New Harvest Park Farmers Market opens next week

The New Harvest Park Farmers Market kicks off its season next week on Thursday, April 14, and stays open every Thursday from 3-6 p.m. through Sept. 29. Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs will ring the bell to open next Thursday’s event.

The Market will feature 15 small, locally-owned businesses and showcase a wide variety of seasonal produce, meats, eggs, plants, prepared foods and artisan crafts, and will grow to 20 vendors during peak season. A community booth will house the Nourish Moves walking program in which market patrons can track their steps and redeem them for Produce Bucks to be spent at the market on fresh fruits and vegetables. Go here for a look at the map of vendors:

Additionally, Nourish Knoxville will continue to offer SNAP & P-EBT processing and doubling at the market through the Double Up Food Bucks Program. SNAP & P-EBT purchases will be doubled, up to $20 per day in Double Up Food Bucks tokens that are redeemable at the market for free fresh fruits and vegetables.

In other Knox County Parks and Recreation news, the newest dog park at Beverly Park is almost done. We’re waiting on some features and special trash cans that – we hope – will be here shortly. We also have to seed a small spot but that should only take a few days.

As usual, we had a four-man crew in Beaver Creek, working on the Knox County Water Trail, a 44-mile stretch of navigable water that touches five communities between Clayton Park in Halls and Melton Hill Park in Hardin Valley. Unfortunately, a track hoe went down, so we’re waiting for it to get fixed. In the meantime, our folks are still clearing jams and floating debris in order to create access points.

Speaking of access points, as you might recall, Aubrey’s restaurant founder Randy Burleson recently made a hefty donation to the project in order to build an “adaptive dock” at the kayak launch near Powell High School. Our carpenters were out there earlier in the week, taking apart some of the current dock to help get the new one ready. We might even be able to build another one at Roy Arthur Stormwater Park off Harrell Road. We’ll know more in the coming weeks.

Additionally, our carpenters spent some time at U.S. Cellular Park, fixing the leaky roof to the concession stands and restrooms. Our Concord Park crew repaired some broken posts on the batting cage at C.B.F.O.; cleaned up trees from the storm at the Concord Dog Park and Cherokee Park; and mowed all the area parks.

We also had a crew at Melton Hill Park fixing the boat ramp, which was washing away.

As always, it wouldn’t be a column without mentioning our one-man machine, Frank Christian. In his weekly text to me, he noted: “Trees down, storm related at Nicholas Ball Park, Solway Park, and Melton Hill Park. Straw and seeding at McBee Ferry Landing Park. I’ve been doing pressure washing, greenway signs, and some mulching at Spring Place Park. Crew did boat launch repairs at Melton Hill Park.”

As a reminder, we plan to host the Walk with the Mayor event on Saturday, April 16, at 10:30 a.m. at Ijams Nature Center. It’s a roughly one-mile (about 20 minutes) walk. Knox County Library also will be on hand. We plan to have the official release and a promotional video out next week. In addition, Lamar Advertising reached out to us, and they plan to advertise the event – for free – on digital billboards.

Also, as a reminder, we have the Women’s Softball Homerun Derby April 27 and the Men’s event on April 28 – both at the Sportspark in Karns.

The Beaver Creek Flotilla will take place on Saturday, May 14, and the Junior MLB Homerun Derby on May 20. We also plan some lawn game events at Carl Cowan Park on May 22 from 3-6 p.m.

As of now, we have confirmed that CJ’s Tacos and Gelato Brothers food trucks will attend the lawn game event. We also plan to have B97.5 there with their van to play music and set up a tent with their bee mascot. We will provide games such as ladder ball, spike ball, cornhole, etc. Additionally, we plan to have a blow-up mini sports arena that includes soccer and basketball goals for small children to enjoy.

Enjoy these photos from work around the county, much of which involving clearing and cleaning up downed trees: