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| Bloomington farmer's market produce and flowers |
Last Saturday, I journeyed to the Bloomington Farmer's Market with a group of students from two floors in my residence hall. I fondly recounted for the residents my days of working the farmer's market for an apple and peach orchard my mother worked for when I was in middle school. The long afternoons battling bees to pick the sweetest peaches you will ever taste, the endless boxing of half pecks of enormous heaps of fruit, the 5 a.m. wake-up to haul the peaches out of the cooler and into the truck, the half-hour drive to our stand where we set up our tent and unloaded all of the peaches, and of course the hours of conversation and sampling and selling of the fruit - it all came flooding back to me with one little trip to the market.
As I walked around, I spoke with a few sellers about how their morning had gone and how they were faring around 10 a.m. Most answered with a "great" or "good", with the occasional "tired" or "sunburnt" mixed in. Their replies, and their worn-down appearances, introduced the realization of just how labor intensive nurturing, harvesting, and selling our sustenance for each day of our lives really is and how much of that grueling work is displaced on other people. How easy is it to step into your local Kroger and not give a second thought to the hours upon hours it took to get that food to your cart? I didn't work to figure out what type of produce would grow well on my land, how much water and sunlight that plant would need, when I would have to harvest the salable part of the plant, how long it would take to bundle for market, and then how I could store the product before I could even get it to market for sale. But someone like the sellers at the market did and I am grateful.
I believe in order for society to take interest in their personal well-being and the well-being of others (especially in relation to food), they should befriend a local food products producer. It doesn't have to be much, a simple conversation should suffice, but that conversation could very well change attitudes around where that person chooses to spend their dollar when feeding themselves. Personally understanding the sources of our food and the producers of the food connects us in a way that McDonald's never can. If I could, I would choose to spend every one of my dollars for food on locally sourced products. Sadly, coffee is not grown here in Indiana, so I can't locally source that. In all seriousness though, I do hope to return to the farmer's market in the hope of not only eating more healthfully but to assist the local growers of the delicious apples, peaches, and peppers I have enjoyed every day since my trip.
I absolutely agree! Another idea is to encourage the practice of urban farming, an increasingly common practice when transportation to and from the larger farms is not possible. This level of urban homesteading is my dream! ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmTJkZy0rM
ReplyDeleteAhh! My level of love for the farmers' market is sickening. It opens my mind a bit more each time I go as well. One thing I never think about is the seasonality of food. By buying in-season food, it is far more likely it didn't have to travel across half the world--just shopping at the market reminds me of this, as I slowly watch berries leave the booths, and apples and sweet potatoes come. Great article, and I agree with Lauren that if everyone could just grow a few plants themselves it could drastically increase our self-sufficiency, as well as our connection with our food.
ReplyDeleteLoved this post! I very much agree with your comments. I had a pretty interesting conversation not too long ago with an individual studying food anthropology (which itself is a pretty interesting topic) but he was explaining to me how the first Indiana cookbook featured all local ingredients whereas your typical cookbook today is almost the polar opposite. Pretty interesting stuff to think about the progression of our culture in regards to food availability, quality, and perception. I think experiences such as the farmer's market are extremely important to furthering the human-environmental relationship, bringing us back to our roots.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I have considered this disconnect before, in my undergrad. At Purdue, the environmental science program is housed in the college of Agriculture and I remember seeing firsthand the differences in ideas and values which lead to the mis-communications between the groups. Each side had great ideas about how to bring both farmer and consumer together and how to produce food in the best and most efficient way possible, but they seemed to talk past each other. If only they could only move past their differences and come to an agreement, I would think, they could come up with some great ideas for how to address these issues. Thankfully, I view the farmers markets and the recent resurgence of local food love as great ways to bridge this gap and bring new ideas to the local food movement.
ReplyDeleteI love this post! You're right, it is so easy to forget that our food is actually labored over pretty intensely. I try to be mindful about where my food is coming from and who worked to produce it, and it makes me more appreciative of it when I eat it. I am also less disgruntled about food prices when I think about the hard work that goes into growing -- you're really paying for months of work growing the food and sometimes years of good soil care. A friend and I were talking the other day about how much we like to work for our food -- pomegranates are fun, for example, because it's so hard to get the seeds out, and that makes them so much tastier. And sometimes I buy nuts in the shell because it makes me think about the food and be more mindful of the food while I'm working to get to the nut.
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