Love, Devotion and Surrender

   
    When I go to the market, I can't help but feel a little competitive. That guy over there has a bunch of rhubarb he didn't buy off my stand, and it's much smaller than the bunches I'm selling. Why are folks going for that chick's salad mix when mine has yellow and purple pansies mixed with the greens? Really? That lady is buying fudge instead of my lilac-blackberry syrup? What gives???
    Inter-farm snark isn't part of the wholesome, community-centered farm market image. However, it is a competition when it comes to markets. Behind the scenes, each of us growers and makers needs a marketing trick or two up our sleeves. Especially when there's no farm stand back home on the acreage and no steady weekly CSA income and traffic, these brief hours in the market are the only place to gamble the farm. You have to essentially kill your crop by picking it, then bring it to an unrefrigerated space, and get it to turn from perishable commodity to cash dollar in a few short hours. There is a fierce undercurrent of hope vibrating beneath those blue and white canopies on a summer afternoon. We all want you, the buyer, to love and want what we do as much as we do. To do so, the buyer sometimes has to make a few sacrifices as well: fresh, occasionally messy flowers over the near-plastic ones from the supermarket; radishes with a little dirt on them instead of the kind "triple washed" and then showered on the hour in the produce section; a fly or two hovering around the baskets of fragrant strawberries. We love, devote and surrender out in the fields; the customers, we each hope, will do the same as they wander from awning to awning. Otherwise, our precious product goes home to sit in the fridge, appear on our penny-pinched dinner table (the Patient Spouse has consumed two meals of pansy and lilac salad to his undying credit—not exactly the Blue-Plate For Stonemasons) or cycle itself back into the soil via the compost heap.
     We all have a trick or two up our sleeves. Finding a way to make the produce, the fudge, or the flowers speak for themselves is crucial to getting them off the table and into the motley arrangement of re-usable bags that circulate the grounds on the arms of weekly shoppers. The first market, fresh lilacs with "free" first smells and compulsory second whiffs did the selling for First-Flower, and half of my stock went merrily homewards to other houses. I went home with $60+ dollars - not a living wage, exactly, but the first time earned income has flowed into, not out of, this endeavor. Last week, daughter Margot the Mathematician offered correct change (after standing in one place for four hours, nine plus three only equals twelve for some of us. Ahem...) She also poured out samples of lilac-blackberry seltzer and rose geranium seltzer. Wherein the Patient Spouse was found to have an equal in the Good Sport department: the burly man whose wife called out, "Honey, do you want to try some lilac seltzer or some rose?" We all acknowledged the bizarre quality of this inquiry—after which he gamely tried the seltzer and bought the syrup, and even managed to retain his pride at the same time!
     Now we are home again, with gorgeous salad in the hydrator where I am product testing it for shelf life and appeal, and a spectacular bouquet in every room. The Patient Spouse gets the lilacs on his dresser and the lilies-of-the-valley on his desk. That way, he can enjoy them in private, and remain a Man Among Men.