elegy to the farmer's market

Saturday was the last hoorah for my local farmer’s market for this growing season. I bought 18 heads of garlic and bid the garlic man adieu. I bought a pound of Amish butter and bid the Amish man adieu. I bought a bag of baby bok choy and bid the all-organic woman adieu. I bought a little “bear” full of honey and found out I can go buy honey throughout the winter from the honey man, so no adieu necessary. I walked slowly to my car, my hands full with the last of the harvest; I sighed to think of the grocery store offerings awaiting me...

But then I drove to my childhood hometown and went to the farmer’s market there, which has a few more weeks to go, and I added a bag of red peppers, winter squashes, two kinds of potatoes (the ubiquitous russet and my favorite, yukon gold), leeks, and a gi-normous head of cauliflower to the back seat of my car and I didn’t feel quite so sad. Now begins the season of heartier fare and neverending soups, two of my favorite culinary aspects of winter (the other is my self-prescribed dose of how ever much chocolate I deem necessary to keep my serotonin levels in balance on endlessly gray winter days). When I lived in the South, I tended not to eat so seasonally, largely because the seasons were largely indistinguishable beyond hot and not hot.

Speaking of the South, I’m quite excited because pecan season is nearly upon us, and this year I’m stocking up. I ran out of pecans back in March or April, and had to supplicate my Mom and Grandma for a few extra bags. This year I plan on ordering 6 pounds, which should last me a year if I keep to the rate of a half pound/month. We order from a small family farm on the outskirts of the town where I used to live in the South--I would drive to the farm on pecan lined drives, where a Southern man who sounded a lot like my Grandpa would sell me the finest pecans in the Southeast. Now, we order them in massive quantities. I can’t wait to taste the caramelly nuttiness of the fresh pecans...

So there is good in the changing of the seasons. I recently read a quote of Santayana, which suggested how much better it is to deal with the changing seasons than to glory in an endless spring. How true, though in a few months I’ll be disgruntled and suffering from the winter blues and I’ll be wishing that spring would hurry and appear and never end. For now, I’m enjoying the pleasures of autumn--today I turned my face to the warm-ish sun, ran through my childhood neighborhood, walked in a woodsy park, and raked leaves. What a wonder of life in the process of photosynthesis and dormancy. All of life in one fallen leaf...