Et Tu Farmer’s Market?

There is always an air of freshness, pastries just out of the oven, ethnic foods wafting their enticing allure throughout the market-like building with its many stands.  Fresh flowers fragrance the air with sweet smells, freshly brewed coffee with its hypnotically scented spell cast over many a half-awake patron.  What makes these pleasing sensory delights at a farmer’s market even better is a visit in the fall when the air gets just enough chill to make the air refreshingly alive.  This is an October visit to the farmers market in the city with your sights set on a menu’s worth of goodies to be procured.

The market near my home has always been a throwback to the golden age of old horse-drawn wagons and spoked wheel trucks rolling into town with their locally grown fresh produce, poultry, beef, and dairy products.  Each vendor’s stand is a downward sloping wooden shelve that is usually stuffed to the max with products.  The buildings are from the 1920s and still hold the old charm of their original construction.  Today the market includes freshly cooked food and coffees from other lands adding an international flavor to the market.  If you plan your meals out, you should be able to come away with enough fresh goods to make some pretty hearty and delicious meals.

My recent trip to the market was a purely investigative one to see what fresh goods were being marketed during this fall season, I did not have a planned menu.  There were some late-blooming summer regulars including tomatoes, peppers and green onions.  Some late season specials like carrots, beets, and muskmelons were all perfectly presented on the display shelves.  But what catches my eye is a sign promoting late-season strawberries on sale by the skid load, 8-quart size packages for just $4.  By now you are aware that I am one of those types of customer who believes that if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.  But these berries looked very fresh and had a good mildly sweet taste upon testing them.  The lady selling them assured me that they were fresh and only one day old.

So, I take the plunge, one skid of those bright red gems now belongs to me.  Just add a can of extra creamy whip to the equation and you have the makings of a perfect after-dinner treat that won’t blow your diet (too badly).  I also purchased some tomatoes from an Amish farmer who knew his way around the beautiful fruit, although I had some reservations about tomatoes grown this late in the season, the farmer looked honest and the goods looked fresh.  Nothing else really grabbed my attention this day so it was time to take the 45-minute ride home.

During the ride home I could visualize those berries covered with that lightly sweetened cream and just waiting to meet their delectable end.  Once at home I put some of the berries in the refrigerator and left a couple of packages out since they were only a day old.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten about a previous engagement for the evening and did not have any of the fresh strawberries that night, however–tomorrow is another day!  Yes, the morning brought on another day and with it came shock and dismay as the strawberries that I had left out overnight had molded badly.  The ones that had been refrigerated had not fared much better.

I stared at the packages of moldy strawberries with an incredible sense of disgust and disbelief, after all, the lady at the stand had assured me that the berries were only one day old.  I quickly figured out that the strawberries in the packages had been frozen and quickly began to rot in the fresh, above-freezing air.  The sample I had tried was probably a hothouse version that was only—one day old!  The refrigerated berries had already begun to wilt and mold themselves, leading me to believe that these berries had been frozen for a while.

I have come to expect this kind of con job, bullshit misrepresentation from large, corporation run stores, but I never dreamed of getting so screwed at a farmer’s market.  These were places where good local farmers and folks came not only to sell their harvest but also to show off their farming and growing skills.  But in this age of growing thievery and deception (anything to make a buck),  I suppose con men/women, snake oil salespeople, and thieves have invaded the last bastion of honest free trade.  The farmers market has lowered its standards to that of a swap meet, where you are trading for secondhand goods.

The days of trust and your handshake being your bond is forever lost to a world of shady crooks who can’t earn honest money anymore because there are very few jobs available where you can do so. Don’t get me wrong here, there have always been dishonest people who would cheat you out of your money.  But it used to be easy to identify where those people did their dishonest deeds and business.  However, today they are everywhere, trust in a business deal has become a thing only lawyers can produce for you.

Our communities need to invest in food co-ops and all of us participate in the cultivation of these community farms to produce our own fresh food.  And we need to set other standards in our communities to weed out shady, petty thieves who have no dignity or conscience.  With food shortages becoming a reality it would make sense for our communities to produce more of the food they consume.  By the way, the tomatoes were good!  As always this is just my opinion.

Talk to Ya Later

The Grumpy Old Fart Customer @2019 All Rights Reserved