The DeSoto Farmers’ Market is moving to Main Street beginning with the 2016 season! More details will be coming soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to visit some of the artisans from the market, you can join the Christmas Home Tour and drop by the Masonic Hall. The Masons have graciously allowed several vendors to set up a sort of Christmas Market!
DFM Blood Drive
Donor Eligibility
Schedule A Time
The market will be hosting a blood drive on Saturday, August 22nd. We’ve partnered with St. Andrew’s and the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center to hold the drive from 9-12 in the fellowship hall.
The Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center provides donor and blood services to Mercy Hospital Jefferson just down the road. The blood donations won’t just go to the hospital though, and we’re excited to be hosting our first blood drive with a regional agency that serves much of the greater St. Louis area.
From the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center website:
Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center is the exclusive provider of blood products and services to 88 hospitals in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin. The Blood Center is based in Davenport, Iowa, where MVRBC’s testing, processing and primary distribution center handles more than 250,000 units of blood components each year. MVRBC is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. MVRBC collects blood at 19 fixed site donor centers and at more than 4,000 mobile blood drives held each year. The population of the Blood Center’s service region exceeds 4-million residents and donors give more than 180,000 donations each year.Blood donations are used to treat many illnesses, not just the car crash victims that come to mind first. In fact, blood transfusions are given for a host of different illnesses, including kidney disease, cancer, pernicious anemia, and hemophilia, and is commonly needed after surgeries.
Please consider donating on August 22nd!
Donor Eligibility
Schedule A Time
Adopt-a-Highway Clean-Up Scheduled
Saturday, May 9th is a clean-up day for the market’s Adopt-a-Highway stretch. It will begin at 1:00 PM and everyone is invited to help.
The market adopted the stretch on Highway 110 just east of town a couple of years ago, but Missouri’s Adopt-a-Highway program has been around since the late ’80s. Per MoDOT’s website, there are currently more than 4,700 groups and 47,000 volunteers in the program making Missouri’s roadsides cleaner and more attractive.
So, what do we do with our adopted road? Adopters have the option to clean up litter, mow, beautify through landscaping, or plant native grasses and flowers. We clean up litter. The litter picked up through this program statewide allows MoDOT to direct its resources to other necessary tasks.
The weather is supposed to be warm, but there’s a potential for rain; about 40%. Be sure to check our Facebook page for any updates in case of inclement weather. If you’d like more information about adopting a highway, click on the photo above.
Busy Weekend
There are several things happening this weekend in DeSoto, and they all line up nicely without too much overlap. Here’s your line-up:
If you’re lucky enough to swing an invite, you can attend the 2nd Annual DeSoto Fine Artisan Exhibition awards Friday night from 6-8 PM. For the rest of us, there’s the general admission time, but we’ll get to that.
Saturday morning, there’s the Desoto Farmers’ Market Highly-Anticipated, Much-Loved, Yes,-We-Parade-with-Little-Leaguers-and-Like-It, Tractor Parade at 10 AM. You can watch the parade anywhere along Main St. between Mahn’s Funeral Home and St. Louis St.
The market will open after that with plant sales from 11AM until 2PM at their regular location behind St. Andrew’s UMC on Rock Rd, so you can catch a few of the Little League Teams in the parade while the market vendors get set-up. They’ll welcome you with bedding plants, baked goods, and some craft items. If you’re looking to get some broccoli plants, this might be your shot.
Now, back to that 2nd Annual DeSoto Fine Artisan Exhibition. General admission is $2 and runs from noon until 5PM on Saturday and Sunday. It is at the DeSoto Community Center, and you might recognize some market vendors’ work there. Be on the lookout for baskets, iron-work, etc.
That gets you through Saturday, so on to Sunday. You can visit the Franciscan Sisters out west of town on Sunday afternoon. Just west of De Soto, the Sisters have 40 lovely acres and you are welcome this Sunday to take a hike down to the pond, tour the organic garden and enjoy either or both awesome gardening talks.
At 3:00, Joe Bean (local Master Gardener & the fellow behind the amazing De Soto Community Herb Garden) will give the talk Herbs How To. Joe’s a great guy and you won’t want to miss his presentation! Bring along your herb growing questions. At 4:00, Maurice will present Organic Vegetable Gardening 101. He’ll speak about his love for organic gardens and the various St. Louis-area gardening projects he has begun over the years as well examine basic organic techniques. The celebration gets started anytime after noon on Sunday, so feel free to come and enjoy a lovely late-April Sunday afternoon and relax at the Franciscan Sisters’ place! They’ll also have lots of Sister-sown heirloom tomato, eggplant and pepper plants available for donation.
(Directions to the Fransiscan Sisters place on Peter Moore: In De Soto just head out west on “H” Highway beginning at Walgreens and go a little more than a mile till you get to a curve in the road and Peter Moore Lane will be on your right. Turn there onto Peter Moore and keep an eye to the right. Very soon you’ll see the Franciscan Sisters’ sign in their hay field on the right. Turn off there and follow the yellow ribbons through the field and park on their lawn. Rain forecasts being what they are, be prepared to walk and potentially drive through some muck.)
That will cap off a lovely weekend, and of course you’ll need places to eat, and there are several in DeSoto. Of course, we’re partial to Pogolino’s because they sponsor the Farmers’ Market!
Trending this Thanksgiving…#TurkeyTrots
Many Americans have decided that Thanksgiving is more than just about being thankful and eating lots of turkey. It has become a day to get moving. As we previously outlined in another posting here, there are plenty of local footraces coming your way this fall. Several of them are happening next Thursday. Whether you do it to justify eating an extra slice of pie or to spend time with family, it is a growing trend.
One local race that we discovered after the previous posting is happening in Festus at the Y. It is open to non-members as well as members, and the registration fee is just $15-20. Click on the graphic below to go to the website, or get the registration form here.
