Rain, fog, thunder in the evening. Temperature in the mid 60Fs.
Things to talk about. I picked a hard haul of butternut/buttercup this morning with Newport and the foreman. I changed clothes at noon and was shipped out to cover one of the day's double markets. Few people showed up and those that did carried a hard chip on their shoulder. I came home late-- then went for a long drink at "The End" bar with Gizzie. (Warning: this could become a ramblin rant)
Over a table full of empty beer bottles and stuffed ash trays we worked Gizzie back from the brink. Farmer's Markets are a different breed of work-- the customers tend to be more pleasant than your average impatient bustler with a hand full of money. You have extended conversations as each one invariably asks about: the weather, x/y/z crop they heard is doing poorly, their garden, whether you are the boss's kid, recipes, why we don't have something we had last week or the big one-- "are these organic?" A typical day is generally enjoyable-- but no one can hound a person, twisting and tearing out your insides, like a farmer's market customer. Gizzie had his first taste of it and, still being new (having little idea how we did things things 2 months ago), he dug himself into a deep deep hole. It's like word boxing-- except you're hogtied and the customer is a cocky 1-0 heavyweight. And maybe that's the hardest part for the outsider to understand-- customers carry an edge, they turn vindictive quickly when they smell blood. They want to hurt you and they want to win.
I've dealt with these people many times before, I can deflect most of them off without incident-- but sometimes they're committed to an argument and it takes all I have to hold back my word torrent.
But examples and then the context:
The story I always tell from last year: I was working the big money market with the boss. It was an unusually sunny/hot/dry year-- so we planted okra and it thrived. It grew fat and big and delicious. We took okra to market. A woman had loaded up several bags of veggies at our tent and then packed a bag with 4lbs of okra, when she stopped. She plucked out a big one and extended it over to me, asking-- what the hell is this? I didn't have a clue what she meant-- it looked fat, big and delicious. She seemed genuinely mad, personally wronged, I couldn't understand what had happened. She said-- these are too big, you must have sprayed them. I knew for a fact that we hadn't, so I told her-- it's a perfect year, we took care of the plant, the vegetable did very well, what do you expect-- plants want to be big.
People can get so turned around in a genetic-food paranoia that they forget that in the right environment everything grows big-- just cause something isn't tiny, worm eaten and sad doesn't mean it's not healthy/spray-less. So anyway, the woman didn't say another word-- she just tipped her bag upside down and dumped out the okra into it's bin, then she dumped out all her other bags too. She leveled a long slow leer at me. She walked across to an organic tent and continued to stare a hole in my head, like I was a pig bleeding on the carpet.
I went crazy that afternoon. At first I felt I'd done something wrong, or that the boss had made some big secret mistake. Then I got angry, I thought-- who is this woman? Who does she think she is? Bah and Old Rudolpho/his sons/his daughters/his grandson, the boss/foreman/the boys, they sweated over this okra-- tilling the soil, seeding it, weeding it, watering it (frequently), praying the weather holds over it, picking it, packaging it and then I brought it for her to buy-- and that wasn't good enough for her? She had to make a show out of her offense at our crops? It was exactly what she'd hoped it was, but she turned up her nose. I was so mad that I stomped around the market looking for the woman so I could tell her off-- didn't find her (fortunately for me).
That was my first time, so it was the most memorable, but there were many others. It's a war zone out there.
Gizzie's first was a slightly more personal attack as he was alone. We bought some carrots this week from a neighboring farm. We boxed up some and took them to market. Gizzie is a man who cannot lie. A woman came up and began interrogating him about carrots-- how's this season for carrots, why do they look like this, are these your carrots? Gizzie was overwhelmed with questions he didn't know how to answer, but he knew and said-- no we didn't grow them. That sunk his ship. She laid into him hard-- so how do I know these are your corn, your tomatoes, your potatoes, peppers, lettuce, string beans, etc, etc? It's too late for corn, how can you have corn? These tomatoes are too big, what did you do to them? Where'd you get these beans? Gizzie was swallowed up whole. And everything was ours, grown/tilled and raised-- just not the carrots. Gizzie sounded like a child, but managed to say-- the carrots are good and we though you might like them, so I brought them here and I am sorry.
It chews you up. At a farmer's market we are Management/Factory/Sales Floor all rolled into one-- there's no mysterious line of command to pass up the buck, everything is our responsibility and our fault. But as a comedian once said: feeding people is sacred territory. We take our work seriously and personally. You can't help it-- I seeded the plants these tomatoes came from in March, transplanted them in May, weeded them through July and have been picking/shining/selling them since August. It takes 1-4 months to bring a plant from seed to fruit, we're there every day-- it takes a couple hours to a week for a customer to buy/cook/eat/shit out that fruit and they'll never think twice about it. You don't have to like them, you don't have to buy them, but never-- never insult my tomatoes. We bring them because we hope people will like them and, no, I am not sorry for that. Insulting our food and all its work-- is to insult Bah, the boss and a host of people just trying to make a good living by growing good vegetables. It makes my blood boil.
This has become a rant. Before I go on:
there are reasons I can understand that the "organic" matters.
1. Trace chemical pesticides can interact with chemotherapy treatments/other highly invasive disease medications. Suffering enough through poison treatments, you want to be 100% sure that it's not the stupid potatoes that are gonna tickle a drug the wrong way and accidentally kill grandma.
I've had only one person make clear this situation at a market. Last year an old woman at the big money market said-- my husband is undergoing chemotherapy treatments, I just need to be sure-- do you spray your tomatoes? Our tomatoes were clean and she was overjoyed. The boss helped her pick out things he knew were planted in fields far from the 1 block of corn we had sprayed. He gave her a discount and then pointed her to other tents he knew were straight spray-less/organic. She was polite, patient and well-intentioned. She had nothing to prove and I liked her for it. (ps-- she's a regular now, back every week. Her husband is recovering, just fine and dandy)
But that's the difference you see. The old woman was buying vegetables, many other customers aren't. Every asshole isn't a silent and dignified cancer patient. As I told Gizzie at "The End" bar: that lady who haunts you didn't come to buy carrots, she wanted to buy politics, a lifestyle, a story attached to carrots-- but the carrots are only incidental to the all important story. It's hard to explain, but people sometimes look at us with actual hatred -- we become little effigies for Monsanto, for supermarkets, for everything they disagree with and want destroyed-- just because we are honest, and tell them: yes we sprayed some of these veggies. Men and women walk away in disgust, their faces/voices contorted, from a table full of food. Some organic farms make a lot of money selling exactly what these people want: food attached to a lifestyle and politics.
But that's why. That's why I respect the boss and this farm: we just sell carrots. That's it, no more, nothing attached. It is food that will feed you-- we won't lie and tell you "today, you helped change the world by spending money and then cooking a dish." Buying our food won't coddle you into thinking you're a better person or somebody that you are not. It is just food. And all we do is make it and then sell it to you. No gimmicks: no straw hats and handmade banjos, no pamphlets on which choices are wrong, no model poster children telling you what a free/enlightened life they lead that you too can share by merely purchasing "the right" turnip. No lies, no gimmicks, just food.
It is just food. And still, we try our best to make it as cleanly, healthily and safely as possible-- but if fungicide didn't exist, there would be no tomatoes this year. Not one. And still we try to do without spraying.
Customers with a little knowledge and a big idea about themselves are a dangerous thing. Their barbs hurt because we care deep. And the honest truth is-- the irate customer doesn't. If they did: they would recognize that we are honest, that this work takes a heavy toll, that like a raspberry row our season is short and only so much can be done before we're harrowed into the soil. It's just food. If you want to eat it do so, if you don't-- walk away.
Take it easy.
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