Farmers Market Secrets

While I'm sure many of you, faithful readers, are likewise faithful farmers market attendees, there may be a few things that you did not know about these markets. I'm talking about fundamental economic underpinnings here, people. More specifically, these are rules that anyone who works at a farmers market does - or should - know.


Rule # 1: The Last Item Never Sells

If 19 of your 20 pints of strawberries sold in the first half hour of market, that last little pint will sit there, forlorn and alone and depressed, until the end of time. It may sound counter-intuitive, but it's true. One might assume that, if there is only one left, the product must be delicious and deserving of purchase... but apparently consumers have a deep-seated aversion to taking the last of anything. Whether that is due to the fact that our mothers admonished us for taking the last piece of cake throughout childhood, or because we assume there must be something wrong with the last piece, I don't know, but whatever it is must be deeply rooted in our subconscious.

In fact, this rule is so true that I know farmers who purposefully pack far more product than they can sell, just so they can keep a fully stocked display. It looks nice, and apparently that appeals in some meaningful way to our psyches.


Rule #2: Customers Never Read Signs

You might think that you're saving yourself a little work by putting up signs describing products, their uses, even their prices... but I am here to tell you that you are WRONG. Customers do not - repeat, do not - read signs.

I tested this theory last week. At the dairy, we make a product called quark - it's a traditional German cheese made from yogurt, and it says so on the handy-dandy little sign that we put next to it. Well, darned if everyone doesn't ask the same thing: "What is quark?" So I posted the sign directly above the sample of the quark. You know, where you absolutely cannot miss it if you try.

By my estimate, I received exactly the same number of "What is quark?" inquiries that I would have otherwise, minus one lady who smacked her husband and pointed at the sign when he asked. Thank you, anonymous lady. You are amazing.


Rule #3: Actually, People Are Just Not Very Observant In General

Lest anyone think I am hating on people who attend farmers markets, let me just say that I am as guilty of this as anybody. A few weeks ago, I went to see a movie*, and could not find napkins for the life of me. Finally I asked the girl who had just sold me popcorn. Turns out they were mounted on the wall, exactly at eye level, right above the counter where I had been looking. I hang my head in shame.

That being said, there's a big difference between not being able to find napkins, and sticking your finger in the yogurt sample that it sitting out so people can help themselves, because you apparently did not notice that there was no lid. Which not one, but four - four - people did on my watch. And that is just sad.




This all being said, I should say that farmers markets are one of my favorite parts of farm life. I love getting to know the regulars and the fellow farmers, I love all the delicious produce that I get to trade for behind the scenes, and I love belonging to and participating in a community that cares about where its food originates.


*The Avengers. It was awesome.

The One About Strawberries

There's a cycle to eating seasonally.

Step one: Wait in restless anticipation for <insert food here> to be available.

Step two: When <insert food here> finally becomes available, gorge yourself until you can't bear to look at it anymore.

Step three: Wait another eight or nine or ten months until <insert food here> finally comes around again.

Of course, there is an alternative extra step - Put up <insert food here> so that you can continue to enjoy it when it is no longer in season.

For me, this food is currently strawberries.

What is it about fresh strawberries? I don't even bother buying the grocery store versions anymore. Strawberries at the store aren't so delicate that they bruise their tender little bodies merely sitting on top of one another in a container. Strawberries at the store don't seduce you with aromas that entice you like a mauve-colored, come-hither, beckoning hand from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, stroking you under your nose as you pass by. Let's face it - strawberries at the store suck.

The strawberry cycle started two weeks ago, when a table of the delectable fruit lured me into another farm's tent at the Falls Church farmers market. I got a quart, and spent the rest of market surreptitiously opening the cooler where I had stashed it, the better to enjoy its scent as it billowed out of solitary cooler confinement. I spent the following week enjoying strawberries on my oatmeal, my granola, and - most memorably - eaten for dessert in a pool of our own yellow-tinted cream.

So when, at Arlington's farmers market this past Saturday, our neighbors started putting out basket after basket of the little red fruit, I was overcome, and purchased half a flat. I used some of it to make strawberry compote to top my traditional boyfriend-is-visiting breakfast, the German Pancake, and I reserved a bit more so I could luxuriate in strawberries and cream later that week, but the bulk of it ended up in little quilted 8-oz jars.

Preserves - the perfect way to make sure that I can get my strawberry fix any time, any place. And they're so easy to make that it's actually a little disturbing - equal weights strawberries and sugar, cut up and mixed with the juice of a lemon, and left alone overnight, then heated up in two-cup increments and ladled into the appropriate sterilized jars and boiled for ten minutes, leaving me with five jewel-bright additions to my tiny kitchen.

But, naturally, I dropped my first piece of strawberry preserve-bedecked toast, sticky side down, in the garage the next morning after only eating two bites.

May and Markets, Oh My!

So in a surprising (but not unwelcome) turn of events, Mark and Clare informed me this week that my schedule will be changing. Starting this week, I will be doing the Penn Quarter Farmers Market every Thursday from here on out. 

The market is located in Penn Quarter, which is in downtown Washington, DC, sandwiched between Chinatown and the National Archives. It takes place from 3 to 7 on Thursdays, and apparently is quite popular with DC chefs. Maybe Sam Kass will be there! (Hey, I can dream, right?)

Most excitingly, I will be doing this market by myself. Clare is going with me this week to show me how to get there, where to park, etc... but after that, it will just be me, myself and I.

I'm pretty stoked. Markets are hard work, to be sure - I'm usually dead in the water by around 4 each Saturday, when my day is over - but I really enjoy them. I love the feel of a busy market, the bustle and smells and sounds. Which is good, because now I'll be doing two, including the Arlington market on Saturdays.

The other change is that Melissa, who normally works in the creamery, has returned from her honeymoon. As a result, I'll probably be spending less time in there. For the last month, I've been in the creamery pretty much every afternoon to help with bottling and such. I'll still be in there some, but I think my time will be split more evenly between that and helping Mark out with more outdoors-y, farm-y tasks.

Like fences. Lots of fences.

From Farm To Table: A Local Tour

It has been a very Farm To Table week here in Virginia.

Herb garden at the Clifton Inn

For the uninitiated, Farm To Table is a local food movement that aims to get food from small farms onto the tables of local consumers through their homes, their schools, and their restaurants.

Probably the most famous example I can think of offhand is Chez Panisse, a restaurant in Berkley, CA that was started in 1971 by Alice Waters.* The notion of a restaurant where all the food was grown locally and organically was pretty radical at that time, but the movement has been slowly and steadily gaining ground and has enjoyed a pretty significant upsurge in the last decade or so.

Last week, the Madison County Farmers Market put on a "farm to table dinner" to benefit the market. Farmers from the market - including us - donated food for a practically 100% local meal. The dinner was held at Prince Michel Winery, who (predictably) provided the wine. Brian, Autumn and I volunteered as servers, along with several other local farmers who work the market.

Then the very next morning, I drove down to Charlottesville to visit the Clifton Inn, a B&B slash restaurant. One of the chefs there buys produce from us occasionally, and had offered to give me a tour of the grounds and the gardens, where he grows some of the produce the kitchen uses. So I went. And he did.

Although the garden was a little smaller than I was imagining, it's exactly the sort of thing I love to see a place like that doing - growing their own food, and sourcing some of their produce locally. A lot of people - everyone from individual consumers to school cafeterias to restaurants - are intimidated when they hear about places like Chez Panisse, who grow and/or buy all of their food locally. But it's okay to start small - growing a squash plant in your back yard, potting a few herbs in the windowsill, visiting the local farmers market and buying a few things a week. I recently read about a school district in Virginia that has the goal of buying 8% of their food locally this year, and gradually increasing that amount to 25% over the next two years. That sounds a lot more feasible than attempting to immediately grow 75% of your own food.

Another bit of Farm to Table news from this week has been the initiation of the newest AmeriCorps program, known as FoodCorps. This inaugural program aims to work with schools to educate youth about nutrition and food, build and tend school gardens, and get more fresh, local produce into school cafeterias.

Ah, if only I were younger and had fewer years of AmeriCorps under my belt.




*Incidentally, Alice Waters was just interviewed on Fresh Air to celebrate 40 years of her career in the local food movement.

To Market, To Market

Saturday morning is the hallowed time of farmers markets for small family farms from coast to coast, and Brightwood Vineyard and Farm is no exception.

Usually I go help Susan at the Charlottesville Farmers Market, which is down in (can you guess?) Charlottesville. But this weekend was different - I went to the Madison Farmers Market, a mere five miles away from the farm, to help Autumn set up.

The Madison Farmers Market started just three years ago, and judging by the jump in sales this year, it's really starting to take off. According to Dean and Susan, it was rare to break $100 at that location in the past. Not too hard to imagine why... it's a small market in a rural area, where lots of people grow their own food and there's not a lot of attention paid to eating local, organic fare. However, this year the market has been pulling in around $175 or more regularly... and, quite often, more.

Autumn has more or less taken the Madison Farmers Market on as her project. She has quite an impressive background in management and food services (coffee, specifically), so I don't know how much of the jump is due to her enthusiasm and marketing savvy, and how much is due to the market's growing prominence in the area. It's probably a bit of both.

One of the nice things about having two such different markets - one small and rural, one large and urban - is that the shoppers at those markets are interested in very different things, and we can allocate our different products accordingly. Vegetables do very well in Madison, for example, so if we only have a few bunches of radishes, Madison gets them. On the other hand, few people in Madison are willing to pay $5 a carton for eggs, so the lion's share of those go to Charlottesville. Folks in Charlottesville go absolutely mad for herbs, but in Madison? Not so much.

Perhaps most importantly, the Madison Farmers Market is a valuable venue for being involved in the local community. It's not only a way for the farm to get to know its customers, but to also meet other local farms and develop connections with them.

After all, isn't that supposed to be the point? We want consumers to be engaged with their food, to know where it comes from and to question it. ("Hello, I was just wondering if you feed your cows chicken blood?")

We want people to invest money in their own communities, not send it to remote corporations in NYC, LA, or across the ocean. And the more consumers visit small, local farmers markets and buy food from small, local farmers, the closer we inch to taking back our food, our power and our lives.

My 2011 Goals and Sweet Potato Pecan Pie

As you may or may not remember, I've been hired by an organic farm for the 2011 growing season. First, I must get celebratory impulses out of my system, not unlike Colin Firth the other night.... so, YAY!
 

Or maybe I'll just celebrate with some PIE.

Now that I have that out of my system, I find myself wondering what role this blog is going to play in the upcoming year. I originally created it to chronicle my WWOOF-ing adventures, which have somehow morphed into accepting an internship on a family farm. My reasons for having this blog haven't changed much, though. And since I'm starting so soon - March 21st, to be precise - I want to take some time now and reflect on my goals.

Document my adventures, thoughts, experiences, etc. Just like a real diary... only a lot less private. I'll keep my own separate journal for my less public musings. Here, not only do I want to keep track of what I'm doing and learning every day, but I want to write about issues facing small family farms, organic and sustainable agriculture, food culture, and so on. All heavily seasoned with my own personal commentary, of course.

Hone my writing skills. While I love to write and think I'm pretty good at it, I know I have a lot to learn. A blog is as good a platform as any to practice writing regularly. Which brings me to...

Write regularly. When I keep a journal, I'm very good about writing regularly, but something - an inherent need for sleep, perhaps - often causes me to give up on keeping up to date when I get busy. And I'm sure this year is going to be nothing if not busy. So I'm setting a goal for myself to update this blog at least once a week. I'll revisit this after I start work, but I think this is a doable amount, leaving me plenty of wiggle room.

Run out of space on Picasa. What I mean by this hyperbolizing is, I want and need to do a great job of visually documenting this year, despite having a lardball of a digital camera to lug around. Besides, blog entries are so much more interesting when they have pictures accompanying them.... as anyone who compares my last few entries to a month or two ago can attest.



Now that all that seriousness is finished, let's talk about pie.

My grandad is visiting us right now and will be leaving soon, so I decided to make a gigantic dinner tonight, which was received with great acclaim. It consisted of pasta puttanesco and a spinach and fennel salad with strawberries and shitake mushrooms, topped with goat cheese and a floridly-colored homemade dressing that involved pureed strawberries.* And, to wrap up, a Sweet Potato Pecan Pie. Capitalized.


Nothing says "I love you, Grandpa!" like anchovies, garlic and salmon-colored salad dressing.

Here's the back story: last year, I had a Julia Child page-a-day calendar. Since I was living off the AmeriCorps $4.50 per day food budget, I couldn't try very many recipes, so I ended up saving them all. This weekend, I spent many an hour organizing the recipes, gluing them individually onto sheets of paper, cross-referencing them and putting them in a binder. I know it seems strange, but one thing you must understand about me is that I get weirdly excited about organizing things...especially if it involves color coding.
  
As I was putting the recipes in their nice, safe little page protectors, I happened to stumble upon one for Sweet Potato Pecan Pie. I like sweet potatoes, I thought. And I like pecans. And I LOVE pie. And wonder of wonders, I had all the ingredients, including sweet potatoes from the Indy Winter Farmer's Market. Unfortunately, I did have to resort to a frozen pie crust, for time was simply too short. But otherwise, the pie was a resounding success, and was absolutely perfect as a mid-winter dessert. Safe to say, the pie will be reappearing for Thanksgiving 2011.

Sweet Potato Pecan Pie

Ingredients

1 9-inch frozen deep-dish pie crust, thawed and pierced all over with fork

(Again, you can make your own crust. I definitely will next time. But this way is certainly time-saving.)

1 1-lb sweet potato, pierced with fork

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. allspice

1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 cup light corn syrup

(Yes, I know it's the devil - you can substitute honey or sorgham or whatever you want. You can also boil water and sugar and make simple syrup.)

 2 large eggs

1 cup pecan halves

Preheat oven to 400 F and bake crust until pale golden, about 8 minutes. Set aside and reduce oven temp. to 350 F.

Cook potato in microwave on high until tender, about 6 minutes per side. Cut in half and scoop flesh into medium bowl and mash - measure out 1 cup and set rest aside. Whisk brown sugar and next 5 ingredients into mashed potato; spread mixture over pie crust.

Whisk syrup and eggs in bowl to blend, and stir in pecans. Pour over potato mixture.

Bake pie until filling is set, puffed, and brown - about 45 minutes. Let cool before serving.

*No, we did not go out and buy strawberries in February. What a notion. My parents get a co-op sort of deal through Green Bean Delivery, through which they get a box every week full of local, organic produce. At least, it's supposed to be local... they seem to have some difficulties in winter, and I've noticed a lot of items coming from Florida... kiwis, lemons, oranges, and the like. At least it's organic, although it raises questions. Check out the FRESH: The Movie blog for a discussion about what goes into a food mile, Part 1 and Part 2.