The Elusive Farmers' Market Parking Space

I've heard that parking rivals price as the top deterrent keeping consumers from shopping at farmers' markets. Once you've gotten used to the convenience of grocery store parking lots, a four-block trek to buy vegetables from your favorite local farmers can be a deal breaker, especially in lousy weather.

But parking issues don't affect all markets equally, even markets of comparable size with comparable parking constraints. Take the Ballard and University District markets.

I've often heard people talk about how difficult it is to park at the University District market, but I usually have to park just as far away when I go to the Ballard market in the middle of the day. Yet I rarely hear people complain about Ballard market parking. I think that's because Ballard is more of a party while University District is a serious shopping venue. You can do plenty of serious shopping at Ballard as well, but folks are more likely to head there than to the University District for a leisurely weekend outing. Leisurely weekend outings often involve parking and walking a few blocks while trips to the grocery store usually do not.

On Fridays during the summer we vend at the Madrona and Phinney markets. On sunny and cloudy days Phinney almost always outsells Madrona. But Madrona has on site customer parking, and on days with dumping rain it consistently outsells Phinney. Customers aren't as deterred by the weather because they can easily get back to their cars.

This past fall the University District market moved from its long-time home in the community center parking lot to the main street outside the center. We were excited about the move. Markets held on streets are almost always busier than markets held in parking lots. Our optimism was well-founded: we've had a wonderful winter there despite some beastly weather lately.

But the move has had another, unanticipated consequence. Like the Madrona market, sales at the University District market have been reasonably consistent in all types of weather, even though our numbers used to tank in the rain and the chill back when the market was held in the parking lot.

The market administration and the community center now offer parking in the lot where the market used to operate, fifty feet from the new site. They charge for the convenience, but the lot always seems to be reasonably full.

Speaking of parking, I used to find that I could improve my parking karma by dropping coins in other people's meters when they were about to expire. But you can't do that anymore with the printed stickers that have to go on the inside car window.

The Farmers' Market Apostrophe

This winter I've been studying editing, taking online courses in an effort to become a better writer and also to improve my skillset as a freelancer. The other day I came across a disturbing piece of news in my course materials: the apostrophe I've been using in the phrase "farmers' market" may not actually belong there.

At the risk of sounding like a language nerd, I love that apostrophe. It says that the market belongs to the farmers. The instructor's rationale was that in this particular phrase, "farmers" functions as an adjective rather than a noun, therefore it shouldn't take the possessive form.

I've used the possesive form throughout this blog, even in the header. When I was working on my cookbook Local Bounty, the editor suggested that we drop the apostrophe. I suspect she used the adjective argument, but it was a while ago and I don't fully remember. I indicated that I felt strongly about it and she let me have my way.

In addition to the thorny intricacies of grammar, my coursework has also dealt with the interpersonal complexities of marking up someone else's work. I realize now that this editor exercised discretion and flexibility in a way that probably ran counter to her sensibilities, because it was apparent that this particular apostrophe mattered to me.

That's the kind of editor I want to be. And in the meantime, I'm going to keep right on using that apostrophe, consistently and defensibly.

Media Storm

There's been quite the media storm lately about food safety at Seattle farmers' markets. The PI ran an article citing a report that the health department found 252 violations in 265 routine inspections this year, including 189 that were considered critical. National sites such as Barfblog and Epicurious promptly ran articles parroting the same information.

As a long time farmers' market vendor, I've experienced hundreds of on site health inspections. Some have involved red "critical" violations. Once I hadn't prepared a bleach bucket, though I did have bleach, water, and a container for bleach water on hand. Several times I've been cited for having handwashing water that was a few degrees cooler than the 100 degrees that the health department requires.

The most common violation found on my company's health inspection reports lately involves a regulation called the four hour rule. The health department allows you to hold potentially hazardous foods in the danger zone (40 degrees F to 140 degrees F) for up to four hours as long as you discard them at the end of this time. In order to use this rule and be in full compliance, you must write down the time that you took the product in question out of your cooler, as well as the time (four hours later) that you plan to discard it.

Most of the markets where my business vends are only four hours long. If we take our cheese out of the cooler at the beginning of the market and discard it at the end of the market, we are complying with the spirit of this rule. But if the health department shows up and we haven't written down that we took the cheese out at, say, 10AM when the market started, they write it down as a red, critical violation.

I'm not downplaying the importance of genuine food safety, especially at farmers' markets. Food should be kept sufficiently cold or hot, surfaces should be kept clean, and folks handling food should never have bare hand contact with ready to eat foods. In addition, food should be handled conscientiously at every stage in the process, from the time we purchase ingredients, to the time we prepare it in our kitchen, to the time we serve it at the markets. But lumping together this failure to record the time we took the cheese out of the cooler with genuinely serious violations like failure to wash hands after using the bathroom does a disservice to vendors, customers, market administrators, and even health inspectors.

Although there have been articles in recent years claiming that health regulation at farmers' markets is particularly lax, farmers' market booths are actually more meticulously regulated than any other food service establishment I've ever known. Market administrators enter into an agreement with the health department requiring them to provide proxy inspections of booths handling potentially hazardous foods on every single market day.

This is the equivalent of having a restaurant inspected every single day that it is open to the public. (Most restaurants are inspected only once or twice a year.) The inspections certainly aren't as thorough as the ones the health department performs. For example, a market manager probably wouldn't notice if my hand washing water was a few degrees cooler than it should be. But the market managers rightfully take this responsibility very seriously, because all of our livelihoods and reputations depend on not making the public sick.

So why the media hype? I think it stems partly from the fact that farmers' market booths are so out in the open and transparent. You rarely see a restaurant kitchen as exposed as a market booth, and this leaves market vendors open to a higher level of scrutiny and judgement. If the cook at your favorite restaurant drops your food on the floor, he can pick it up and plate it and you'll never know. (Ever hear of the three second rule?) That could never happen at a farmers' market because someone would inevitably see and report the incident to a market manager, resulting in an earnest talk about how the reputations of all vendors are on the line when a single vendor puts customers at risk.

It also doesn't help that many smug, self satisfied market patrons play down the importance of food safety at farmers' markets, claiming that farmers' market food is inherently safer than mainstream industrial food. Artisan food producers do tend to care more about the food they produce, there is some evidence that grassfed beef does tend to have lower levels of e coli than factory farmed beef, and a foodborne illness from a farmers' market product is much easier to trace and address than one caused by a huge outfit that distributes product in many states, under multiple brand names. But that's no reason to be complacent, and food mishandled by small producers is just as likely to make you sick as food mishandled by industrial behemoths.

Last weekend a reporter from KUOW showed up at the Ballard Farmers' Market with a health inspector who works closely with local farmers' markets. The inspector performed a couple of inspections, including one of my booth, explaining about the regulations and checking temperatures and handwashing stations. As far as I know, the story hasn't aired yet, but it struck me as an effort to show another side of the story, about the hard work that we actually do put into keeping our booths and our product safe.

I'm assuming the reporter felt okay about what she saw and heard, because she swung back around after the interview and bought a quesadilla.

Loading Out

The process of loading out at the end of a market day is a bit like I would imagine the dismantling of a gypsy caravan, but members of a caravan tend to all be headed in the same direction while market vendors are headed to different places. If you're all headed out together, then one slow link in the chain delays the entire process. But if you're each headed your own way, then it's everyone for themselves.

Some vendors rush to get their vehicles at the earliest possible moment. Technically you're supposed to break everything down before you get your van so each vehicle spends as little time as possible on the street and things move along relatively smoothly. But few people follow the rules. At one market there's a line of vehicles waiting to come in as soon as the market ends. One guy consistently falls asleep in his truck while he's waiting, so someone has to gently nudge him awake when it's time to move.

We all tend to be friendlier and more patient on busy days than on slow ones. After a rainy day you feel soggy and poor, and you just want to go home. After a busy day you feel affluent and magnanimous, and it just doesn't matter as much if your day is 15 minutes longer.

I've seen vendors get into fights during the process of loading out. Someone sneaks into a spot that someone else has staked out. Everyone's tired, and it gets ugly. I tend to take my time packing up my stuff, to stay out of the fray and be able to pull my vehicle up right next to the booth.

The Wallingford Market's New Location

This month the Wallingford Farmers' Market moved from its old home at the Wallingford Center to a new home at the Good Shepherd Center. I'm usually slinging quesadillas at the Columbia City Market on Wednesday afternoons, but I managed to sneak away last week to peek at the new venue.

It feels expansive and pastoral. This is a welcome change after the space the market occupied in the Wallingford Center parking lot was cut practically in half last season. That felt stressful and cramped. It's also wonderful to stand on grass rather than asphalt. You feel a lot less beaten up at the end of the day when you stand on a softer surface.

The challenge at the new location is to let people know that there's a market going on, even though it's hidden from view. The old location was right off of a main drag. The advantage of the new location is that it's a pleasant place to linger. It's also the home of Seattle Tilth, ground zero for urban agriculture, and I can't think of a better setting for a farmers' market.

There's a chef's only market between 3 and 3:30, for the purpose of allowing the pros to get in and out quickly. That's a worthy idea, though it doesn't make much sense for those of us who are selling finished products rather than primary ingredients. Fortunately, the rule isn't strictly enforced and the first half hour at an afternoon market tends to be the slowest time of day for my operation anyway. In any case, our sales so far have blown last year out of the water, so I'm certainly not complaining about this minor inconvenience.

Goodbye Meadowbrook

The Meadowbrook Farmers' Market announced this week that it had cancelled its 2011 season. There simply weren't enough vendors to make it happen this year. I have to admit, I was one of the vendors who hadn't planned to return.

I'd always thought of the Meadowbrook Market as a beautiful experiment. The managers were enthusiastic and committed, and it was perhaps the only market in the city that had a completely secure location because it was held in the parking lot of the school that founded it. Other local markets such as Ballard and Queen Anne have to apply for street use permits year after year, while markets hosted at venues such as the University Heights Center or the Phinney Neighborhood Center also need to renegotiate the terms of their locations every year.

The Meadowbrook market grew out of a tight Waldorf School community. The very first day in 2009 was amazing; in fact, one vendor I spoke to recently said that it was the best day he'd ever had at any market. But it tanked pretty fast. I've heard folks speculate that the problem was a location off the beaten path and, in retrospect, I think it may have been the only market I've ever seen that was located on a side street rather than a main drag (except maybe the first few years of the Queen Anne Market.) In any case, I think it's possible that the school's community could have supported the market, but school season is fall, winter and spring, while market season is summer.

I'm sure that folks are going to read all kinds of assumptions and conclusions into the Meadowbrook Market's cancellation this year: they'll say it was one too many markets in the city or that the lousy economy killed it. New markets succeed and fail for many reasons, and every market and every season is unique. Personally, I hope folks will continue to start new markets, bringing new ideas and new vendors into the mix. There's still so much potential, and so many ideas we haven't even tried.

Opening Day at Georgetown 2011

Saturday was opening day at the Georgetown Farmers' Market. It was an overcast day, which wouldn't have been particularly noteworthy except that it followed the best stretch of weather we'd had all year. Three sunny days in a row! And we finally hit 70 degrees! After that teaser it seemed that nobody was particularly excited about being outdoors on a typical chilly gray day. Still, Patty Pan was lucky to be the only prepared food vendor there, at least on opening day so our sales were off the charts, at least compared with most of last year.

Georgetown is an interesting market. Some market purists argue that it's not actually a farmers' market at all because there are as many flea market vendors as farmers. But I'm not a purist and I think that the more different kinds of farmers' markets we see, the more options there will be for farm fresh food.

This market has everything going for it except customers. Georgetown is an increasingly trendy neighborhood with few grocery stores. The market has a great venue, with old brick, train tracks and a defunct brewery in the background. There's also plenty of space, in fact, there's enough space to configure the stalls so that every vendor has a corner, at least at this point in the season. Corner stalls allow vendors twice as much selling frontage, so they're usually in high demand and you often have to have seniority or an amazing product to get one.

So we'll just have to wait an see whether the Georgetown market will realize its potential. It may just depend on whether we can all stick it out long enough.

Trash

Being a market vendor has given me a new perspective on trash. The health department requires that all food vendors keep a lined trash can in their booths, and that's a reasonable request because we need to have a place to put the waste that we generate. The market managers require that we take our trash away from the market when we leave, and that's a reasonable request because there are a lot of vendors generating a lot of trash, and someone has to haul it away.

As a prepared food vendor, my business generates more trash than most other booths because of the "disposable" plates and forks that we use. Some of the stuff is compostable, but we're still left with the issue of who has to haul away the compost. Prepared food vendors pay higher fees because of the waste we generate, but I still try to be mindful of it. The market puts out trash cans to collect customer trash, but space is still limited.

I often see customers confused about what to do with their trash. Market trash cans are available, but they're often 20 or 30 feet away. I try to keep the trash can in my booth out of customers' reach to limit the amount of trash I have to haul back to my kitchen with me, but several times a day someone will try to reach over the stove to get to the trash. I pay a lot of money in liability insurance, and it upsets me when people get too close to the stoves. I've seen people duck under the bright read "caution" tape that I use to keep customers away from the stoves, and come into the booth to put things in the trash can. Sometimes people just try to hand me their trash while I'm cooking.

I never thought so much about trash until I started doing this work. Although it makes me ornery when someone tries to hand me trash, I might have done the same before my vending days. I suppose this assumption of convenience is part of the same mind set that allows us to use "disposable" plates and forks in the first place. I don't have a good answer, but I do have some good questions.

Winter in Ballard

I'm continually amazed by the Ballard Farmers' Market over the winter. It continues to amaze me even though I've been vending there for 8 winters. These guys in the photo are queued up to buy salmon right as the market is opening. (Note the guy in the shorts. It's January!)

For my business this market peaked during the 2008 summer season, as far as summers go, but each winter is still better than the winter before. In fact, a typical winter day at this market is still better than a typical summer day at any other event.

I wish they could clone the magic here and import it to other neighborhoods, like Phinney Ridge. But then it wouldn't be nearly as magical.

New Boots and the Pineapple Express

My business hasn't missed a day at the Ballard Farmers' Market since 2004, unless you count the one day in 2008 when my employee took the company van home without asking and then couldn't get it off his street because of the ice and snow.

This past Sunday I woke up with the rain pounding on my roof and seriously considered calling in and saying I just couldn't. The weather report said to stay home if you possibly could. (What kind of weather report tells shoppers to stay home on a Sunday two weeks before Christmas? Positively unAmerican.) I decided to head to the kitchen and take it from there. I'd bought a pair of serious, warm boots when I was in Vermont last month for precisely this type of occasion.

A very soggy and cranky cat ran up to me as soon as I got the key in the kitchen door. I guess he'd been caught out in the elements all night. I didn't let him in, but I didn't latch the door either so if he'd been persistent enough he could have taken shelter.

I spoke to my employee who was doing the Broadway Farmers' Market that day and we decided to proceed, if only for the market managers who work so hard to make it all happen. The last thing they need is to come down in torrential rain and not have any vendors.

I put on the raincoat that I keep at the kitchen and began hauling things outside. Before I knew it the van was fully loaded. I headed over to Ballard. The rain seemed to be letting up on the way, but it started dumping again as soon as I pulled up next to my booth space. I took my time trying to get the tarp on the top of the booth as taut as possible so the water wouldn't collect, but it was a lost cause. I was knocking off buckets of water with the broom even before I'd finished unloading.

In the end, it wasn't such a bad day. The rain mostly let up by early afternoon, although few customers turned out. But I felt full of love for the customers who did show. At the risk of sounding creepy, I expressed that to one couple. They responded that if we vendors could turn out, they figured they could too.

That's my favorite thing about doing markets in horrible weather. The experience brings folks closer together as we each do our part to create something larger than ourselves.

Winter Farmers' Markets Vermont Style

Three years ago I visited the Brattleboro Winter Farmers' Market the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The weekend after Thanksgiving tends to be a rough weekend for market vendors, even in Seattle. Fridges are full of leftovers and many customers are out of town.

Three years ago there were very few customers and most of the vendors looked depressed. There wasn't much produce, either. It may have been the first year they tried holding a market through the winter, and I remember thinking that I hoped they would keep at it until folks got used to the idea of coming out to buy local produce even during the colder months, and farmers adjusted their planting schedules to a longer season.

Today I visited the market again and was excited by the change. The place was downright crowded and there were plenty of fresh vegetables. I even got some of the last of the year's tomatoes.

I met a vegetable named scorzonera that was completely new to me. It's related to salsify and burdock. Mother Earth News compares its flavor to oysters, but I actually thought of melon when I tasted it, only it wasn't quite as sweet.

There was prepared food as well, from breads, jams and cured meats to jars of pickles and mustard. Musicians played to a tabled area where eaters enjoyed Thai food and focaccia. There were crafts as well, in fact, folks in this area find it strange that there's such a raging controversy among Seattle market managers over the issue of whether or not craft vendors belong at local markets. The relaxed approach here goes both ways: The famous Putney Craft Tour (which includes my sister's fine work) also features a cheese maker.

Georgetown Carnival

"It's like a carnival," a farmer friend excitedly told me last weekend about the brand new Georgetown Market. (I wasn't able to be there personally on opening day because I was at the Bastyr Herb and Food Fair.)

I found it ironic that she described the event's vibrant atmosphere using exactly the same word that some farmers' market managers use disparagingly to describe events that don't focus sufficiently on farmers.

The Georgetown Market feels a lot like Fremont 1995, before the event split and the farmers' moved west to Ballard. There are crafts and flea market stuff as well as farmers and prepared food. There's even a guy selling Vermont maple syrup, which seems to defy the local focus, except that he divides his time between Washington and Vermont and actually does make the syrup himself. He's in the craft section rather than the farmer section, which is an interesting way of integrating this unusual compromise.

Rebekah Denn wrote an interesting piece in this month's Seattle Magazine exploring the question of whether Seattle has too many farmers' markets. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that I've always regarded farmers' markets as an ancient phenomenon in the sense of people gathering in public spaces for commerce, but they're actually quite modern in the sense of providing a venue with a strict focus on farmers, as a way to foster local, small scale agriculture. If that really is the point of a farmers' market, then perhaps these "carnivals" are getting in the way and creating debilitating competition.

On the other hand, farmers' markets are many things to many people. They're public gathering places as well as places where local economies can thrive. Food happens to be the ideal product for this type of event because local food is the freshest food, so locally food producers can offer great value on the best food around. But a great market has to give customers more than just food as an excuse to come down week after week. Even the farmers-only markets recognize this when they offer live music and chef demos.

The Georgetown market has room for 100 vendors, There are about 50 vendors there now, so there is considerable room for growth. It's got a unique setting, with railroad cars and a defunct brick brewery as a backdrop. Last week was crazy busy. This week was considerably less busy, but that's not unusual at a new market that holds a big opening. I'm looking forward to watching it evolve.

Covenant

I read weather reports obsessively. When I don't like what one says, I check another. Yesterday morning I checked at least four and they all said the same thing: a major storm would be moving in during the afternoon.

I gave my Columbia City crew the day off, figuring I could handle things myself and cut my losses. By 1 in the afternoon, however, it was still sunny and 70 degrees, and I was starting to second guess myself.

Sure enough at about 1:15 the sky got very dark very fast, and on my way to the market it started raining. By 2 o'clock there were gusts of wind strong enough to lift the tent off the ground, even with 25 pound weights on each leg.

If this had kept up consistently all afternoon, it would have been among the worst market weather days I'd experienced in more than 12 years of vending. Fortunately it was only intermittent bursts of crazy wind and heavy, sideways rain.

As soon as the market ended, a spectacular rainbow made an appearance. I like the biblical take on rainbows, seeing them as signs that everything is going to be okay. It's going to be a great season. But on any given day, anything can happen.

Beware of Leafy Greens

This afternoon I spoke with a health inspector who informed me that the USDA has recommended that local health departments begin treating leafy greens as potentially hazardous foods, and the King County Health Department is considering following this recommendation. I asked her whether the proposed regulations would cover greens like collards and kale that are cooked before you eat them, and she said it would.

If what she said is accurate and these regulations go into effect, they could have serious consequences for farmers' markets. Treating leafy greens as potentially hazardous foods would mean handling them in the same way you're supposed to treat chicken, at least with respect to temperature control. This means that any farmer selling leafy greens would have to keep them in closed ice chests. Not only would farmers be unable to display leafy greens, but they would also be severely limited as far as what they could transport back and forth to markets because ice chests take up a lot more space than boxes. The implications for my own business would be tragic, because my vehicle couldn't hold enough coolers to keep my greens cold.

I did some cursory online research and learned that the stricter standards for temperature control for leafy greens is coming about in part because of the initiative and voluntary compliance of vegetable grower trade associations, or groups that lobby on behalf of industrial scale commercial farmers. This was equally disturbing: commercial growers truck their product in refrigerated vehicles to refrigerated warehouses. It's mainly the little guys who store their greens at room temperature on the way from the farm to the market.

Opening Day at Columbia City 2010

Yesterday was opening day at Columbia City, the first seasonal market to open. Opening day was originally scheduled for May 19 because this season the market will no longer be able to use the parking lot where it's been held the past 12 years. The market will be moving out onto the street nearby, and the organizers were planning to wait a few weeks until there was more produce available, and then hold a big opening day event to commemorate the move. But just a few weeks ago they received permission to continue using the parking lot until the end of June, so they decided to start the market earlier in the season, as usual.

Opening day at Columbia City used to be a big event, with great music, larger than life puppets, and appearances by the mayor. The past few years it's been much more low key, in fact, it often feels like many folks in the neighborhood don't even know it's going until it's already been open for a few weeks.

Columbia City used to be my best market, but it peaked 4 or 5 years ago and plateaued. It's still a great market, especially when the weather is good. Yesterday the weather was lousy, but we still had a decent day. It just felt more like a winter market than a summer market.

Farmers Market Report

I just read through the Farmers Market Report released by King County last month. It's a thoughtful document, assembled after a series of surveys and interviews with vendors and administrators.

The report described an enterprise and a community in the midst of a challenging growth phase. Beginning farmers find it difficult to compete and get into old, established markets. Administrators of established markets feel that newer markets are cutting into their turf. Too many farmers are selling too many of the same crops, but there's also a perception that it's unfair for markets to admit newer farmers over more established growers even if this helps to create a more interesting and appealing product mix.

It's certainly challenging for new farms to break in, but most of the established farms took time to hit their stride as well. Newer farmers feel shut out of the bigger markets, but markets of this size didn't even exist when most of the established farmers were getting started. Everyone wants to vend at Ballard, but when I first started vending at Ballard it was the size of many of the smaller markets today.

It takes time to build a business, and it takes time to establish seniority. The same people who are saying that there are too many markets are also saying that it's too hard for newer farmers to find places to vend. New markets are ideal venues for new farmers who can't get into more established markets. I've seen various farmers achieve success at small markets simply by sticking around until other farmers with unreasonable expectations pulled out, leaving the best stalls for the folks with staying power.

Personally, I find this turmoil fascinating and exciting. Things will sort themselves out eventually, until there's a new growth spurt and we're faced with a whole new set of issues. It's a great problem to have.

Food Miles

I haven't read James McWilliams' book Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. But I've read enough similar reviews to think I've got the idea: McWilliams argues that the concept of food miles only accounts for one small aspect of the total energy cost of producing food. McWilliams is the guy who wrote the New York Times editorial in August 2007 citing the New Zealand study that demonstrated that lamb raised in New Zealand and then shipped to England actually has a lower carbon footprint than lamb raised in England because the climate in New Zealand is more suitable for raising lamb.

Apparently McWilliams also has a good time making fun of the locavores who drive to the farmers' market to save the emissions that are spewed shipping food from distant regions. I've heard several references to McWilliams' book during the past few days, and it's gotten me thinking that we earnest would-be locavores can't keep glossing over this very real question of whether local eating really is more sustainable when industrial agriculture has its own energy efficiencies.

I do think that all of our deeply held beliefs, from religious convictions to political stances, are primarily emotional rather than rational in orgin. That's why it's so hard to change someone's mind through rational argument and so easy to manipulate opinions emotionally. The big picture as far as sustainability and food miles is probably too complex for any of us to understand comprehensively so we focus on isolated facts that support the positions we already hold, like the statistic that a lettuce grown in California and shipped to New York uses more calories in transport fuel than it provides in food energy, or the New Zealand study comparing the carbon footprints of New Zealand and English lamb.

I eat as much locally produced food as I can because I want to live in the kind of world where small-scale farmers can earn a living, where an honest, creative food culture has an opportunity to thrive. There is a consistent historical correlation between small scale farming and broad-based land ownership, democracy and humanist ideals. The democracy in Ancient Greece was cultivated by small-scale farmers and the shift from feudal manors to private land ownership helped to show Europe out of the dark ages. Thomas Jefferson's revolutionary democratic ideal was a nation of independent farmers, and after the Civil War freed slaves were supposed to get "forty acres and a mule," or a piece of land that was synonymous with freedom.

At the Ballard Farmers' Market today a guy bought a quesadilla from me. I was standing by the stove, about five feet from my cash box. He gestured to the cash box and said, "You'd better get that off the counter. Someone's going to steal it." He spoke with a thick New York accent. (One of my people.) In thirteen years of vending at farmers' markets, I've only seen one person try to steal a vendor's till, and he only got about ten feet before a bunch of customer's tackled him.

That's why I eat local food.

A Day on Broadway

Yesterday I worked the Broadway Sunday Farmers' Market for the first time. It's a seasonal market, but it has a longer season than any other seasonal market in town, running from May until late December.

I tried to get into this market earlier this fall, but it didn't work out. Then the manager called me last week and asked if I wanted to give it a try for the last 2 weeks of the season. I have to get a $226 health permit even if I'm only vending for 2 weeks, and technically I should also pay a $50 late fee if I submit the application less than 2 weeks before the event starts. I nearly said no because I couldn't imagine making any money having to pay these fees, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I called the health department and they agreed to at least waive the late fees, and I found myself thinking that not every business decision has to be directly about money. I wanted to get a sense of this market because I've heard good things about it from other vendors. I also figure that at this point in the season if I even break even on something it's worth doing because it creates extra work, and all of my employees want more work.

I loved the market, though I barely broke even. It was a freak show, in the best possible way. Great people watching. It was also very, very cold, at least for Seattle, and I do love the whole winter farmers' market phenomenon. I love the fact that there are enough of us vendors crazy and committed enough to get out there are create a market, even when it's hard to be outside. And I love the rapport that develops between the customers and the vendors. We're all so grateful to each other. They're grateful that we continue to show up even though our sales are obviously slow and it's hard to stand outside on that kind of day, and we're grateful to them for coming and shopping even though they have so much more to choose from this time of year at the supermarket.

I want to figure out a way to do this market next year. They need prepared food, and I feel I'll do well there. I'm already committed to doing 3 other markets on Sundays. My business has never done 4 markets in a day, not even for special events, and I don't want to buy another vehicle, although I am willing to buy some extra equipment. I'm going to see what I can do to figure out a way. I've got some ideas.

Back in Ballard

This past Sunday I started working the Ballard Farmers' Market again, after doing the Mercer Island Market all summer. Mercer Island is a great little market, but there's no market like Ballard.

I've been vending in Ballard even before it was even located in Ballard. The market started in Fremont, as a row of farmers at the Sunday market there. But the Fremont market outgrew its space, and in 2001 the farmers moved west, where they started off in a bank parking lot on the site that is now the Ballard library. Late in 2002 we moved to our current hom on Ballard Avenue.

Ballard was this town's original year-round farmers' market, and none of the other year-round markets even come close to it in sales and vitality, in fact, Ballard in the winter is still better than almost any other market in the middle of the summer.

It's good to be back.

Mercer Island Retrospective

This picture shows one of the vendor meetings that the Mercer Island market manager would hold most Sunday mornings, fifteen to twenty minutes before the start of the market. I really liked the idea, and it certainly helped to keep us current on what we needed to know, like special promotions, though the logistics were sometimes tricky. (If you look really closely you can see some vendors clutching their cash boxes.)

This Sunday was the last market of the year, and I'm actually kind of sorry to see this one go, although I won't miss the wind, which got a lot worse with the beginning of fall. Like Queen Anne, Mercer Island is an independently run market with a terrific, motivated team of volunteers. I suspect it's no coincidence that both markets stayed strong until the end of the season, rather than petering out like some of the others.

I was skeptical about picking up this market, which just started in August 2008. The manager called me repeatedly last year, telling me how great it was going to be, and how well I would do there. (She doesn't eat dairy, and really wanted to be able to eat my vegan cheese sauce on a weekly basis.) Everyone hypes their own market, so I figured that was what was going on, but then I started hearing from vendors that they just couldn't keep their tables stocked fully enough to meet the demand. So I decided I'd figure out a way to do it, even though it was on Sunday, the same day as Ballard, which is by far my busiest market.

According to everyone involved, this year wasn't nearly as successful as last year, although that seems to have been the case at almost every market. Judy, who runs the Ballard Market, has a theory that every market sucks during its second year. Be that as it may, it was still one of my better markets, and I'll be happy to do it again next year.