We arrived at the market late, apparently, and we nearly missed it because there seemed to be only one vendor, perched on the back bumper of her car with the hatchback open and a row of coolers inside, presumably hiding luscious stores of leafy greens. My heart sank. It had been a morning of ups and downs, the latest up being the discovery of a hand-painted sign, Farmers’ Market – Today!, at the corner of Spring and Main in Williamstown. And now this down. Just one vendor at a farmers’ market?
Then I spotted the sign, the tall A-frame chalkboard emblazoned with a list of more vegetables and fruits than I could have imagined: kale, garlic scapes, red leaf lettuce, Boston lettuce, zucchini, pattypan squash, broccoli, peas, chard, rhubarb, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, the list went tantalizingly on and on. I stared, jaw agape, and dumbly pointed in the general direction of the coolers. I might have said something like, “Gblargish?”
After a year in the desert, the presence of fresh, locally-grown foods can really shock a person.
It didn’t matter anyway, because the one vendor at the Williamstown Farmers’ Market (they should really change that apostrophe, because, at least on that day, it was just one farmer) was sold out of nearly everything, save for broccoli and Boston lettuce. And ever-present zucchini.
The nice thing about living in a small New England town, though, is that people dole out advice. Here, they offer commentary — helpful tips — as frequently as people in Arizona avoided eye-contact before scurrying back into their air-conditioned double-wides.
“Market starts at eight,” said the farmer-vendor woman. She was wearing a gardening apron. I wondered if this bounty was the result of an overproductive backyard garden, or if she did this for a living. It’s so green and misty up here; anything seems possible. It was ten-thirty. Clearly we had missed the boat, or the tractor, or whatever. We learned that there would be eggs next week. We bought whatever she had available, and dutifully stuffed it into our canvas New York City Greenmarket bag. (It may be nostalgia, but Union Square is still the best farmers’ market I’ve been to, but we’ll see if that changes once I hit one in Vermont.)
I cooked up the broccoli the other night with some olive oil, garlic, pepper flakes, and salt (you know, the best way to cook up some broccoli). It was so green. It was green like the definition of green. It meant green.
Maybe it was our low-energy bulbs, I don’t know. It was some fantastic broccoli.