Recent book signing events have taken me to more farmers markets and let me spend more time than I normally do. The first thing I've noticed is they're astonishingly well attended, whether at 4 PM on a Monday afternoon, 2 PM on Wednesday or 11 AM on a sunny Saturday. They are powerful people magnets, even when hastily improvised in black paved parking lots--one is actually in a Wal-Mart lot-- because these somehow magically morph into colorful and lively carnivals. No wonder a market that used to be one day a week is now five days, another that used to be two is now three.
I'm also thrilled to report I never saw anyone at any farmers' market looking sad or mopey. How could they be? Food is life, so the abundance of vegetables, fruits, meats, coffee, pastries and cheese assaulting the eye at every turn makes farmers' markets founts of joy. Lots of people bring their kids and lots of kids walk away eating a freshly baked raspberry bar or with grandma wiping blueberry smush off their face. My favorite was a tow headed four-year old waving a bunch of baby carrots like a carousel ring. Hopefully it gets to be a habit.
The organic vegetable stands get as mobbed as the gluten free bakeries. People are hungry for real sun ripened tomatoes (you can tell by the cracks around the stem) heirloom or not, and good old-fashioned, non-genetically engineered corn. Interestingly, while there has been plenty of corn available in the southern tier, the difference in climate and latitude has kept it from ripening yet for northern markets. Over and over yesterday I kept hearing: "No we don't have any corn...yet." But I have been getting it 2 ears for $1 for weeks now.
Closer to sophisticated enclaves, farmers manage to show up with artichokes, microgreens and leeks. One farmers has dozens of different lettuces all started for you to grow in your yard so you can pick your own just in time for dinner. I watched one farmer sell out of green tomatoes. One woman who stopped to talk to me told me how much she loved Tokyo/salad turnips, adding that she hated regular turnips and especially "those orange Thanksgiving ones. But these little white turnips are so sweet I just eat 'em up!" Three people asked me what to do with kale.
Raspberries are gone, blackberries are moving in. Early apples are on tap. The blueberry people all sell out. Everybody is fascinated by my blueberry apple chutney; they want to rush home to make it and save it for Thanksgiving dinner.
At one market I counted five families walking away with quarts of fresh goat milk. At another they were scoring raw milk and thick freshly made yogurt--super stuff you don't find in any super market. Every Saturday people stand patiently in a long line to get extraordinary, prize winning cow milk cheeses from a local farm "where the cheese stands alone" because this is the only outlet. Yesterday people kept coming to the baker set up next to me asking for his pretzels. He sold out the first hour, disappointing not just lots of passersby but half a dozen folks who said they'd driven all the way there just to get one. "Guess I gotta come early," I heard over and over.
There were distinctly dressed Amish farmers at one market. There have been grandmothers behind stands of traditional cucumbers, potatoes and zucchini. There are always now twenty something young couples purveying snappy looking organic herbs, roots and greens. A retired schoolteacher has taken up cheese making and offers delicious fromage blanc marinated in herb infused oil. A now middle aged couple has made a smashing success of a flower farm whose stand is consistently festooned with all sorts of bouquets and colorful plants. One nurseryman drives three hours each way to sell his perennials and hanging baskets.
And then there are the Somalis...at three different markets every week. They come from Fresh Start Farm, a miraculous social integration scheme figured out by an NGO called The New American Sustainable Agriculture Project. Its program Cultivating Community provides these refugees with farm plots for which they are totally responsible. They choose what to raise and how; they figure out how to market it. Most now go to farmers' markets where they meet and mingle with the surrounding community. At one market, I stopped to ask them if they had fava beans and if they made a traditional fava bean dish of the region: ful mudammas. No, they weren't growing the beans but yes, the smiles on their faces grew large talking about ful. Talking about food, anywhere in the world, always becomes instant integration. Eating is what we all share.
At one book signing this week, I was stationed right next to another group of Somalis and watched as almost everybody who came to that market came to their stand. Many sported such big smiles and gave such friendly hellos to the couple sitting behind the carrots and cabbages, I thought they were old friends, then rationalized maybe just steady customers. But most were neither. They were just trying to be polite, decent folks. Several gray haired men stopped to talk because they'd somehow been involved in the region and had memories. The teenager was sprawled on the back seat of the truck sound asleep but as his parents chatted away, their piles of produce sinking down to nothing, the planet seemed suddenly civilized and glorious.
And even though some who stopped to talk to me told me their troubles, which were considerable, they were at that precious moment so happy to talk about turnips or making an apricot tart or eating the dandelion greens grandmother pulled and served. So at this time when the world is laid very very low, farmers markets are a real high because there's nothing like the taste of joie de vivre.
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