction she calls her "Elderberry Elixir." She experiments with different scents and ingredients to create a whole array of natural skin care products.

"It's chemistry. It's legitimate chemistry," she said. "You have to know what you're doing, you know, lye can be somewhat caustic and you don't want to get it on you because it's not very comfortable. Developing the soap that I came up with, that took a lot of trial and error and researching how all the different ingredients react with each other and complement each other, or not so much."

At the core of the Apple Palooza event was plenty of taste-testing of recipes that included the pomaceous fruit. Several shops downtown provided apple delights for guests to try. They could then write down their favorites and vote for them in a people's choice contest.

Mother and daughter Liz Ricciardi and Rebecca Selle of Coeur d'Alene had differing opinions about what treat was superior.

"Usually, I really like the antique mall, but I really liked Finan McDonald's cookies," Ricciardi said. "It had cut up candy in it. They were good, they were different and I liked that."

"At Christmas by the Lake they had apple cake," Selle said. "It had oat crumble on top, it was cinnamon-y."

Apple Palooza has been an annual event for four years, and mom and daughter said they try to come each fall.

"I really enjoy it," Ricciardi said. "I think it's a neat idea to get people out and downtown."

Selle said she likes events like Apple Palooza and the Chocolate Affair because she doesn't normally shop downtown.

"I like that you walk around and go through all the stores because most of the time, I don't shop in these stores here," she said. "You go inside and see what each store is, like if there are new places you haven't been to."

The Kootenai County Farmers' Market will return in May 2015 and Apple Palooza will be back next harvest season.