I’m going grocery shopping tomorrow and I’m trying to decide whether I should shop for produce at the supermarket (Whole Foods - not out of yuppie pretention, but all of its national brands and its private label are cheaper than the local Giant’s), or go out of my way to the farmer’s market. I went a few weeks ago, and the produce didn’t really taste that much better. Maybe I did something wrong, because I thought that’s what these markets were good for. Is there supposed to be some other benifit for these places that I’m overlooking, like maybe economical ones (they did have some suprisingly inexpensive fish filets, but I didn’t pay hard enough attention to the price of the produce)?
The draw for me:
Better quality
Better prices
Fresher produce
Local sources
Eliminate the middleman
Access to produce and products I can’t get elsewhere
There’s a Whole Foods only a few blocks away from the farmer’s market I go to, but I’ll still try to get most of my produce from the market.
<<Putting on old geezer hat>>
It used to be that buying from the Farmer’s Market meant buying from the farmer. In those days, you could tell a difference in the taste and the quality. There was often a festive atmosphere and you could often find foods you would never find in your local A&P. It was lots cheaper, and you could buy up whole bushels of beans and peas for freezing or what have you.
Nowdays, when you buy from the Farmer’s Market, you are most likely buying from a middleman. You can get stuff just as good at the grocery store. Also, with the flash freezing process, you can also get fruits and veggies that are out of season in your neck of the woods, but growing in abundance elsewhere. This was virtually unheard of 40-50 years ago.
YMMV
I think it depends on where you live. Over the last 15-20 years, a lot of small farmers have set up in my area, and when I go to a farmer’s market, I’m buying from the people who picked the produce that day. They like to grow a bunch of different things and sell them fresh; it’s quite inexpensive and usually much better quality.
Example: I can get an overflowing 3-basket box of fresh, amazing-tasting strawberries for $4 at the farmer’s market, or pay over $2 at the store for maybe 1.5 baskets-worth of old, flavorless strawberries. The farmer’s market costs a bit less and tastes much better.
Farmer’s markets also often have local bakeries, fancy-local-foods-people, and plant nurseries selling their goods, so you can get yummy stuff and support local businesses, and they’re nice places to spend time.
Now I’m feeling lucky to live where I do. I think I’ll go to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning…
:waving robot arms:
DANGER! WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!
Discount seafood is not always a good idea, especially on the weekend, or on a Monday. You could be getting Friday’s unsold stock.
I’ve never been that thrilled with farmer’s markets, but if you have a good one in your area, and know what you’re buying, I can’t see the harm in giving it a go.
I love hitting a farmer’s market…with my cadillac…sorry, could not resist, as FM’s seem to be what all the White Knuckled Deaf Old Men Who Shouldn’t Be Driving Anymore are aiming for for maximin car-nage.
Anywhooo.
I love Farmer’s Market. For Detroiters, there is a most excellent one in Pontiac by Summit Place Mall. It has weekend hours, but I have picked up some great deals on plants, veggies and mittens made by retarded folk who are learning to knit.
There are also the junk booths of utter crap sold by people who think it is collectable.
They need to find Ebay to reach a greater audience with their garbarge.
I would rather support the local farmer, it is a dying business, with taxes going up and the value of the property worth more than the crop and the farmer’s selling out to developers.
I’m a sucker for a farmer’s Market and one day I will actually make it too Detroit’s Farmer’s Market.
There’s a tailgate market down the road from my house every Wednesday evening. Folks set up booths in an unused parking lot. In my experience, if you buy in-season produce, it tastes much better than the stuff from the supermarket. I also like buying from local people instead of farmers in California.
It can be the luck of the draw, though. I’ve been to a couple of dismal farmers’ markets before, too.
I used to know an organic farmer in Boulder, CO.
He loved farmer’s market’s. In his own words:
“The restaurants are my most picky customers. They want everything fresh and perfect. Second are the grocery stores. They mostly want perfect, but will take stuff that’s slightly scuffed. The farmer’s market’s are the best. I can put the oldest ickiest looking stuff out there, and people BUY it for the same price the grocery stores sell for, only the money goes to ME!”
I’ve shopped at the Springfield, Illinois farmer’s market from time to time. I don’t have such an advanced palate that I can tell the difference between a California onion picked last week and shipped across country to my local Wal-Mart, and an Illinois onion picked yesterday and driven 50 miles to Springfield. But YMMV.
I go there for the jams and salsas. I can taste the difference between apple butter at Wal-Mart (apple juice and a bunch of chemicals, made in a factory in Florida) and apple butter at the farmer’s market (made with apples and butter in some Grandma’s kitchen). And salsa with fresh tomatoes… MMMMMMMMMM, salsa.
Well, our farmer’s markets are pretty much next to the farms. More diverse produce is brought in, but local corn, tomatos, peppers, asparagus, peaches and squash become favorites. And there is a difference.
South Jersey.
I love our local farmers market. Farm fresh produce is brought in early every morning from local farms. I’ve been know to be there at 6 a.m., when they open. I’ve got fresh string beans, corn, new potatoes, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, strawberries and watermelon in my kitchen right now. MMMMMMM… Oh, and yes, I went just this morning.
Depends on the market. Our local farmer’s market, which is open only on Saturday mornings from June thru October, has a rigid rule that all items sold must be produced by the sellers. Even arts & crafts items cannot be from “kits.”
One guy showed up once with a truckload of produce he picked up from a wholesaler. Since he didn’t grow the stuff himself, they wouldn’t let him in; he sold from his truck just outside the market and didn’t come back.
I like the low prices, the freshness, and that the produce is often larger than our local "super"markets, which seem to think that brown lettuce or apples with spots are OK to display as long as it’s not too brown or too many spots.
Sometimes there is a guy playing the guitar on the grass, too. Better than Muzak.[sup]TM[/sup]
At 7 am on the way to work, my local smaller markets are all honor system. Walk in, grab what you need and put money in lock box.
For me the big draw of a farmer’s market is that it’s (usually) outdoors. And I always go with either a girlfriend of mine or my husband or both, and it’s just a fun time. The one we go to usually also has an indoor part where they’ve got about 100 little kiosks with weird/rare/artsy/fun stuff for sale, almost like a flea market. And there’s about 15 or so food kiosks with international fare.
Anyway, I just think they’re fun. Better than shopping for groceries in a musak-filled store. I just don’t buy my meat there… I do that at my local Costco from hell.
The best part about the market I go to is the little fresh poultry stand. They’ve got chicken really cheap, and eggs pulled that same morning! I’d never realized an egg could taste so different when they were fresh–especially boiled.
Our farmers market here is out back of a bigger market, with an italian deli, butcher, baker, flea market, craft fair, gift vendors, glassware outlet, and antique mall all in the same building. It’s one of my favorite places to spend a leisurely Saturday morning.
The Farmers’ Market in downtown Baltimore is worth it for the tomatoes alone! Every spring I restart my container garden by buying my seedlings from there, too.
I don’t even know where else I could go for fresh beans. The eggs are heavenly. Artisan breads? Check! Whole Foods (love them, by the way) has, what, four or five varieties of apples, maybe? The farmer’s market has about fifteen. The same goes for eggplant, except it’s probably close to ten, than fifteen.
The prices are unbeatable! Shallots are SO much cheaper at the farmers’ market. As are string beans, bunches of herbs, squash and salad greens.
So, to recap, fresher produce, larger selection and lower prices are the draw of the farmers’ market.
Building on what burundi said, the official Farmer’s Market in Asheville is an appalling tourist trap: it’s a set of huge warehouses that sell lots of “diet spoons” (cheap teaspoons with large holes drilled in the bowl) and other tacky tchotchkes alongside slab after slab of fatback. no good.
No, around here you want to look for the “tailgate markets.” There’s at least three of these within a ten-minute drive of my house. Small-scale farmers, especially organic farmers, set of card tables at these markets and sell their seasonal produce and other stuff out of the back of their pickup trucks.
The prices aren’t noticeably better than at the grocery store, but I do think the quality is better (despite Athena’s alarming quote :D). There are also two more advantages:
- I can talk to the farmers directly. I wanted ot buy basil plants recently, so I asked the woman selling them to tell me about the different varieties; she spent about five minutes giving me an enthusiastic lesson on the differences between curly-leaf basil, lemon basil, regular basil, etc., including tasting leaves from the different plants. The farmer selling fruit-infused goat cheeses invited us to try samples of all her varieties and talked to us about how she made them. I enjoy that kind of interaction.
- Similarly, I just feel good about buying from these folks. I like to support small-scale agriculture; I like what it means economically and culturally and environmentally for my community.
I will say, Athena, that I used to work on a “market farm,” a 2-acre organic farm that sold primarily to farmer’s markets and also to a few local schmancy restaurants. We didn’t distinguish between what we sold to restaurants and what we sold at market, and we picked the market veggies the day before market, so they weren’t especially old and icky.
Daniel
Around where I live (Bay Area) dealers in the Farmers’ Markets must grow it themselves, and the produce must be local - nothing from Mexico. The other good thing about it is competition - you can vist four stands with corn, and get the best deal for the best quality. It is usually a bit cheaper than the grocery stores also, not that they’re that bad usually.
Not many tailgates here, but when I lived in New Jersey we bought corn from the farm a couple of miles from our house. Nothing better than that.
My tomatoes still beat even farmers’ market tomatoes, though.
That describes my observation about this market perfectly. There are actually trillions of markets around this area, but I’m not in the mood for such turbelent trial and error.
The term “farmers market” has no specific meaning.
Around here, there’s a chain of “farmers market” stores. Really big places with tons of produce/meat/fish/etc. You can get stuff that the local supermarket folks have never even heard of. And you can buy grains and spices amazingly cheap. But there aren’t any farmers lurking around.
There is an official state farmers market in the area but its so out of the way and hard to get to that I’ve never been to it, nor have most people in the area.
But I used to live among farm folk, and the difference in taste you get from a farmer’s stand and what sits in the bins at Kroger in amazing. Take carrots. Just plain old carrots. Fresh farm grown (or home grown) carrots taste completely different from the supermarket stuff.