South Huntsville Farmers Market offers 'chicken tractor,' strawberries, fresh cinnamon rolls (updated, photos)

Latham Farmers Market

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(Gallery by Kay Campbell | kcampbell@al.com)

Ready for some feathery friends who'll repay your care with fresh eggs? Consider housing a handsome rooster, like this one, and some hens in a 'chicken trailer' in your yard. Learn about chicken trailers during today's South Huntsville Farmers Market at Latham United Methodist Church, Tuesday, May 28, 2013, in Huntsville, Ala. (AL.com file / William Colgin)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – A "chicken tractor" is not a tractor pulled by chickens – but it might offer someone with a good-size lawn a tidy and safe way to keep chickens while letting the chickens have the nutrition of fresh plants and bugs they can scratch up from the ground.

A demonstration of a chicken tractor, fresh vegetables -- kale, radishes, onions and lettuce that are still being pulled out of the ground as I type – are on their way to Latham United Methodist Church's Farmers Market as you read these words on Tuesday, May 28, 2013.

The South Huntsville Farmers Market is held in the shady side parking lot of the church just east of Memorial Parkway at Weatherly Road every Tuesday from 3 to 7 p.m.

One of Huntsville's newest church-sponsored farmers markets, like the one at Church of the Nativity's Greene Street Market, 4 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays in downtown Huntsville, Latham requires all of those selling produce, meat, eggs, cheese, flowers and baked goods live within an hour's drive of Huntsville and be involved in the production of those items. Ten farmers will be bringing fresh produce today in addition to the other venders of home-made goodies and flowers.

In other words: These markets really intend to put those who eat food next to those who grow food.

Special features at Latham’s South Huntsville Farmers Market today, Tuesday, May 28, 2013, according to the church’s alert that went out this morning, include: hanging baskets of flowers, honey, goat cheese, jam, early spring vegetable produce, strawberries, and cinnamon rolls.

The chicken tractor will be on display, and that mouthwatering smell in the air will be the uber-fresh pizzas being baked in the portable brick oven of Earth & Stone's Wood Fired Pizza trailer. Earth & Stone also bakes at Greene Street Market on Thursdays.

Kay Campbell, religion reporter for The Huntsville Times and www.al.com , can be reached at KCampbell@al.com and 256-532-4320. .

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