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Far Away, But Familiar
Ruth Katcher runs a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, and she is currently one of the few Local Food Forum subscribers outside the Chicago area (we're working on that). Ruth visited Chicago earlier this month, and I gave her a tour of The Lincoln Park Farmers Market.
Ruth and her husband then proceeded west, where they made a stop in the Black Hills of southwest South Dakota en route to a family visit in Colorado. They visited the farmers market in Custer, South Dakota, and Ruth was so kind as to share the following essay.
Custer is a very different place than my hometown of Chicago. Its population is about 1,900, which I'm pretty sure is exceeded just on the square block on which I live in the Lakeview neighborhood. Black Elk Peak, the highest point in the United States east of the Rockies, towers more than 7,000 feet near Custer; in some Chicago neighborhoods, speed bumps are the highest elevations.
But based on Ruth's portrait, if you're a farmers market regular in a big city or suburb, you'd feel right at home at Custer Farmers Market. Enjoy the virtual tour.
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After several days of tepid supermarket produce as we drove through the Great Plains, I was delighted when a ranger in Custer State Park told us about a market in the nearby town of perhaps 2,000 people.
At most farmers markets in New York City, there are at least three vendors selling farm produce as well as several vendors selling a range of other food. At this small market deep in the Black Hills near Mount Rushmore, there were just a few tents, with vendors offering jams, pickles, chutney, cutting boards, and crocheted dolls, but only one farmer.
But what a farmer! There were spectacular tomatoes, field and cherry, as well as a delicious, small, yellow variety that I'd never seen, all for half of what I'd pay in the city. I also saw cucumbers both green and yellow, zucchini, summer squash, several varieties of hot and sweet peppers, garlic, onions, green and yellow beans, carrots, chard, garlic scapes, and cantaloupe.
The corn had sold out early, but then the farmer drove up with burlap sacks stuffed with replenishment ears, and the customers dove in, as my husband put it, like piranhas. And one of those piranhas was me! The farmer's wife made the sales and, naturally, added the totals in her head.
Like at any farmers market, though, the big hit was the community. I enjoyed discussing varieties of squash with other customers, speculating about the flavor of the round, yellow cucumbers, and comparing notes about how to cook kohlrabi. Customers greeted friends and relatives and shared gossip about the week.
While hundreds of customers stroll through my home market in Brooklyn every hour, here there were no more than a dozen at one time, but they arrived steadily and stayed longer than they needed to.
I've been thinking for some time about CSA and farmers markets both as third places, social environments that are neither home or work, where neighborhood ties can build, perhaps starting weak but strengthening over time.
Whatever the size of their customer base, the Custer Farmers Market clearly has this quality: The customers may come for the veggies, but at least some of them stay for the community.
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