Farmers markets: Good idea

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Saturday morning is the time for farmers’ markets. By my count there are at least a dozen of these open-air gatherings in the area, offering freshly picked locally grown produce at reasonable prices.

The bill of fare at these gatherings runs the gamut from apples to zucchini, from tomatoes to cucumbers. Some even offer hot breakfasts and strong coffee to help charge your batteries and get you into a buying mood. Somewhere a vendor cranks up a CD player and music wafts through the air, adding a festive quality to the day.

I grew up in the slow-moving dusty town of Doniphan, Miss., just north of the Arkansas border. We had a farmers’ market there too, and even though World War II was in full swing and everything was rationed, you could buy all the fresh vegetables and fruit you wanted from families who arrived every Saturday at dawn to set up their wares on the courthouse lawn.

There were one or two pickup trucks, I remember, but most folks showed up in mule-drawn farm wagons. They were loaded with lettuce, cabbage radishes, carrots, potatoes, strawberries, okra, freestone peaches, red, green and yellow apples; overflowing baskets of green beans and fragrant mounds of cantaloupes, honeydews and watermelons.

Just about everybody in town stopped by the courthouse on Saturdays to buy from their favorite vendor. We had a garden, of course, but Mom and Dad always picked up a few things we didn’t have. Strawberries and peaches were my favorites, and those sweet cantaloupes, of course. I don’t know why, but we called them muskmelons back then. Dad said it was a good thing to buy from these folks. For some it was their entire livelihood, he said.

Farmers markets were a pretty good idea back then. And they still are.


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