Farmer’s market is life

Farmer’s Markets, in my mind are all the same. Filled with the same stuff.. jams, wind chimes, homemade jewelry, what have you. Honey, beef jerky, seen one seen them all, I say. This truly is one of my core beliefs. What better way to spend a Saturday or Sunday morning than in the monotony of a farmer’s market? That was rhetorical. I have lawn to mow, edges to trim, generally other shit to do rather then spend the better part of a weekend trying to be some farm-to-table version of myself. I think this is where me and my Highlander mom club deviate in our ethos. I like value and affordability but in all honesty i think Wegmans does a fine job achieving this all in one place. I assume they take care of their people and their producers and the environment and the kids and whatever other causes are worth causing for.

Wifie is taking me to Ithaca for the day. It’s a lovely 69 degrees on Saturday morning (great day to mow). The Babies spent the night with the in-laws. We wake up leisurely at 7am or so. Have some coffee. A couple friends are coming along with us, other chicks in the Highlander club. They don’t have Highlanders or kids, but their SUVs are white with tinted windows, so close enough. The Highlander crew wants to hit a farmers market and I give them my thoughts on wind chimes and jam. They get it, I think, but the ethos/pathos/logos is too strong a force, farm-to-table is life.

We get into town and I park the car at what seems like the water authority? Still not sure. There are a lot of people mulling about for such an industrial part of town. Maybe they’re homeless, I think to myself. The look is hep 90’s grunge. We join the crowd following them through a dirt path and I start to get a feeling that we could be entering a tent city. Instead we discover a large smoker, you know, one of those large-black-pull-behind-the-truck food smokers. $12 barbecue pork sandwiches. Ok, not a homeless tent city. We buy a couple sandwiches topped with pickled cucumber and cabbage. They have a couple different sauces at a self-serve station. Very tasty.

We continue on and are met with a large open air shelter. The Ithaca Farmer’s Market. The killer of weekends. The reason for unkempt lawns and unruly hedges. The purveyor of unyielding jams tucked into the back of suburban refrigerators, never to be heard from again. 

I’m walking while eating a decent pork sandwich, so not a total loss. The pickled vegetables are the star of this show. The girls are having a look around. I end up standing in a line for who knows what. Seems like the thing to do. As I look around people start to line up behind me. It must be worth the wait, I think to myself. I’m still eating my sandwich as I ask the guy next to me what we’re in line for. Turns out it’s a line for breakfast burritos. The best in Ithaca (I can only imagine). I pulled the trigger too soon, I have a belly full of pork and bread and pickled vegetables and disappointment. Why had I not waited!? I get out of line, ashamed at my inability to control my own impulses for bbq’d pork.  

The market is unique visually. It’s a wooden structure with a metal roof. The wood beams and posts are exposed and stained in a semi-transparent teak color. There are patio lights strung overhead as you walk throughout the building, it would be cool at night. Smoke from the grills of various food vendors show from rays of sunlight peeking through openings in the metal roof. 

This is how a farmers market should be. There were jams and wind chimes, okay, staples of a farmer’s market. But there was so much more. For me it was the food vendors that make it a unique experience, Asian, Mediterainian, Bbq., Vegan, but not only that, you have an acoustic guitarist playing the hits and the walk out boat dock. We order a few iced coffees (Nitro) and sit on the dock with our legs dangling out over Cayuga lake. We chat about nothing. We see people coming and going. A family pulls in on a connoe. A little boy, a mom and dad, and their yorkie. They dock and it’s off to the market.     

      

I’m not not saying you should go because you should.