I haven’t been going to farmers markets regularly for some time. I used to go to them pretty regularly before 2012. After that, maybe I’d go once every year or two near the end of the season looking for closeout butternut squash or home-grown potatoes to put in the root cellar. But I got lazy over the last few years and didn’t bother much with the squash or potatoes.
This week I went to 4 of our local markets looking for a #20 - #25 bag of Kennebec potatoes and was shocked the markets had declined so much when it came to farmer’s produce.
Market 1: shut down completely.
Market 2: Had 27 tents and 1-1/2 produce sellers. The rest were baked goods, jams, honey, soaps, arts and crafts.
The main produce seller had a small, but OK collection. But she could not supply the potatoes as she said the drought and deer had wrecked her crop. (I was surprised the deer ate the potato greens as I thought they were poisonous.)
She had a few pounds of potatoes to sell that were the size of eggs. She did have some pawpaw’s to sell, but I was too late and only small ones were left. I think they averaged about .75 each. She is an old gal, a fixture at the market that I remember from when I first started to go there decades ago. But she is looking tired and I don’t know how much longer she can go on.
There used to be a meat seller there that travelled with a portable freezer. He sold organic beef, chicken and lamb. In the old days they had mainly food at this market. But one by one the old timers retired or died and the young’uns didn’t replace them. There was a nice apple producer with a decent orchard. He died and kids sold the farm and the new owner cut the trees down. A dairy farmer there used to sell nice white peaches. He retired and died in less than a year after he retired.
The ‘1/2’ seller at Market 2 only a handful of produce items and no potatoes for me. But they did run a small dairy farm. She and her daughter were Mennonites and they sold raw milk at the farm. But she said for legalities you can’t buy the milk; you have to buy shares in the herd and get your pro rata share of milk each week from the cows. There was also some confusion about selling the milk over state lines, but she said I’d be OK even if out of state as I would be a partial owner.
For a $20 a month, which is the minimum share, you get 1/2 gallon of raw milk per week. And if you want more milk you just size it up from there. (The milk comes out to $10 a gallon per week.) I was telling an old gal down the street about this and she thought $10 was expensive. I told her I pay almost $12 a gallon for non-raw ultra-pasteurized grass-fed milk at the store, so $10 is not that bad. (Just a note…in a food emergency, get ultra-pasteurized milk. It last 6 weeks to 2 months unopened in the refrigerator…maybe longer.)
Market 3: Had 12 tents and 1 produce seller. The produce seller said they could not sell me a #25 bag of potatoes, but they may be able to come up with it later if she checks with some farmer friends and gave me their contact info. They were trying to help out an old timer there that could not go to the farmers market any longer, so they didn’t know all the details. They said he is trying to sell the farm to someone else. They did have 2 small baskets of potatoes. They were the square green baskets. Like you get 3 or 4 large tomatoes in and were $7 a box for the potatoes. I don’t know how long they will be able to keep it up if they can’t find someone to replace the farmer.
There used to be a giant produce seller at market 3. He was also a fixture there. The biggest seller I’ve ever seen at any farmers market…but he is no more.
Market 4: Not a traditional farmers market, this was a private owned ‘roadside attraction’ farmers market that specialized in home grown corn. The corn was not organic, but it was non-GMO. They used to sell peaches with the fuzz on them, some years apricots (home grown ones with flavor) and Kennebec potatoes among the other produce. All the home-grown farm produce was gone. No more apricots and the peaches were commercial peaches. Hard as a rock, no fuzz and no flavor or fragrance. No more Kennebec’s either. Just commercial potatoes.
I looked up a listing for more farmers markets near me. The got 5 more markets within 35-minute drive in 2 neighbor states. (I’m in a Tri-State Area.) I hate driving that far to find out they got nothing for me, but I may give another one or two a try.
Really sad, honest food is getting tougher to find all the time. What a mess!
Commercial potato vs home grown potato both stored 6 months in the root cellar.
