A simple soup was the plan. But it called for potatoes, and by 1 p.m. last Sunday, the red, white, and blue potatoes - some of them thumb-size fingerlings - had been snapped up under the old, brick shambles at the Headhouse Farmers Market, Second and Lombard.

Their basket was still on the table, tantalizingly (reprovingly?) empty. The Sunday market runs 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. You snooze, you lose. No soup for you!

Don't let the photograph fool you: That's a preview of what's to come, the market in high season, cascades of fresh onions and beets, spotlit under sunflowers by the bucket.

May is the warm-up act - here, and at the dozens of other outdoor markets blinking awake in the early light. Once you might not have found much beyond wintered-over rutabagas and new asparagus. But farmers are revving hoophouses earlier; covering crops in the fields.

So at 22d and Fairmount last Thursday afternoon, you could encounter cukes (already!) and beets and big radishes, the fruit of a greenhouse in Nottingham, Pa., that an Amish farmer heats with wood. Actually, the fire heats the water that circulates near the plants.

And there were sightings on Saturday (Headhouse has Saturday hours now, as well) of new-crop scallions and lush Pequea Valley yogurt made from grass-fed milk; of unfiltered honey, sorrel, bok choy, and exotic mushrooms.

On the other hand, a new vendor, Blackbird Heritage Farms, specializing in endangered breeds of sheep, chickens, and geese, and a line of open-pollinated (which is to say non-hybrid) vegetables, postponed its Headhouse debut until next Sunday: Down on the Townsend, Del., spread, the deer ate the lettuce.

Of course, the advent of a new market season isn't just about welcoming the spring produce. (Or La Colombe's new coffee stand, or the pulled pork from Sweet Lucy's.)

You might bump into a Wharton professor you know buying exquisitely thin-skinned, dark-chocolate-dipped Spanish figs for his lady friend. Or a colleague, her jeans rolled calf-high, sharing her stash of flatbread before biking home to Fitler Square. Or the cheesemaker from Chester County you haven't laid eyes on since fall.

There's an eager, first-of-season flush in the greetings. Hauling produce to town hasn't become a chore yet. It's not too hot. It's soothing, in fact. Yes, there will be growth in the spring - you can rest assured.

By 1:45, the Sunday crowd was thinning under the brick shambles. Some vendors were running out (of favas and rhubarb) or packing up (scallions and cartons of pastel-colored eggs). There were musings about the arrival date for the wet, sweet strawberries from Lancaster County, and whether Tom Culton would be growing show-stopping organic artichokes again in that secret field of his.

But the time for lollygagging was over. The curtain was falling. From the Queen's Farm table, a bunch of spring onions was quickly procured, and a delicate spray of yellow oyster mushrooms. A limp, tender-young bunch of pale-green kale was obtained from the Weaver's Way stand. And gently spicy chicken sausage with broccoli rabe from the coolers of Griggstown Quail Farm.

A few hours later, and eight miles to the west, it would be on the stove - the onions and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil, the kale cut in fine ribbons and added in, then the last of last season's frozen heirloom tomatoes, and pieces of the broccoli-flecked chicken sausage.

No, it wasn't soup. But over whole-wheat pasta, with a glass of red wine, it wasn't just another supper, either.

Headhouse Farmers Market

Second and Lombard Streets
Saturdays and Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
www.thefoodtrust.org

Contact columnist Rick Nichols at 215-854-2715 or rnichols@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/ricknichols.