Devra Gartenstein's Blog, page 5

Phinney Farmers' Market 2011

I'm pleased to report that the Phinney Farmers' Market is much improved this year, at least during the three weeks that it's been up and running.

This year the market moved from the lower parking lot at the Phinney Neighborhood Center to the upper parking lot. The new location is much more visible from the street, which is always good for business. The old location was "L" shaped, with prepared food vendors like myself tucked in the corner that bent away from most of the other vendors. At the new location we're integrated much more gracefully with the rest of the market. We're even next to the music, which always helps. Folks linger to listen and while they're there, they buy food.

Another important change has been the fact that they now allow dogs. At some point in the past, the administration had made the decision to make this a dog-free market. Some dog owners stopped coming specifically because they disapproved of the decision while others simply found it inconvenient to leave their dogs home during a Friday evening jaunt.

I'm always surprised at the good behavior of most of the dogs I see at farmers' markets. But I remind myself that I'm seeing a preselected sample: bad dogs don't get to come to the market. One farmer friend has a theory that days when you see a lot of big dogs at the market tend to correlate with high sales, while days when you see a lot of small dogs tend to correlate with lower sales. I'm not sure how you could objectively verify that theory, but it does intrigue me.

The Wallingford Market's New Location

This month the Wallingford Farmers' Market moved from its old home at the Wallingford Center to a new home at the Good Shepherd Center. I'm usually slinging quesadillas at the Columbia City Market on Wednesday afternoons, but I managed to sneak away last week to peek at the new venue.

It feels expansive and pastoral. This is a welcome change after the space the market occupied in the Wallingford Center parking lot was cut practically in half last season. That felt stressful and cramped. It's also wonderful to stand on grass rather than asphalt. You feel a lot less beaten up at the end of the day when you stand on a softer surface.

The challenge at the new location is to let people know that there's a market going on, even though it's hidden from view. The old location was right off of a main drag. The advantage of the new location is that it's a pleasant place to linger. It's also the home of Seattle Tilth, ground zero for urban agriculture, and I can't think of a better setting for a farmers' market.

There's a chef's only market between 3 and 3:30, for the purpose of allowing the pros to get in and out quickly. That's a worthy idea, though it doesn't make much sense for those of us who are selling finished products rather than primary ingredients. Fortunately, the rule isn't strictly enforced and the first half hour at an afternoon market tends to be the slowest time of day for my operation anyway. In any case, our sales so far have blown last year out of the water, so I'm certainly not complaining about this minor inconvenience.

Zola's "Belly of Paris"

I knew I was going to enjoy this book from the very first page, as Zola describes the wagons pulling into the Les Halles market one morning during the mid 1800s. Vendors are paying for stall space, quibbling over placement, and getting in each other's way. One of my favorite things about my own market experience is the connection I feel to the countless farmers and vendors who have parked their wares in public places since the very beginning of civilization.

My attention began to wander during one of the early scenes as the protagonist Florent takes off to explore the market with his new friend Claude, who is based on the painter Paul Cezanne. Through a long, drawn out section, Claude repeatedly exclaims about the colors of the light on the vegetables as the sun rises over the market. Though the account probably should have been about half as long, it did call to mind the folks with cameras who I see daily at Seattle markets, angling to catch the produce in the best possible light.

Later in the book, I grasped what Zola was trying to accomplish in that too long section, as he waxes poetic describing cheeses and fruits:

"There, next to the one-pound stacks of butter, a gigantic Cantal was spread on leaves of white beet, as though split by blows from an axe; then came a golden Chesire cheese, a Gruyere like a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot, some Dutch cheese suggesting decapitated heads smeared in dried blood...a parmesan adding its aromatic tang to the thick, dull smell of the others."

And:

"The cherries, arranged in rows, were like the lips of Chinese girls drawn into a tight smile: the Montmerencies suggesting the fleshy lips of fat women; the English ones, much longer and more serious; the common black ones, which looked as if they had been bruised by kisses; the bigaroons, speckled with pink and white, which seemed to be smiling with a mixture of merriment and anger."

Like Claude the painter, Zola was painting his market with words. He clearly knew the venue as intimately as any modern day vendor, describing the subterranean caverns dense with livestock and the vats of culturing milk, the vendor rivalries and the neighborhood gossip who showed up late each day trying to get something for nothing. I know each of these characters, or at least modern day versions of them.

Zola's genius as a writer lies in his profound understanding of working people. He manages to paint them with an eye that is at once sympathetic and critical. I can't think of a more fitting subject for his talents than a bustling market with its day to day dramas. This is certainly a gloomy book, focusing on the dark side of interpersonal relationships. And yet the story unfolds amidst the heart and soul of one of the most vibrant food cultures the world has ever known. If only for that reason, I found it strangely uplifting.

Goodbye Meadowbrook

The Meadowbrook Farmers' Market announced this week that it had cancelled its 2011 season. There simply weren't enough vendors to make it happen this year. I have to admit, I was one of the vendors who hadn't planned to return.

I'd always thought of the Meadowbrook Market as a beautiful experiment. The managers were enthusiastic and committed, and it was perhaps the only market in the city that had a completely secure location because it was held in the parking lot of the school that founded it. Other local markets such as Ballard and Queen Anne have to apply for street use permits year after year, while markets hosted at venues such as the University Heights Center or the Phinney Neighborhood Center also need to renegotiate the terms of their locations every year.

The Meadowbrook market grew out of a tight Waldorf School community. The very first day in 2009 was amazing; in fact, one vendor I spoke to recently said that it was the best day he'd ever had at any market. But it tanked pretty fast. I've heard folks speculate that the problem was a location off the beaten path and, in retrospect, I think it may have been the only market I've ever seen that was located on a side street rather than a main drag (except maybe the first few years of the Queen Anne Market.) In any case, I think it's possible that the school's community could have supported the market, but school season is fall, winter and spring, while market season is summer.

I'm sure that folks are going to read all kinds of assumptions and conclusions into the Meadowbrook Market's cancellation this year: they'll say it was one too many markets in the city or that the lousy economy killed it. New markets succeed and fail for many reasons, and every market and every season is unique. Personally, I hope folks will continue to start new markets, bringing new ideas and new vendors into the mix. There's still so much potential, and so many ideas we haven't even tried.

Roasted Veggie "Pate"

I made this wonderful roasted vegetable spread for the Humble Feast dinner the other night. I'd listed it on the menu as "Roasted Vegetable Pate" because I've been trying to come up with more pretentious names for my menu items. Folks seem to respond to that.

In any case, I'd had this vision on roasting some veggies and pureeing them, along with some homemade bread. When I scouted around at the market last Sunday, though, the only veggies I could find worth roasting were yams, parsnips, leeks and shallots. The leeks and shallots would add depth, but the yams and parsnips were both sweet so I wanted something to balance them. I thought of sorrel, than wonderful, tart spring green.

It's a humble pate, and a very tasty one.

2 parsnips, cut in chunks
2 small yams, or 1 medium-size yam, peeled and cut in chunks
3 shallots, peeled and cut in half
1 leek, cleaned and cut in 2-inch lengths
1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of black pepper
1 tablespoon miso
4 sorrel leaves

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Toss the parsnips, yams, shallots and leeks with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet and roast them for about 40 minutes, until the yams and parsnips are soft.

When the veggies are cool enough to handle, puree them along with the miso and sorrel leaves. Serve with crackers or wonderful bread.

Opening Day at Georgetown 2011

Saturday was opening day at the Georgetown Farmers' Market. It was an overcast day, which wouldn't have been particularly noteworthy except that it followed the best stretch of weather we'd had all year. Three sunny days in a row! And we finally hit 70 degrees! After that teaser it seemed that nobody was particularly excited about being outdoors on a typical chilly gray day. Still, Patty Pan was lucky to be the only prepared food vendor there, at least on opening day so our sales were off the charts, at least compared with most of last year.

Georgetown is an interesting market. Some market purists argue that it's not actually a farmers' market at all because there are as many flea market vendors as farmers. But I'm not a purist and I think that the more different kinds of farmers' markets we see, the more options there will be for farm fresh food.

This market has everything going for it except customers. Georgetown is an increasingly trendy neighborhood with few grocery stores. The market has a great venue, with old brick, train tracks and a defunct brewery in the background. There's also plenty of space, in fact, there's enough space to configure the stalls so that every vendor has a corner, at least at this point in the season. Corner stalls allow vendors twice as much selling frontage, so they're usually in high demand and you often have to have seniority or an amazing product to get one.

So we'll just have to wait an see whether the Georgetown market will realize its potential. It may just depend on whether we can all stick it out long enough.

Making Work

These days I often base my decision to vend at a new market on the fact that every vending opportunity creates work, and people need work. My business has built an infrastructure over the years, and it's often not difficult for us to pick up new markets and make use of unused parts of that infrastructure by preparing a little extra food at the kitchen we're already leasing, and using a van and some equipment on days when they would otherwise sit ide. Even if we just break even, we're seeing what can come of this opportunity and we're making work.

There have been raging debates the past few years about whether new markets "cannibalize" existing markets, siphoning their market share and their clientele. The way I see it, they do and they don't. There's certainly the potential for someone who wants great tomatoes to stop at one market rather than another because it's more convenient. There's also potential for someone who wants great tomatoes to buy them rather than not buy them on a particular day because there's a convenient market nearby that hadn't been there a year earlier.

We're picking up a brand new market this year at Willis Tucker Park, in Snohomish. It's on Friday afternoons, so traffic is going to be hell, but I'm excited. Friday markets tend to be challenging. They're not like other weekday markets, where folks come on their way home from work and probably don't have anything else to do that evening. They're also unlike weekend markets, which tend to be more leisurely because folks often go there as a day-off activity. This new market is in a busy park with a swimming pool. I'm hoping it'll have some of the qualities that make weekday markets succeed as well as qualities that make weekend markets work.

We'll see. In any case, I'm be making work for my staff.