Finding Yourself at a Farmers Market
You are walking around the neighborhood with nothing to do on a Saturday, you turn the corner and are suddenly in the middle of bustling marketplace. You’ve found yourself in on of the 47 farmers markets in the five boroughs. Now what?
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By Michael Long
More than 250,000 people shop in the 47 New York City farmers market each week during Summer season. According to GreenMarkets, the following producers are participating in the markets:
-79 vegetable and fruit growers
-21 meat, dairy, poulty, wool and fish producers
-13 maple syrupy, honey, jam and wine producers
-26 plant and tree growers
-17 bakers
-1 composter.
We’d love to hear your favorite farmers market story in the forums.
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your farmers market experience:
Bring Cash: For the most part, no credit card machines. They’ll have change for twenties, but you might as well bring some smaller change. You may be able to exchange old family heirlooms if they are of high enough quality. As a general rule, farmers markets are the not the place to negotiate over prices, although you should be able to get a bulk price if you want to buy a crate of fruit for canning.
Bring Bags: Most growers will have paper bags, but this is not a grocery store. Bring a backpack or cloth shopping bag. Neat trick is to put a reusable ice pack in the bottom of bag to keep things fresh on your walk home. Put heavier items on the bottom of the bag, leaving the top for greens. This may require some repacking as you shop.
Get there early: The best produce is to be had in the morning. Chefs and restaurant owners along with hard-core food lovers come early. You can always go back to bed once you have your produce for the week stashed away. This is especially important for greens and other delicate produce, which can be wilted by the midday heat.
Scope the place out: Every public market has a buzz around certain growers. Walk around the whole market, checking out where everyone else is shopping. If you are there early, look at what the restaurant workers are buying. They are the people wearing white chef’s jackets going about a focused appraisal and loading up.
Meet the growers: The largest farm represented in the City is almost 400 acres and the smallest is 4 acres. Talk about disdain for large agri-business. Ask when the produce has been picked. Ask for their suggestion on the best product. Ask for a sample.
More than just a shopping tip, the people selling produce at the farmers markets are doing it because that is their life.
Trina Pilonero of Silver Heights Farm, a grower in the Union Square farmers market says, “When I first started, I thought Union Square was for tourists. Then I became aware of just how local it is. The people care about the relationships they develop with the particular farmers that they deal with all the time. I hear about babies and marriages and dogs. So I'm not only a farmer but a friend.
Trina noted that the personal contact she enjoys is also crucial to her business, “Customers come back and tell me if their plants did well or failed ... which is important to me. It's important for both of us – not only the person buying the produce. The word is getting out...people are a lot more accepting of face to face contact, whereas it used to be you purchased your produce with a shopping cart and didn't have to interact with anyone. I feel the interaction adds to your life.”
Get hyper-seasonal and be picky: Once you have seen where restaurant shoppers and other people who know what they are doing are shopping and have spoken with the owners to see what they have to say, find out which particular produce is at the height of its game. One grower may have a few products, but be particularly excited about the tomatoes this week because of last week’s weather. If everyone else is very excited about the tomatoes, it’s probably a good week to be eating tomatoes.
Don’t just buy any tomato if one grower’s produce is in season. Some growers are from New York and some are from New Jersey. The seasons, as we know from the changing of the leaves, can be significantly different only short distances apart. Also, there are more than 120 varieties of tomatoes sold at the farmers markets in the city, so you have some choices to make.
Once you have been shopping at farmers markets for a little while, or if you have particularly helpful guidance from a regular shopper or a grower, it should not be too hard to figure out what’s hot during your visit. Make sure to feel, smell and look carefully at everything. If you don’t know what you should be looking for to make sure that a particular type of produce is in top form, ask the grower and the other people shopping around you.
Have a budget: If you are hungry when you start shopping, buy something and eat it. Try an apple. Don’t keep shopping while you are hungry because you are going to keep buying. A pound of cheese may sound like a good idea when you are salivating over the case, but it is going to cost you and you probably don’t need to be eating that much of it.
The infectious fun of shopping at a farmers market can be overwhelming. You may spend so much money and buy so much food that you won’t come back for weeks out of spite. Decide ahead of time to spend a fixed amount of money, say forty dollars, and stick to the budget. This may force you to skip certain items and patronize a grower with better prices but less attractive display.
Plan on the run: The saddest thing to do at a farmers market is to buy too much food, having to watch it go to waste in the bottom drawer of your fridge. Once you find out what the best produce is this week, gather ingredients for a meal and plan out how you are going to use everything, even if you are only going to set aside some carrots for snacking. Not to harp, but ask the growers if they have any favorite recipes. If someone is growing acres and acres of a particular vegetable, they probably have developed some good recipes over the years.
Go home: Take your purchases directly home, not more than one or two beers on the way. Be nice to your produce and it will be nice to you. You may just walk away with a newfound respect for your food and the people who grow it.
To find the farmers market in your neighborhood and schedules for shopping, go to our Find-It engine or www.cenyc.org/HTMLGM/marketlisting.pdf.
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