Farmers' Market

 

I visited the farmers’ market today.  I am always amazed and impressed by the abundance of things people grow and make and how they get it ready to sell so early in the gardening season.  And I always wonder why I even bother with a garden, with all the stuff available from those industrious folks that set up on Tuesdays and Saturdays, down at the park by the river.  They amaze me, as do the homesteading people, who keep moving to this county.  They are always building something, planting something, tending something, or re-doing something.  I prefer to sit on the porch. 

We started planting our garden a couple of weeks ago.  For the first ten days, I thought the only thing we were going to have to eat this year would be onions, which immediately pushed their shoots up toward the sky.  But I saw yesterday that the corn is up and some peas and beans are poking their leaves timidly out of the dirt.   My cousin, who does the lion’s share of the work in the garden, said he was not going to plant as much corn this year.  Next thing I know, he has planted five rows.  Most of the tomatoes and peppers are surviving at least, waiting for the earth to warm sufficiently to grow.  I have already had to set out more squash, to replace what the rats ate.  That’s a story for another time.  And I am not hopeful for the okra.  I actually went to the market hoping for okra plants, but had to settle for a zucchini plant.  One zucchini is plenty for me, and I’m afraid the four squash plants, if they all survive, will overwhelm me with their produce.  A little squash goes a long way.  Four zucchini plants would fill up my kitchen.  The problem with squash and zucchini is that I never seem to catch it at just the right moment.  One morning it’s not quite big enough to pick and by evening it’s the size of a watermelon.  I am reminded of an older gentleman I knew who planted two rows of squash one spring and thought it was not going to come up.  He planted two more rows and then it all came up after all.  I am thankful I didn’t live in the same county with him.  Even if I had locked my truck, he could still have put bags of it in the back.  Everyone in gardening country knows to lock your vehicle during squash season.

I bought cookies and homemade Italian bread and picked up a nice handmade recipe book for an upcoming wedding gift.  I sampled some bok choy but passed on it.  It tastes a little like celery, which is not a favorite of mine unless it’s in chicken salad or cornbread dressing.  I had never seen it in real life, and I certainly never tried to grow it.  I was tempted by some beautiful onions but couldn’t decide what I would need them for, and I was reminded by the garlic bulbs that I need to pull some of mine up and figure out how to preserve it.  The garlic bed had been here as long as I can remember and I am sure my ancestors used it.  I never could figure out exactly what to do with it, but I have been instructed that you pull it up and let it dry.  I’m not sure what to do after that.  This year I’m going to try harder to figure it out. 

Every spring I think of the year my mama and I decided to grow asparagus.  We ordered the plants and created a bed for them early in the spring.  Then we planted them upside down and wondered why they just sat there.  That was our one and only foray into asparagus gardening.  We grew some eggplant one year.  I’m not sure why because no one in our family had ever eaten eggplant.  Mama cooked it once and we never mentioned it again.

As I looked around at the variety of greens this morning, I was reminded that I’m not too fond of most of the early vegetables.  I can take or leave kale and I only like mustard greens cooked with lots of pork jowl or scraps of ham fat.  I love the looks of radishes in salads but don’t particularly like the taste.  We used to grow leaf lettuce and I can remember my grandmother pouring hot bacon grease over it with boiled eggs on top.  I suppose I ate it, but I don’t remember being especially fond of it.  

I am a big fan of farmers’ markets, being especially interested in growing and eating local. We are blessed here with plenty of opportunities to buy homegrown food - eggs, meat vegetables and even milk.  I grew up drinking milk from our own Jersey cow and was never able to adjust to store milk.  And the beef you buy in stores barely resembles what we filled our freezer with every year.

Thankfully, we still have sources here for homemade sausage, grass fed beef and eggs from free range chickens.  And thankfully, we still can plant a garden.  Now we wait for the rain and think good thoughts for those four little okra plants.