Just next door to the Green Music Fest last Sunday, healthy food-minded people could find the Wicker Park and Bucktown Farmers Market. It was supposed to have stormed all day, but the sun was out and people strolled through the market, stopping to smell the fresh tomatoes or buy pink peonies. RedEye ventured out to the market to chat with some vendors, most of whom arrive at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. to set up and stay until about 2 p.m., or whenever they run out of products.

First, we were drawn in by the colorful red, orange, yellow, and green tomatoes at Iron Creek Farm‘s stand. “We’re here every Sunday, June through October,” said farmer Tamera Mark, who drives 1.5 hours from her 70-acre, certified-organic farm in LaPorte, Ind. “We have a century-old farm handed down in the family. My husband and I both farm and have done farmers’ markets our whole lives.”

She explained the difference between the different-colored tomatoes. Pointing at some red ones on the end, she said, “Those are all the beefsteak tomatoes. They tend to be your nice, meaty tomato. Yellows are a little milder though. Orange have a nice flavor; red tends to be a little more acidic. I probably am partial to the heirloom varieties— Green Zebra being right on top of my list. It has kind of a citrusey flavor to it.”

At the next stall, baked cheese beckoned. A staple of any local farmer’s market, Wisconsin-based Brunkow Cheese‘s stand has a grill to melt cubes of cheese — sometimes filled with bacon. But, said Brunkow employee Jesse Cohen, who lives in Chicago, “We sample a lot of different cheese, not just the baked cheese,” including cheese curds, spreads and aged cheddars. “We have a lot of regulars who come, if not to buy cheese, at least to try some.”

Cohen’s favorite is the 10-year cheddar: “It’s got a nice sharpness to it, and by 10 years a lot of the proteins have started to crystallize, so it gives it a nice texture and a little bit of crunch too.”

As Cohen was explaining this to me, a customer stopped by. “Ten-year cheddar is actually what I’m looking for,” she said. They’re one for $6 and two for $10, Cohen told her. She chose the deal.

“Wicker’s really chill,” Cohen said. “Most of the people here, it’s mostly, like, babies in strollers or hipsters coming through.”

Right across the path from Brunkow’s Cheese, a young woman in a bright yellow shirt and earrings stood in front of loaves of bread, cookies and paczki. Reney Kulach was manning the Delightful Pastries stall for the first time. She’d been working in the bakery for about a month.

“I help out with packing and putting things in a basket and stuff like that,” she said. “To tell you the truth, it’s pretty fun. People are very nice, and everybody’s really cheerful and everything, even though I don’t know the prices, all of them. They’re like, ‘No, take your time, it’s OK.’ ” She brought a price list over to show me. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

Seeding Orchard was next, with cartons of bright red strawberries and raspberries from South Haven, Mich., for sale. Raspberry season was just starting, explained salesman Matthew Olsen.

Children are always grabbing handfuls of berries off the tables, but one time at the Wicker Park market, an older woman tried to take off with five melon ballers.

“It was during melon season,” said Olsen, who also runs nonprofit organization Warrior Arts Studio. “She took, like, all of them, and then one of our guys called her out. It was like, ‘Uh, did you just take those?’ She’s like, ‘No,’ but she had like five in her purse.”

We also spoke with and photographed flower vendors such as Heidi Ong and her family’s Garden Offerings and Illinois Specialty Cut Flowers; Flip Crêpes‘s Mark Talleus, a Frenchman who makes both sweet and savory crepes; and Mark Aiken of Wisconsin’s Nordic Creamery, who last week helped Rick Bayless buy butter without realizing it: “I had no idea who he was.”

Our last stop was at a central location right across the path from the vendors’ stalls, and an important stop for many of the market-goers: the Link tent. Corey Chapman of Woodlawn’s Experimental Station explained to me how Link — Illinois’s version of a food-stamp program — works at farmers’ markets: “The problem happened before everything switched over from paper to Link.” At farmers markets, he said, there were high redemption rates for actual Link users, “but when people started using Link cards and using electronic technology that became a barrier between the farmers and customer. A lot of farmers can’t afford to have a wireless machine. Machines can cost any where between 500 and 1,000 bucks, and farmers just don’t have that type of money to shell out.”

So the city of Chicago partnered with the Experimental Station to work at five of the city markets to bring Link to the markets, and this year, Chapman said, it expanded to 10 markets.

“We’re here trying to provide that service to all the customers who really want to have access to fresh food that really need it,” he said.

For those paying with their Link cards, the Wicker Park market uses a “chit system,” Chapman said. The farmers have little piece of paper with their name on it. Customers go to their tent and tell them, for example, that they want $10 worth of produce.

“The farmer writes down $10 on the paper; they bring it to me, I ring it up,” Chapman explained. “I give them the receipt; they go get their food.” That day, he’d had to call in his orders. “Normally I have a machine, but my machine is out for service today. It happens a lot.”

Stop by the Wicker Park and Bucktown Farmers Market, every Sunday through October 30 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

(All photos by Ruthie Kott for RedEye.)