Berry good indeed
Oregon bounty on offer at Lincoln City Sunday Market
Mercedes Marriott of V Family Farm
By Jordan Wolfe
For the TODAY
Lincoln City Sunday Market is back and ready to “surprise and delight” according to one popular vendor.
Canopies and tables will encircle the Lincoln City Cultural Center every Sunday through October 11 with local and regional farmers and artisans selling products ranging from strawberries to watercolor paintings of blackberry brambles to Kouign-Amann.
Wait. What?
“Kouign-Amann is a laminated pastry,” said Jennifer Olsen, who co-owns the Siletz-based How We Roll Bakery with husband Roy Olsen. “In the final fold — the last 35 layers — we add cardamom, sugar and sea salt. Any croissant dough should have 108 layers, just based on the way that they're folded and laminated.”
The result is a caramelized, muffin-shaped wonder and the bakery’s specialty, available every week at the market.
Jennifer and Roy, whose father was a master pastry chef, started in Salt Lake City with the company Bake 360 and worked to turn it into a multimillion-dollar café.
“We needed a work-life balance, so we came here,” Jennifer said. “Took the best of what we do and put it into two farmers' markets.”
The Olsens’ ability to have a presence in Lincoln City is because of people like Melody Wilkins, the market’s board treasurer. The market is in the third season of its current form, and Wilkins has been around since the beginning of this iteration. She said the importance of a farmers’ market to her is twofold.
“First is the food side of it,” she said. “We do Snap and Double Up Food Bucks, so we're getting it to people who really can use some help getting that fresh, healthy food. And then we have a lot of talent in the area, and getting them a place to sell their work is really important.”
A vendor dabbling in both produce and art is Birdsong Botanicals, a regenerative farm based out of McMinnville. Each week, partners Peter Peterson and Christian Wrigley offer their fresh-grown herbs, seasonal vegetables or berries that are ripe that morning, tea blends, tinctures, glycerites and a variety of Peterson’s watercolor prints of the plants that he helps grow on the farm.
“Most of the things we make are things we grow,” Peterson said. “We grow Tulsi, an African Tulsi in the mint family. It makes beautiful tea, so it's probably the plant I'm most proud of.”
Another farm making the weekly trip is V Family Farm, situated on 80 acres in Independence. Co-owner Dee Marriott and her family have been farming for 30 years and every week will bring seasonal staples like asparagus, snap peas and her favorite strawberries to market, along with produce familiar in Marriott’s home country of Thailand.
“We’re known for carrying ingredients for Far East cooking,” she said. “So, a lot of bok choi, gai lan and Thai basil.”
For customers who are just starting to introduce traditionally Asian produce to their meals, Marriott recommends starting with incorporating something like bok choy into a salad to introduce the taste.
“Do baby steps,” she said. “And then you can step it up by stir-frying with protein; that's walking on the wild side.”
A new vendor to the market, Wright Tide Seafoods, is literally bringing a bit of the wild side to customers — in a massive ice-filled cooler.
“We started this season with the mission to provide more local fish to the community and educate them on sustainability and where your fish comes from, knowing what fishing vessel it came from, what port it came from, when it was landed and who processed it,” said Samantha Wright, founder and CEO of the company.
Wright, who grew up in Lincoln City, began the company in September 2025 and said her husband has been commercial fishing for more than a decade. Each week, expect to find Wright selling a variety of seasonal wild-caught fish including lingcod, rockfish and sablefish, also known as black cod. The offerings will vary with the season to other coastal favorites such as Dungeness crab and Chinook salmon.
Shopping isn’t the only reason to swing by the market — weekly entertainment is also a feature. Wilkins is in charge of the weekly musical acts that play in the market every Sunday at 11 am.
“Nobody wanted to do it, so I kind of got stuck with it,” Wilkins said, “But now I love it, it's one of my favorite things.”
The Lincoln City Sunday Market is open from 10 am to 2 pm through October 11 outside the Lincoln City Cultural Center at 540 NE Hwy 101. For more information, go to lincolncitysundaymarket.org.