We are getting ready to start our 3rd or 4th year of selling, depending on how you count the first year which we did primarily from the town house and not from the farm at all.
Since we started we have met, talked to, read stories about and heard stories about thousands of people. Some are very touching, some sad and some are just plain funny.
Last summer a really nice women came up to me to buy produce. From her speech pattern I would guess her to be from the greater New York City area, which is a lot of our weekend customers. Dressed casually and very friendly.
I gave her the mantra… “We sell locally grown, pesticide free and in season produce.” She looked at what I had to offer and then asked, “Do you have mangoes?” I stopped and looked an politely said that mangoes don’t grow locally, so no we don’t carry them, as we only sell what is ‘locally grown, pesticide free and in season”. She was fine with that, but then the comment to which I had almost no reply was when she asked, “Are you going to have them next week?”. At the risk of insulting her, I merely said no that they would likely not grow locally next week either. She walked away.
Chuck tells an even better story about college students; our leaders of tomorrow !
A group of college students were had been buying free range farm eggs. They knew the health benefits of buying free range and buying locally grown produce. They had done it for awhile. Then one of the young ladies suggest that they had stopped buying the farm eggs.
Asked why she noted that she had just learned that chicken lay eggs from the same escape route that they ‘poop’. She could not imagine every eating another farm egg that she KNEW was produced that way.
Taking it one step further, for information purposes, really, was the apology that she was no longer going to eat eggs. Eggs are a great source of a lot of vitamins, minerals and protein.
She was quick to respond that she was not stopping the practice of eating eggs. She was stopping the practice of eating FREE RANGE FARM eggs. She was going to stick to the ones that are “sold in supermarkets. The ones produced in the Styrofoam cartons. They would be OK”
There could clearly be no response to that comment. This, by the way, was no slow or dumb person. She, like many we deal with on a regular basis are so far removed from the farms and how food is produced that they have been overlooked.
Chuck and I watched a TV program (though we don’t own a TV and haven’t for over 7 years, we do sneak shows we want to see with friends or on the computer) TV celeb chef Jamie Oliver was in West Virginia at a school and quizzed first graders on simple veggies. Held up thing like potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, egg plant etc. I truly don’t remember if they got any correct. I know they had potato wrong and called a tomato a potato. They had no clue what the egg plant was nor the radishes. They may have gotten carrots right.
Now, these kids are not from center city. You might, sadly, understand that if a child lived at 45th St and 8th Ave in Manhattan, then perhaps they don’t know where all the food they eat comes from.
It is scary when people who make it a point to buy at the VERBA FARM @ WILLIAMS POINT or any other farm stand or farmers market don’t know what grows locally and what does not, nor do they know where all eggs come from. Sad when kids don’t know what the raw basic vegetables look like and can identify them.
Now on the flip side, I am amazed when I sell tomatoes that there are customers that tell me exactly which variety I am selling. I admit, I don’t know all 200 or 300 varieties of tomatoes that grow locally (and maybe I should).
There is a learning curve to buying local. When you shop at any of the big grocery stores and the bananas are next to the apples which are next to oranges and next to peaches and they are that way all year round, it is easy to forget what grows locally, what is in season and even if they are genetically engineered (didn’t even go to pesticide free. US markets are not obligated to tell you if produce is genetically engineered)
We all need to educate ourselves about what we eat. My suggestion is to BUY LOCALLY. BUY IN SEASON. BUY PESTICIDE FREE. Since that does describe what we sell, the easiest way is to buy from us.
