The Kalona farmers market kicked off on Saturday, June 4, featuring over 20 vendors selling everything from embroidered tea towels to fresh produce to freeze-dried candy. Banjoy, a four-piece bluegrass band serenaded the corner or B Ave and 5th Street, accompanied by chirping birds and market-goers as they strolled through the booths scattered around downtown.

Lehman’s Bread, operated by Katie Lehman, was sold out of almost all their product by 10 a.m., offering bagels and six or seven different kinds of sourdough bread with all different ingredients — in fact, they were almost sold out within the first half hour of the market, Katie said.

Katie bakes all her breads out of her home in Kalona, which makes for “a long two days,” but is worth it to see the finished product. She grinds all her own whole grains and enjoys the process of making sourdough bread.

“I like the final product. I love bread to eat, first of all, so that’s kind of what started it. I got started with the sourdough and it’s just a fun science to figure out,” she said. “It’s not regular yeasted bread because it’s all made with a starter. Figuring out different ingredients is fun and rewarding.”

Elena Beachy of Fiat Mason also makes her products out of her home in Wellman, including jams and jellies, butterhorns and macarons, although she did not have macarons to sell this past week because the wet, rainy weather makes baking them very difficult.

“Everything is foraged or homegrown organically at my house,” Beachy said. “So every single jam I sell, I have picked the fruit myself. I make French recipes, where I go by weight. And it’s only pure fruit and sugar, I don’t use any pectin. If a fruit doesn’t have much pectin naturally, I try to include some green fruit in it, which have more pectin.”

Beachy said she has been foraging and making jams and jellies since she was a little girl in France, baking with her mom.

“I love foraging,” she said. “I’m always so excited to see what I can find out there and what I can make out of it.”

Beachy said she hopes to soon obtain a license for selling foraged mushrooms.

On the other end of the fresh-food spectrum, Lisa Vileta of Wyld Chyld Freeze-Dried Candy offers a different take on classic candy treats — once they’ve been freeze dried, chewy candy becomes crunchy, light and airy with an enhanced candy flavor.

“It’s all store-bought candy but the freeze drier, the machine, is like a dehydrator on steroids,” Vileta said. “What it does is it does a vacuum freezing process, which takes the moisture out. And then it has the drying process that puts the heat in and will expand a lot of the chewy candies.”

Vileta, who operates out of her home in Williamsburg, had to offer many different candies, including samples, such as skittles, salt-water taffy, milk duds, Werther’s caramels, mini starbursts, sour skittles and caramel m&m’s.

Not all the booths sell edible wares at the Kalona market, including Niff-Tea Towels, operated by Kathy Niffenegger of Kalona, offering machine-embroidered tea towels, hand-quilted placemats, table runners and bags.

“I have been sewing since I could sit at a machine and work the foot pedal,” Niffenegger said. “I love to just get lost in it. It’s relaxing and soothing and I just love it.”