Who is Selling Your Food at the Marion Farmers' Market?

The Marion Farmers' Market is filled with a wide assortment of produce and personalities. From X-ray technicians to landscape architects, these local sellers are some of the most interesting people you'll meet.

The market , where it is held every Wednesday from 3 to 6 p.m.

Take a step behind the booth and get to know some of your Marion Farmers' Market local vendors.

"The Tomato Lady"

Long before she became known as "The Tomato Lady," Cathy Kirkwood Sternhagen planned on entering the medical field.

"The thing is, I couldn't stand to see anyone in pain," Sternhagen said. She left a 4.0 grade point average and started a tomato-selling business when she was 19. Today, Sternhagen and her employees produce 120,000 pounds of hydroponically-grown tomatoes every year.

Sternhagen has six employees help with producing and picking the tomatoes, two of which are her 14 and 15 year old daughters. Each of her pickers typically works around 30 hours a week. Their farm, located in Hopkinton, Iowa, has around thriving 4,000 tomato plants.

"It takes a whole family to do," Sternhagen said. She and her mother do the marketing, and hit eight farmers' markets in six days. Sternhagen even started the farmers' market in Sand Springs, Iowa.

Architects in the Orchard

Further down the line of vendors is Marcus Johnson, who until last February was working as a landscape architect in Philadelphia.

Now, he and his wife, Emma, are curators to nearly 2,700 apple trees.

"It's definitely different than what we were doing before," said Johnson. He and his wife decided to move to Marion to be closer to Emma's parents, who own the orchard and farm near Central City. Both Marcus and Emma work on the farm daily now. They've got 20-25 different varieties of apples, and are planning to add new ones next year.

However, their first few months as apple orchard overseers haven't been without incident. Johnson thinks they lost about 90 percent of their apple crop when the trees bloomed too early, and the frost came unexpectedly.

This is the first part in a two-part story on your Marion Farmers' Market. Make sure to check back tomorrow to meet the whiz-kid behind a delicious Czech pastry.