I don’t know if it’s still hipster to love Farmer’s Markets… but I love Farmer’s Markets. I know it costs more money than going to the grocery store, but there’s something about handing real people money in exchange for things that belong to them is just… I don’t know. Liberating? It feels real and beautiful.
This weekend I attended my first Farmer’s Market since COVID-19 threw a wrench into our lives. It was an outdoor market, in Painted Post, NY. It is aptly named “Painted Post Farmers’ Market” and my uncle will be there every Saturday all summer as long as he has things to sell. This week he had squash, strawberries, kale, and garlic. LOTS of garlic. Everything (but the garlic) had been sold by the time me and my mom got there, except for one lonely bunch of kale that he forced my mom to take after I complained about the kale I had already gotten from my CSA and the kale that is rapidly becoming too large in my greenhouse.
There were only 6 stalls total. From one I bought 3 beautiful green tomatoes because fried green tomatoes make me feel like I’m 8 years old and summer will last forever. This isn’t because I ate fried green tomatoes as a child, I never actually had a fried green tomato until the first summer I spent with my (then boyfriend) husband at his family’s cottage. But for some reason fried green tomatoes make me think of summer reading projects in high school, late night summer thunderstorms where I’d sit in the garage with my Dad and watch the lightning, fireflies, and the smell of dust kicked up on a hot dirt road.
From another stand I bought a small bouquet of red white and blue wild flowers. They were expensive at $4 for such a small bouquet, but I have been looking at them all weekend and they take my breath away.
From a final stand I bought a malted milk ice cream sandwich. And it was too delicious to live (or sit still and have its photo taken).
What I’m trying to say here is: go to your local farmers market. Where a mask. Splurge a little. It feels good to give people money for their things instead of giving billionaires more money that they don’t need.