At the Farmer's Market

            Today, I caught the bus down to Willow Park and the Cache Valley Gardener’s Market. After hearing good things about it for so long, I finally made the trip. At first, when I got off the bus, I was very confused. There’s a clothing exchange market at the north end of the fairgrounds, and I initially thought that was the Gardener’s Market. It seemed odd that there weren’t any booths with produce inside the pavilion, but maybe I’d missed them because I arrived towards the end of market time. However, I’ve been to Willow Park before, and I knew that the fairgrounds were something different. So I left the pavilion and all the used-smelling clothes behind and wandered south.

            I passed a bunch of people preparing for what seemed to be an ultimate Frisbee tournament, a couple of family reunions, and the fairgrounds stables before I finally reached Willow Park itself. I could see white tent covers in the distance, and I knew that this time, I’d found the market. Still expecting it to be mainly produce stands, I was delighted to find such a wide variety of things being sold in the booths. It was like being back at the Renaissance Festival, minus the costumes and the jousting. There was a booth full of delicate wire jewelry. I spent so much time admiring it that I felt guilty when I walked on without buying any. There were a few food stands, and I quickly got in line for fresh-squeezed peach limeade, which was delicious. Next, my eye was caught by a booth where a man was selling a selection of rather beautiful rolling pins and breadboards. I bought a rolling pin. I already have one, but it’s only 10”—which those of you with cooking experience may recognize as being too short to roll almost anything with. This one is gorgeous and longer than my tiny rolling pin and its handles combined.

            I walked on. There was a booth selling magnets made from bottle caps and pictures of fandom things, so I bought a set of Avatar: The Last Airbender magnets. They are awesome. I will not be asking my flatmates’ permission before I put them on the fridge.

            Then, of course, the produce. There were about seven or eight booths selling fruits and vegetables grown in Cache Valley. Many of them sported signs that boasted multi-generational family farms. I walked back and forth along these booths as nonchalantly as I could before I was able to single out the one that had what I was looking for (raspberries and tomatoes) and one of those multi-generational signs. Once I found the right booth, I waited until it didn’t look like there would be any customers for at least a minute or two, then stepped forward.

            “So how long has your family been doing this?” I asked the smiling, forty-something lady standing on the other side of the produce. She looked like she’d be easier to talk to than any of the overalls-wearing old men sitting nearby (as much as those men reminded me of my grandpa).

            “We’ve been coming to the farmer’s market for the last eight years,” she said. “But the farm itself—we’ve been on it for four generations.”

            “Oh, wow,” I said. “How many acres do you have?”

            “Eighty,” she said. “But we only grow produce on about fifteen. We do hay on the rest of it.”

            “I have an uncle in Idaho who grows alfalfa,” I said, nodding.

            “We used to only do hay and alfalfa, but the boys wanted to try produce.”

            I asked her what the growing season is like, and mentioned that my grandpa used to be water marshal when he had his farm in Morgan. He hated all the drama. She laughed and agreed that water is kind of a tricky issue up here in Utah. She told me how they plant lettuce, cilantro, and some herbs early in the season, because those plants can handle the cold. Then they do strawberries, potatoes, beans, peppers, tomatoes, and summer squash in the first half of summer, and finally corn and pumpkins in the second half of summer. Having only ever worked on a half-acre garden when I was growing up, I didn’t realize that you could extend your harvest by staggering your planting. Instead of planting all of one crop at once, you do some one week, some the next, some the next, and so on for about five weeks.

            “This all sounds like pretty hard work,” I observed after she told me all this about their farm.

            “Oh, yeah,” she said, her eyes widening. “Farming is probably some of the hardest work, and it isn’t for a lot of pay, but the boys love it, so it’s worth it.”

            As I headed back to the bus stop, careful not to let my rolling pin smash the raspberries and tomatoes, I wondered what it must feel like to put in months and months of backbreaking work, and then to have all those baskets and bushels of plump, ripe fruits and vegetables of every color to show for it. I’ve made things before, and I’ve stood back to admire my work, but it’s been at least ten years now since I helped anything grow.