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Secrets of the Farmers' Market
http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2009/07/secrets-of-the-farmers-market/21849/
Jul 23 2009, 8:20 AM ET by Sara Lipka

Now that she works on a farm, the author gets to see the market from a new 
perspective.

Strolling through the farmers' market used to be my Sunday ritual. Crops, 
neighbors, a busker or two; it all felt timeless. Now I like to say that I 
went one day and never came back--just got on a truck back to a farm.

That's more or less true, but I do go back--to the other side of the market 
stall. Our farm sells at two weekly markets in Washington, D.C.: Sunday 
morning in Dupont Circle and Thursday afternoon in Penn Quarter. And let me 
tell you, going as a grower is a far cry from my old 
slide-on-the-flip-flops-and-scuff-down-Q-Street.

We start harvesting two days in advance, filling crates in the field, 
stacking them in the back of a pickup, and trucking them a half-mile to our 
farm center. There we wash and count and pack our produce into blue-and-gray 
plastic storage boxes, labeling them, for example, "Carrots, 20, Dupont." The 
stickers signal not only what we've got but how hard we have to hoist; root 
vegetables require more oomph than, say, lettuce. And forget the flip flops.

    Prices do shift, I discovered. Cucumbers may go up if someone else is 
charging more; squash might fall.

On Sundays we're up by 4:30 a.m. to haul boxes out of two walk-in coolers and 
a storage room into our refrigerated box truck. Two or three of us sit across 
the cab as we roll down our gravel driveway onto asphalt. It's still dark 
setting off, but headed east, we see the sun rise.

The goal is to start setting up an hour and a half before the opening bell, 
maybe the only thing our market shares with that other one in New York. We 
line up our boxes along the curb, raise our tents and tables, and pile our 
harvest high. Layouts prompt much discussion and debate. What looks best? 
Features our marquee items? Lets customers flow through the stand? We weigh 
the relative merits of L shapes, T's, and U's; aisles, islands, and second 
tiers. Market design is about artistry and efficiency. And showing off.

Our farm's and others' bountiful displays--diminished by the time I used to 
arrive--still amaze me. Prices don't. As a customer, I sometimes balked at 
expensive arugula or leeks, either passing them by or invoking Michael 
Pollan's "hidden costs" of cheap food as I broke another 20. Now I look at 
string beans and remember how long it took me to pick them, in the rain; dry 
them on wire racks so they wouldn't rust; and mix green, purple, and yellow 
varieties. Not to mention seeding, weeding, and releasing wasps to prey on 
the beetles that devour the plants' leaves and dangling beans. $5 a quart? 
Bargain.

Lipka_July_22_market_300.jpg

Photo by Gardiner Lapham
Prices do shift, I discovered. Just before we open, farmers surreptitiously 
scramble, eying one another's signs. Cucumbers may go up if someone else is 
charging more; squash might fall. We add quickly in our heads as customers 
gather. The early bird regulars have been standing there since 8:55, their 
beets and blackberries packed, crisp bills in outstretched hands as they wait 
for the bell.

Chatting with customers makes my day. A smiling elderly woman who always 
comes during the week also showed up one Sunday. "I already ate all the peas 
I bought!" she said. "I won't be able to last till Thursday." Another woman 
once approached me and whispered, "There's a very large spider on the chard." 
Other customers share tips, like crushing sweet stevia leaves with mint in 
mojitos. And sometimes a question starts a conversation. One woman asked if 
we had lemons. A man held up a sweet white onion, greens still attached, and 
asked if you could eat the bulb.

Chefs also wander by in their monogrammed jackets, scanning our spread. I'm 
always excited to see Nghi Tieu, the pastry chef at Café Atlantico, a few 
steps from our Thursday market. On Fridays the restaurant offers a farmers' 
market dinner, and Tieu not only shares her deliciously creative ideas, but 
brings us leftovers to taste. Recently she featured our carrots, in carrot 
cake with cream cheese foam, carrot-kumquat ice cream, and carrot-ginger 
croquants; and beets, in beet ice cream with chocolate crème fraîche and 
citrus beet soil. A bite like that can keep me on my feet for another few 
hours.

We nibble Tieu's desserts along with our own fruit, which customers ask to 
do, too. One day two men in Metro maintenance uniforms came over and tasted 
several cherries. But they didn't buy any, shaking their heads at the price 
of the pints. For all the thrills of the market--and my defense of the labor 
of each harvest--I worry about limited access to local food.

So does Freshfarm, the organization that runs our markets. With its help, our 
farm applied to accept "get fresh" checks from the federal Farmers' Market 
Nutrition Program for low-income women, infants, and children. Freshfarm also 
issues coupons to senior citizens through the Commodity Supplemental Food 
Program, and at two of the group's eight markets, customers can now pay with 
food stamps.

As each market ends and the final bell rings, gleaners stop by to take some 
of our remaining produce to shelters and food banks. On Sundays, the same 
homeless man always appears with his cart, grinning, nodding, and pointing at 
a head of lettuce or a bunch of chard. When I pick and pack for markets, I 
wonder who will end up eating each thing. It's nice to know it could be 
anyone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sara Lipka - Sara Lipka is a journalist with a local food habit. Since 2003 
she has written about college students for The Chronicle of Higher Education, 
in Washington, D.C. Last year she lived and worked on a farm in Virginia, and 
this year she is starting a school garden in Maryland.