Get thee to a farmers' market

because this is National Farmers' Market week.

Frankly I'm never quite sure what these designated days and weeks mean, and have thought from time to time about making a list of the ones I find most absurd.  But surely farmers' markets are anything but absurd, unless it is absurdly bountiful in this month of gardens and farms over run with good things.

Yesterday Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that 8,144 farmers markets are now listed in USDA's National Farmers Market Directory, up from about 5,000 in 2008.  Actually, they are up about 10% just in the last year.  Search for a market near you here:  
http://search.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/default.aspx

National Farmers' Market Week

This is it, according to the USDA. A good time to remember to get to your closest market, and see what's in season - if you don't have a garden that lets you know.

And before you complain that farmers' market produce is more expensive, consider two things:

Much of the food available at the supermarket and in fast food outlets, which is based on commodity crops, may appear cheaper, but that's because it's subsidized. Your taxes help to pay the difference. And your increased health care costs pay some of the remainder.

More and more farmers' markets here in California are accepting CalFresh (our version of SNAP, which used to be food stamps) at a 2 for 1 rate - $10 of CalFresh benefit will buy $20 worth of farmers' market produce. For many items, this makes the cost less than supermarket produce.

a sad mosey

Last Friday at noon I headed out for Rio Vista - where we were having a Celebrating Creation event on Saturday - the long way, heading down through Marin, Vallejo and Benicia, then east on 4. My goal was to find some local produce to serve at lunchtime on Saturday.

I think I must have been having fantasies about Brentwood. Probably it was the Buy Fresh, Buy Local signs the community features. I was ready!

But what a disappointment. Many farm stands simply were not open yet - though promotional materials say they are. One I found specializes in dry fruit and nuts, and sits right in the middle of a new subdivision. I asked the owner where some of the nuts - kinds I know don't grow around here - came from. She was a little vague, and I asked if nuts in the shell weren't subject to COOL? She didn't know what that was.

Onward I drove, taking in the sights. Strip malls, box store arrays, subdivisions with 2 story 2000 sq ft houses cheek by jowl, and apartment (or condo?) complexes that looked like public housing. A particularly sad sight was a van advertising "foreclosure tours". Looking around, I wondered how many of the folks who live in Antioch and Brentwood were in flight from the urban East Bay, taking advantage of no down payment, adjustable rate financing - and now are wondering just what they've done.

Then, continuing east, there was a sudden end of the subdivisions - well, maybe there was a small one here and there, old enough to have trees as tall as the two story buildings. But even here in the open space, many of the orchards seemed to be on the way out, vegetable crops, too, and horses and grapes on the way in.

I did find one cherry orchard that was open and selling - and the cherries were good - because they were all ripe. And finally somewhere between Knightsen and Oakley I found a farm stand selling strawberries, asparagus, eggs and lemons.

One hope I have is that the real estate bust will slow the rising land prices, and the encroaching housing, and leave more of the fertile land bordering the Delta for agriculture. The Brentwood Land Trust is apparently committed to preserving ag land, so the Bay Area can eat when we run out of oil - even though this wasn't apparent just driving around.

http://www.brentwoodaglandtrust.org/

I also hope the farmers in the Brentwood area will wise up - that if you are going to advertise as an area to Buy Fresh, Buy Local, you need to have more crop variety year round. If I can do it in my little community garden plot, they can, too...

Wear clothes. Not too many. Mostly plant fiber, animal hair, or pounded bark.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Penguin, 2008) urges us, with humor and good sense, to "eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Put that together with headlines like


Nalgene to nix BPA bottles due to consumer concern
(Houston Chronicle, April 18, 2008, 10:38AM)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5712126.html

and you have to wonder what's next....

Containers your great-grandmother would've recognized as containers.

Clothing your grandmother would've recognized as clothing.

Music your parents would've recognized as music....


What Michael Pollan writes about is hard to dislike - and encourages a simpler way of consuming food, simpler in the 'common sense' way, but not simpler in terms of obtaining foodstuffs. It requires intentionality, care and attention. And may pay off in better health, for you and the planet.

One enjoyable suggestion is to purchase food at local farmers markets and 'shake the hand that feeds you'. In Sonoma County, California, you can, for example, buy at farmers markets (in places like Healdsburg) organic potatoes from the farmer - the same potatoes you would be served at the French Laundry or John Ash restaurants.

Buying containers from the potter, purchasing coffee from the growers' collective, buying cheese at the dairy, etc., -- both a pleasure and good sense. Could living good also mean living well?