Stand By Your Stand: The Gourd Guy
This week's featured farmers'-market stall
Erika Janik
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Bored of aimless browsing at Madison's popular farmers markets? In Stand By Your Stand, Decider heads out to find their best and strangest offerings, and tips on how to use them.
The source: Blue Mounds, Wisconsin
Wares: Both large and small ornamental and luffa gourds. Varieties include long-handled dipper, Chinese bottles, lump-in-neck, snake, maranka, large bushels, and miniature bottles. There are also vegetables available, but the gourds are the real attraction.
Best deal: Prices vary, but you can find a decent-sized bottle gourd for $15.
Weirdest item: Luffa gourds. Many people think Luffa (or loofah) sponges come from the sea, but the bath and kitchen sponge is actually a vegetable you could grow in your own garden.
Serving suggestion: Try a gourd birdhouse! Owners Larry Haas and Terri Schmit include an instructional sheet for making birdhouses and bowls out of one of their hard-shell gourds.
Find it at: Dane County Farmers' Market, Saturdays, 6 a.m.-2 p.m., Capitol Square, through Nov. 7.
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