Farmers’ Stories

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Clarissa

August 2, 2014

Now that I can drive, I can finally start going to our local farmers’ market on a regular basis. Before, I didn’t feel like forcing N to get up early to drive me there.

And here is what I noticed. Quite a few of the farmers accompany every purchase with printouts of stories that they wrote. The stories are usually akin to diary entries. In them, the farmers share a regular day in their lives. Nothing much happens, and that makes the stories fascinating.

I think it’s really cool because you get a glimpse into the lives of people who grow the food you buy. Farmers always look apologetic when they put the sheets with these stories into customers’ hands, and I always feel like telling them that I do the same thing but online.

Do your local farmers do that or is this a regional thing?

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8 responses to “Farmers’ Stories”

David P. Bellamy

August 2, 2014

Wonderful! I have not seen any farmers doing this. They do, on rare occasions, enclose a sheet of paper listing what crops they expect to have available later in the year, and when.

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Marek Parbo

August 2, 2014

Well, i am from a “mini farm”- normal house whit large garden(if we imagine the property as a square field,then one of the side is somewhere 100-150m and other is probably between 150-200 meters (too lazy to calculate it by using maps for now), My grand grand parents used to grow tomatoes(manual watering and using cattle as a heat source during colder times(early spring-late autumn) and other vegetables and sold them on market during first side of 1990’s. since 2000’s we stopped farming on decent size (ended growing potatoes, started to grow less tomatoes and so on)(close relative members came together and we all harvested what we got from our fields until 1999-2000?( i remember that i also helped when i was probably 3 or 4. We have never writed a list of our harvests, especially giving any information about our harvest to anyone… and i cant think of anyone else who has done it(who i know of). Only similar thing i know is that someone released a statistics fact book last month, having info like how many deers/wild pigs have hunted and how many are left, how many profits a company made etc.

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maitreyi1978

August 3, 2014

What is in that green thing on the small plate? It is too small to be melon.

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1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  August 3, 2014
  
  Cucumber, by the looks of it
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    August 3, 2014
    
    It is a cucumber and it is called “crystal lemon” because it is pale yellow and round! Id never seen anything like it before.
    
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Jones

August 3, 2014

Must be a regional thing …

Nearby the farmers will talk your ear off while forgetting that other people want to buy a few things and are actually queued.

I suppose they figure that if you wanted faster, less personal service, you’d buy your produce at an automated cash register in a Sainsbury’s or Waitrose. 🙂

PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAG

PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAG

PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAG

Enough with the bossy cash register voice! 🙂

Anyway, I suspect there’s less of an oral chatting tradition where you are, unless of course the farmers have condensed their chatting onto paper so they can sell a bit more produce …

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 3, 2014
  
  “Anyway, I suspect there’s less of an oral chatting tradition where you are, unless of course the farmers have condensed their chatting onto paper so they can sell a bit more produce …”
  
  – That is a VERY interesting perspective. So this is a substitute for oral communication. Fascinating!
  
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Rose

August 4, 2014

I love this!

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