I love the presentation of Who Cooks For You Farm‘s market stall.
Hello, lovelies…
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Tag Archives: farmers’ market
Easy summer lunch
Caprese salad with backyard mutant tomatoes and two kinds of basil from the herb garden, farmers’ market corn, and local sausage (just because it’s awesome). Anyone local know where I can get good fresh mozzarella?
unintentional farmers’ market tour of the mid-atlantic
You never notice a specific type of car until you buy it. Then, when you’re looking for your car in the supermarket parking lot, there are suddenly twenty more just like it. Thankfully, the battery hasn’t died in the key fob yet, and you can beep the horn and flash the lights until you find it.
Apparently that is now my luck with farmers’ markets. Both times I’ve traveled for work in the last month, I’ve stumbled across markets without even trying. While the first one was fairly anemic, the one in Parkersburg, WV this past week was hopping.
The first thing I saw were these posters prominently displayed in public places around town – this one, in my hotel lobby.
The market setup (the day before) with the Wood County Courthouse in the background. A great setting in downtown Parkersburg.
Signs set up in the lot nearby for guaranteed parking spaces.
And when I checked it out over lunchtime on Friday, it was bustling. Just how you expect a farmers’ market to look.
My overall impressions? The advertising was fabulous, very professional and eyecatching without looking too slick. The vendors were a nice mix of local produce and value-added goods. The band in the nearby shell kept people tapping their toes. Having the market over a lunch hour (10am-2pm) is a smart move in a city that rolls up the sidewalks after 5pm. Having WV Extension information there (both a table with a person to talk to and lots of pamphlets and handouts with recipes for food found at the market) is a great way for people who aren’t familiar with vegetables sold there to figure out what to do with them. And I even bought a market reusable bag. Because I’m a sucker for reusable bags.
Can’t wait to stumble across the next market!
when is a farmers’ market not a farmers’ market?
My idea of a farmers’ market: farmers selling fresh produce and value-added items in a market setting. Pretty simple, right?
According to Wikipedia (the source of all things true and open-sourced), farmers’ markets “consist of individual vendors, mostly farmers, who set up booths, tables or stands, outdoors or indoors, to sell produce, meat products, fruits and sometimes prepared foods and beverages.” A traditional way of selling agricultural and homemade products, they are “one of the oldest forms of direct marketing by small farmers” (thank you, Local Harvest). They’ve risen in popularity over the last decade, many of them have cropped up in urban areas and take food stamps (or SNAP or WIC or whatever the alphabet soup of the day is), and they get farm-fresh produce to consumers directly. The person buying the food can ask the person growing the food how it was grown and be comfortable enough to buy the food as a result, or politely walk away if they’re not satisfied with the answer. Information is easily available to the consumer so that they can make an informed decision.
Which is taken away, at least in part, by large grocery stores. Gone are the days when the local greengrocer got regular shipments from local farms. Produce is shipped in from all over the country, and all over the world. There are no seasons in the produce section anymore. If you pay close attention, those grapes may be from South America one month, and California the next, but you can still get grapes year round. But at what cost? Is it worth a potential e. coli outbreak on your spinach to get it as cheaply as possible?
I’m perturbed today by the co-opting of the idea of a farmers’ market, whether intentional or not. At a farmers’ market, you expect to see things grown in season, ripe and lush and ready to eat. The building in which my office is located is advertising a ‘farmers’ market’ (it’s in quotes intentionally) for this week. Seeing as though the Earth Day ‘farmers’ market’ was produce shipped in from who knows where that looked just like what you can find at the big box grocery store, I asked questions this time around. It’s all from one place, a commercial produce facility the next state over, and the organizers didn’t seem to be fazed by the idea that the ‘farmer’ wouldn’t be on site to interact with potential customers. It’s not a farmers’ market at all – it’s a mobile grocery store produce section. Which is fine if you want a mealy, underwhelming apple in April. But at the peak of strawberry season, I want something picked fresh that morning and brought directly to the table so I can buy it and savor the ripe burst of flavor.
It bothers me that this distinction is lost on so many people. That organic is too expensive, that it doesn’t matter if pesticides or genetically modified crops banned in other countries are involved, that we’re putting these things into our children’s bodies without considering the consequences. Maybe if we all could talk to our farmers again, we’d know the difference.
