One of the interesting parts about doing the farmers market has been observing people, and their funny interactions with produce.

Sometimes it involves little experiments with human nature.  For example, last year, I noticed that as the garlic basket became picked over, people had left one very large bulb of garlic, and were choosing smaller ones instead.  I picked it up to see why - was it broken up?  Was it moldy?  Was there a crushed clove on it?  Nope.  The stem on top that the plant grows out of was twisted around the bulb at an unusual angle.  When we planted it, we probably got the clove headed the wrong direction in the soil, and the plant grew around itself a bit it compensate.  Do people eat the stem?  No!  It’s part of the dry papery coverings that get peeled and (hopefully) composted.  The rest of the bulb was enormous and perfect, but people were scared off by a kinked stem at the top.

So, out of curiosity, as the season wore on I left that bulb of garlic in the mix, and didn’t cut off its funny stem.   The garlic options became fewer and  fewer, smaller and smaller, but still, everyone rejected the bulb with the kinked stem. People were seriously buying garlic half its size, for the same price, instead of settling for a large but slightly unusual shape.  It never sold!  We took it home, and just to complete the experiment, I opened it up and peeled some cloves.  The largest ones were big enough to save as seed garlic, so I kept them for planting.  The rest was perfect - larger than the garlic we usually get to use.  We save the best for seed, sell the next best, and use the smalls for everyday ourselves.

Tomatoes always get a lot of debate and commentary.  We are growing Roman Candle sauce-type tomatoes this year.  One source description reads “… pure yellow banana shaped tomatoes…. very flavorful and have very few seeds. Excellent for making salsa, sauce, and gourmet dishes…”  They are lovely!  Bright yellow, they really do look just like a big strong candle flame.  Wonderful flavor.  Didn’t sell a single one at the market so far!  People ask about them.  They pick them up, exclaim, talk about them, and then say things like the person who asked in a woeful tone, “But what do you DOoooo with a YELLOW TOMATO???”  Or, “Well, my husband would never eat a YELLOW tomato.”

How I feel about all this depends on my mood, and most of the time my reaction is a jovial desire to educate people, tell them about what they could try, how good something is, encourage experimentation, etc.  There’s a bit of suppressing a laugh, grin, or teasing remark.  Sometimes though, I try not to wonder at their families eating FD&C yellow 5-colored cakes, candy, pickles, popcorn, jello, etc….but not, OMG, a YELLOW TOMATO.

To my delight, though, every now and then these sorts of interactions are offset by the really satisifying ones.  The woman who hurried up to the table and excitedly pulled the beautiful white-and-lavender unusually-shaped eggplants out and set them on the scale in a towering pile, for example.  She knew what she was getting.    She wasn’t among the crowd who “just can’t even think of it as an eggplant if it’s not dark-skinned”.

I think maybe I grow for these individuals.  We’re not big producers, and part of the reason I grow my own food is to get interesting produce I can’t afford to buy, or that can’t be mass produced:  The gourmet types, the thin delicate-skinned varieties, the colorful nutrient-rich varieties, the skinny flavorful beans, the finely textured baby veggies, chemical-free.  Not the mainstream.  The mainstream makes the money, I suppose.  But recognizing quality and uniqueness brings an incomparable satisfaction.

On a lighter note, the funniest overheard quote of the day?  Next door to us, the Humane Society had a table display set up.  Behind them was one of Zingerman’s permanent lunch menu advertising signs.  A woman came up to the Humane Society’s table, eyeing the Zingerman’s sign behind them, and asked, “So - What’s your Soup-of-the-Day?”  Grin.