Author Topic: strawberries at farmers' markets  (Read 2006 times)

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Offline franksolich

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strawberries at farmers' markets
« on: June 22, 2008, 07:59:14 AM »
I'm curious if anyone has noticed that's being charged for strawberries at farmers' markets.

Yesterday (Saturday), I accompanied the neighbor to the big city to buy some groceries.

His wife and the infants were in Omaha.  The insurance company had paid for the truck wrecked by the Buckeye pothead, and they used the money to purchase a new sedan, and so she wanted to try it out.  But before leaving, she left him with the grocery shopping list.

The neighbor and I went to the grocery store, and he did his thing, while franksolich did his thing of watching what are usually decent and civilized people, acting like primitives,

On our way back, we detoured off on a gravel road, as there is a well-known farmer's "market" there.

I'm never fond of "shopping," but this is summer in the Sandhills of Nebraska, and because it gets so sordidly hot and humid here, so as to lessen the stress on the body and temperament, I generally subsist on a light diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, generally chopped up with ice in the blender (not fruits and vegetables together, but all sorts of fruit, or all sorts of vegetables, together).

We came to the roadside stand.  Everything was in good order; it all looked good.

Now, farming families are busy people, and so don't have time to sit around a shed waiting for the occasional customer to drive by.  What they usually do is set everything up in the early morning, and then depart until evening, when they come to close up and determine what needs added to the inventory the following morning.

And so it's self-service for the customer, including the standard usual customary coffee can, where one puts his money after totaling up his purchases.

I saw boxes of strawberries.  I have plenty of fresh fruits here, but alas at the moment no strawberries.

I blanched at the price: two bucks a pound.

"That's too much," I said, "and besides, next week, they'll be bigger, and they'll be a buck a pound.  I can wait a week for strawberries."

The neighbor however had his own shopping-list, and did that.

When he got done, it came to sixteen bucks.

He had a $20 bill on him.  franksolich had two $20 bills and one $1 bill.

So we looked into the coffee can, to find four $1 bills for change.

The neighbor pulled out a handful of stuff; currency, checks, IOUs, and telephone numbers, some metal coinage rattling on the bottom.

One of the bills was a $100 bill.

"Well," I said, "if one's getting two bucks a pound for strawberries, it doesn't take long to burn up a $100 bill."

The other currency was $5s, $10s, and $20s, with only two $1 bills.

Not enough to make change for the twenty of the neighbor.

So as to even it out, making the bill an even twenty bucks, the neighbor had to grab two pounds of strawberries, a little bit put out because even though excellent strawberries, they were overpriced, and nobody other than primitives shopping for marijuana, likes to pay more than he should have to pay.

I'm curious; that's the current price for number one grade A first-class top-notch strawberries at farmers' markets here in the Sandhills of Nebraska, two bucks a pound.

Has anyone elsewhere noticed what's being charged in their area?
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Offline formerlurker

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Re: strawberries at farmers' markets
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2008, 08:21:50 AM »
$4.99 at the grocery store for a package of them, but they were on special for buy one get one free.   They are delicious.   Produce is through the roof here.   I usually overpay tremendously for produce at Whole Foods when I hit that place on occasion (the produce there is that good).

I really wish we had more farmer's markets around here.  I would love to buy local. 

Offline NHSparky

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Re: strawberries at farmers' markets
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2008, 08:42:09 AM »
Free when you have your own plants.  Screw Hannford's, screw Market Basket.  Both want too much.

And blueberries/raspberries will soon be free for me as well.  Alas, my cherries, pears, and apples won't be free for a year or two yet.
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Offline Chris_

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Re: strawberries at farmers' markets
« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2008, 09:49:34 AM »
During strawberry season when they're grown locally, they're $1.50 a pound at the supermarket.  In the off-season, they're a dollar more.
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Offline DixieBelle

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Re: strawberries at farmers' markets
« Reply #4 on: June 22, 2008, 11:03:01 AM »
Frank, I just went to our local farmer's market. People have been bragging about them forever so I finally gave in and got myself down there early Wed morning (the only time they are open at this location).

Strawberries were $7 a quart!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, you read that right. I had to look three times and watched another lady pay for hers to make sure. I backed away slowly and tried to avoid the horse manure on the ground.

Canteloupes for $4.99 a piece as well.

I noticed that these people were not "farmers". Not real ones anyway. They were "organic growers" in city clothes with shiny SUVS. They had their vehicles backed up to the boothes. Not a real farm truck among them. Every booth had a fancy banner and every one had their own "label" on things. I had stumbled into the "farmers market" for cityfolk who just want to feel superior. It's also on a "historic farm from the 1700's" and has placards and buildings done up by the county park authority. There is even an old milking house and hay barn with a petting zoo. I was not a real farmers market at all.

Give me side-of-the-road-honest-to-goodness-farmers any day of the week.

Friends tell me of another place (some distant away) that does have these kinds of real farmers. People from as far away as the Shenendoah Valley. Real working farmers with real food. None of this boutique stuff.
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Offline franksolich

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Re: strawberries at farmers' markets
« Reply #5 on: June 22, 2008, 05:24:24 PM »
Right, DixieBelle.

I wish I would have saved the primitive bonfire about where one primitive slipped, and admitted that produce at "farmers'" markets in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont oftentimes is shipped up there from Florida.  Probably from some "farm" owned by an evil corporation down there.

The "farmers'" markets in Lincoln and Omaha are enthusiastically patronized by the Starbucks/Ben & Jerry's crowd, the academics, the Democrats, the liberals, the primitives, and those who wish to be hip, cool, trendy, with it.

But the "farmers'" markets in Lincoln and Omaha are usually run by white-collar professional people, city folk who have "acreages" out in the country, and who on weekends don homespun and bonnets and calico and overalls and scarves and aprons so as to appear "rustic."

There are authentic farmers' markets, and the first clue is the inventory.  If it's stuff that's growing in nearby fields and yards, it's real.  If it's got stuff like pomegranates and oranges and bananas (in Nebraska), it's fake.

A farm that grows only corn, for example, will have only corn at its market, nothing else.

Also, authentic farmers' markets are usually in the off-roads, off the main drags; there are many stalls (or sheds or whatever) now in their third generation, and the people who do this have established reputations, and so there's no need to advertise, to have an "ideal" location.

Actually, what drives me nuts is "overadvertising," where one drives by a very large farm truck filled to the brim with corn, and there's three or four 4' x 8' plywood boards advertising CORN.  It's very difficult to miss a very large farm truck or to identify what's on it. 

"Collectivization" doesn't seem to work in Nebraska outside the two major cities, where the farmers and "farmers" are all put in one space (such as the Old Market in Omaha or the Haymarket in Lincoln).  Most farmers' markets are a one-family operation, and scattered all over the countryside.

Various other cities have once in a while tried organizing a central location for farmers' markets, but they've flopped.  Those who wish to sell in the towns and cities, out of the back of pick-up trucks, prefer being the only person in a location, and so as a result, there's one "market," and only one, in each of the parking lots of the city or town.  Lots and lots of them, but only one in each place.

It entails a lot of driving, but outside of Omaha and Lincoln, everything in Nebraska entails a lot of driving.

The usual procedure (which saves gasoline and money) is this: someone decides to go to the "big city," 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 miles away, and on his way there, takes the back-roads in case he comes across something good.  Then after he gets his stuff in the "big city," he takes a different route home, other back-roads.

No one specifically goes to a farmers' market; it's a by-chance, random, on-the-way thing, and of course Nebraska with so many agricultural products, the odds are almost perfect that one finds at least one thing he's looking for, but usually most things he's looking for.
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Offline RobJohnson

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Re: strawberries at farmers' markets
« Reply #6 on: June 24, 2008, 02:33:33 AM »
$2 a lb sounds like a great deal to me for fresh strawberries.

It takes alot of work to grow, water and weed a bed of strawberries, then one still has to pick them....