Shopping on the Farm

April is the crucial month for launching new farmers markets, before the busy summer season begins. Saturday, Pierce College in Woodland Hills opened one of the potentially most intriguing of this spring’s crop, the only certified farmers market in the Southland that is actually on a farm. Amid 240 acres of verdant, rolling hills recently rescued from development, students and employees of the community college tend cattle, sheep, cute little Russian meat goats and even three llamas.

None of the farm’s produce is available at the market yet, but the dean of the college’s agriculture department, Dick South, hopes the opportunity will motivate enterprising students to raise nursery plants, grow vegetables and renovate the sadly neglected orchard.

Among local producers present on opening day, Culinary Farms of Reseda set up a fine display of salad fixings, including mesclun, edible flowers, baby spinach, beet greens and spicy mix.

Ken Arno of Van Nuys had free-range chicken eggs, both brown and white.

And Peter and Estevan Bereczki, charming Hungarian brothers from Northridge, brought sage, orange and wildflower honeys gathered from hives in the Angeles National Forest.

Mark Lewis’ Dry Dock stand offered mussels farmed in Carlsbad; Morro Bay scallops, halibut and delicate rock shrimp caught off Santa Barbara; and opakapaka, huge, gorgeous red Hawaiian snapper from a few hundred miles farther west.

Green Farms sold asparagus, cauliflower and broccoli from Lompoc.

From his family’s empire of farms near Fresno, Shaun Rosendahl brought several fruits that originated in Australia: crunchy Pink Lady apples, juicy Lane Late navel oranges and Ellendale mandarins, which perhaps require the relentless heat of the outback to flourish, as these specimens were grainy. Amid a wide selection of dried fruit, he had unsulfured glaceed peaches, pale yellow, translucent fruit preserved in sugar syrup; these were less cloying than the sticky Australian version generally available.

Woodland Hills (Pierce College) farmers market, De Soto Avenue and Victory Boulevard, Saturdays, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.