On the Side | In Head House, hearing market echoes

Just past 10 on a gray Sunday morning, Week Eight for the Head House Farmers' Market was yawning awake, the White Lady peaches being propped primly on folding tables, sunflowers at sunny attention, turkey sausage sizzling in the centuries-old (and too-long-vacant) brick arcade that runs down the middle of Second Street at Lombard.

Almost 30 open-air markets have cropped up in the city in recent years. But this is another level of the game: Here you could see the impact of critical mass (28 producer-only vendors), the intersection of history and longing, the giddy joy of civic revival, and the opportunity to make - and if you aren't careful, to spend - some serious money.

"Great cities deserve great markets," recites Nicky Uy, the laid-back, on-site manager for the Food Trust, the market's nonprofit sponsor.

And so as farmers displayed cascades of heirloom tomatoes and polished onions, and the scent of toasting corn tortillas rose from Los Taquitos de Puebla portable griddle, there were palpable resonances of San Francisco's Ferry Plaza farmers' market, and (as chef Marcie Turney and her partner, Valerie Safran, shopped for greens for the Head House Square Farmers' Market Salad they're running as a weekly special at Lolita) of the Union Square greenmarket in Manhattan, which inspires menus at cafes on its flank.

You hear boom-time talk: How about twice as many farmers next summer, covering the cobblestones outside with a field of pavilion tents? Why stop at the end of fall? What about selling Christmas trees in December?

Wild Flour Bakery, the wholesale bakery that makes exotic flatbreads, pastries and the challah rolls for Rouge's prize-winning burgers, has been so stunned by the bear hug for its first venture into retailing that it's re-examining its business plan.

Is it time, co-owner Laura Yaghoobian wonders, to invest in a retail storefront?

Philadelphia, of course, has the Reading Terminal Market, a century-old youngster compared with the Head House space, which dates to 1745. But Reading market has strayed from its role as a farm-fresh provisioner, and, as a metaphor, is now embroiled in an unseemly public brawl over the lease for a tourist-stop cheesesteak stand.