Before the ACS Conference, I had a few days to get a taste of the new internship. First day on the job: Farmers Market in the town where I am staying for the next two months, Chehalis, WA. It struck me as a bit odd that a town of only about 7,000 people, with one of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the state could sustain a farmers market on a Tuesday afternoon. But lo and behold, the quest for fresh food knows no bounds. I wouldn't call it busy, but it was a respectably bustling farmers market. There were around 16 vendors, selling a variety of handmade or farm-grown products. My first farmers market experience while at Cato Corner was at Union Square. There is not much that can compare to that mosh pit of hungry bodies. But I also got a taste of a few smaller markets in the Connecticut area. In comparison, Chehalis had more vendors and customers at its weekday farmers market than the West Hartford market, which was in a far wealthier and more densely populated area. This gives me hope on multiple levels.
First, it proves that good food and support for local artisans knows no boundaries: socio-economic or political. Shopping for fresh, local food is not inherently expensive. If you buy a few high quality, fresh ingredients from the market and plan simple meals, it won't cost you much more than a supermarket cart full of hamburger helper and a lifetime of heart disease and scurvy. Of course, mix in a modest smattering of grocery store items (shoo, farmers markets don't sell Fruit Roll Ups and those Fiber One colon-blow bars I like so much). Seriously though, farmers markets can help you keep your life and meals simple and healthy at modest costs if you have a game-plan and make a habit of frequenting them. Plus, instead of buying a bunch of snack food, you'll start to crave the awesomely sweet, high quality vegetables and fruit available from local farmers. I don't know who or what educated the customer base in Chehalis to that fact -- the customer base that seems to have only been able to prop up a Safeway from hell, a "Grocery Outlet" where Safeway's products come to die, and a K-Mart next to a Walmart -- but it has miraculously happened, at least as far as the farmers market is concerned.
Also, the market is in the heart of a heavily conservative county, which is proof that good food and concern for sustainability is not a liberal hippie thing. There are no food police telling you how to live your life or sneering at your secret stockpile of Sour Patch Kids. It's just common sense that shopping fresh and local yields more flavor in your meals, health in your life, and delight for your community and mother nature.
Of course, this also means that a good cheese store really could survive almost anywhere (which gets my hopes up for someday rejoining my peoples in the Midwest). As long as you participate in the community, educate your consumers, and refuse to be a pretentious, uptight prick about it (yuppie or hippie), then people will want to buy and eat your food because it is delicious and they like you. But then again, what do I know. Maybe people here just don't have a whole lot going on for a Tuesday afternoon.
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