It is catching on!

by Heather C.

I was finally able to go to a farmer's market this weekend!  The markets here are now open and the one I went to is twice as large as it was last year.  The diversity of the vegetables available and the professionalism of the packaging is also increasing and that seems to be causing some concerns among shoppers.

One lady was selling hydroponic cucumbers and tomatoes.  I know this because she had boxes that had that printed on the side.  The cucumbers were also shrink wrapped.  This gave me pause before buying because I wasn't sure if they were local.  Apparantly I wasn't the only one with that concern.

A man came up to her and started interrogating her about where she got her produce.  She explained that she grew them on her farm in a local town.  She started to explain hydroponics but the shopper's main concern was where she got the boxes.  She explained that she bought the boxes to ship the produce.  He didn't seem convinced that she was truly growing her own vegetables.  I walked away as he was getting more belligerant.  I think she was going to have to invite him over to her farm to see for himself before he would believe her. 

I was carrying a reuseable bag from Whole Foods to carry my vegetables.  I went to the Crazy Cat Farm booth to buy some eggs and the owner started into a discussion of Whole Foods.  He said that they have good eggs there.  But, he added, they are shipped in.  "Shipped in" was said in a sideways whisper that made it sound like some kind of illegal activity.  I couldn't know where they came from unlike when I bought his eggs from his very spoiled local chickens who eat organic feed. 

I was glad to see the Eat Local message  being an integral part of the discussions at most booths.  Eat Local may truly be going mainstream.

Heather C. lives in rural Ohio where she is just starting to local vegetables appear. 

Comments

[Laurie O]

It's hard not to get a little peevish when you know a market has a policy about local produce and somebody is blatantly not following it. Once a farmer laughed at me and told me he grew his asparagus on his farm in Peru. Made me suspicious of others for a while - and not a little angry. Because it's this kind of problem on a larger scale that makes people not trust labels and ditch the whole thing out of frustration.