Once a hangout for local slot players who stayed for the diner specials, the Roadhouse Casino at Boulder Highway and Sunset Road is attracting a new crowd – but they’re looking for fresh vegetables and organic products.

The new Henderson farmers’ market is open 4-8 p.m. Thursdays through the summer beside the old Henderson casino, which has been shuttered for several years. The outdoor market is drawing traffic not seen since the days of loose slots and the meatloaf special. And maybe not even then.

I headed there for the late May grand opening to experience the atmosphere of hip foodies and carnival-style offerings like Cajun barbecue and funnel cakes. The market also provides a favorite Vegas time-killer: people watching.

“It looks like the community is going to support it and that’s the great thing,” says Dan Garrison, a farmer and the market organizer.

You can find deals here: three red bell peppers for $2; two baskets of strawberries for $5. And observe the characters: Those who cling to the belief that an organic oil cures all and that all you need is that Tea-rrific jar of green tea to calm your life. A countercultural 1960s revolutionary hocks incense. All you have to do is ask around and you’ll find hidden stories in the corn. Retail therapy has never looked so home grown.

And maybe there’s no time like the present to relive better days. Curt Shepard, a 64-year-old Las Vegas man, is selling reminders of his psychedelic past while he waits to go back to work as an at-risk youth counselor. He sits in the shade of a Bob Marley wall hanging.

“It reminds me of the good times, it reminds me of friends, it reminds me of the movement of people during that time,” says the former Deacon for Defense, a 1960s black power civil rights group active in the South.

Vendors like Shepard don’t seem to mind sitting outside in 100-plus degree heat selling products that seem like luxuries during a recession. I don’t mind paying 50 cents more here for berries, knowing that my money is supporting a central valley farmer and his children, who are right there helping stock the table. But I know I won’t be taking flying lessons in that one-man glider parked at the front of the market. But the flight instructor attracts curious shoppers.

This market is still small – it will have about seven farmers driving from California, Utah and Idaho for the Southern Nevada weekday markets before making the trek home for their own weekend markets.

Garrison says the “gateway to Henderson” is the perfect place to pull over for some California blueberries, organic white nectarines and cherries from his family farm.

The barrel-chested Fresno farmer resupplies a vendor with heads of corn. He drops one on my foot while attempting to stock, talk and sell.  He offers me a Brooks cherry – the first variety to ripen before the summer – with a shiny red skin and a sweet and tart flavor. “It’s the best crop we’ve had in Brooks in four years. Bings [cherries] will be out in about three weeks. But now these cherries are phenomenal.” And with that, Garrison was off. He had to go pick up the bread guy, a local baker, whose truck has just broken down on the side of the road.

Henderson isn’t little anymore, but it may not have the culinary diversity for vegan Chef Mayra Trabulse, who often finds herself educating shoppers on vegan eating.
She attributes the crowd around her tent to savvy social networking skills (5,200 Twitter followers, 600 Facebook friends).

“A vegan is a person who chooses to not eat animals or animal by-products,” she repeats to William Tye, a retired bridge builder who lives in Henderson .

“I eat everything,” he says, as his wife pulls on his sleeve. “I was brought up that way. You were taught to eat everything and not to throw anything away.”

Perhaps this is an argument that even the quick-witted Mayra will not attempt: no, you don’t throw away the meat, you don’t even buy it, I could see her thinking. She moves on instead to the virtues of 100 percent organic balsamic oil.

“People tend to think if you don’t have a recipe, you can’t function,” Chef Mayra says. “Just open your fridge and see what you can put together. There is no science. A zucchini and a cucumber. They get along. Trust me. They are friends. Tomatoes, avocados – they are friends. Put it in a bowl and do that rather than potato chips.”

She combines cucumber, avocado and tomatoes with the oil and tarragon, oregano, marjoram and mint paste.

Tye is one of the first to line up to taste. This isn’t what he’s cooking at home, but for a warm evening at the Henderson farmers’ market, it cools him off.

“It looks really good,” he says before taking a fork-full of the salad.

Experience the Henderson farmers’ market at 2100 N. Boulder Highway every Thursday evening.

By Becky Bosshart