tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4195849674476062131.post5899636310039918283..comments2023-09-19T05:39:16.641-05:00Comments on Homemade: Salad days: CSA weeks 3 and 4The Huisvrouwhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02101139743289058693noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4195849674476062131.post-38243100286061823112007-07-01T19:23:00.000-05:002007-07-01T19:23:00.000-05:00Your story is another great illustration of the lo...Your story is another great illustration of the local vs. organic conundrum. In Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan points out that the organic movement as originally conceived was also very much about local food production and distribution. My guess is that the disconnect happened when the word 'organic' took on value as a marketing term. With more and more people asking the kinds of questions that you posed at the cherry stand, it will be interesting to see if local emerges as the more critical of the two criteria.<BR/><BR/>You might want to check out the current issue of Eating Well, by the way, for its coverage of the top farmers' markets in the country. One of those receiving honorable mention is in Boulder. I actually wrote the sidebars for that article, and one interesting fact I learned that didn't make the cut concerned produce auctions. <BR/><BR/>Produce auctions tend to occur in areas where there are Amish or Mennonite farmers with minimal access to conventional markets and strong community values that keep individual farmers from competing with their neighbors for customers. The surprising part for me was that the typical produce auction buyer was a roadside stand operator--someone in effect functioning as a middleman in a context (a farmers' market analogue) where we don't expect there to be any.The Huisvrouwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02101139743289058693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4195849674476062131.post-44319870723326030682007-06-30T19:15:00.000-05:002007-06-30T19:15:00.000-05:00In our parallel worlds, where your CSA is my farme...In our parallel worlds, where your CSA is my farmers' market every Saturday morning, I have to say I'm getting fed up with "farmers" passing off trucked in produce from around the country as their own homegrown bounty. <BR/><BR/>This morning I was out to score some Colorado Bing cherries, as the wife and I have gone through ten pounds or so since the season started a few weeks ago. As I had been horribly disappointed with the neatly packaged, perfectly shiny and utterly flavorless cherries offered at Costco, I was looking forward to the sweet and tender ones grown locally.<BR/><BR/>When I found some decent looking ones this morning, I asked the (seemingly) rhetorical question to the "farmer" manning the booth, "Are these Colorado cherries?", to which he proudly proclaimed, "No, these are from Washington; Colorado season is over now."<BR/><BR/>Is it being too naive to think that farmers' markets - especially the largest and most populous one in Denver - should be, at their most basic, selling local produce? Granted, some vendors make no proclamations of locality, in favor of being organic. But still, aren't these markets supposed to reinstill ideas of seasonality and <BR/>peak flavor? Are we just using these transactions to temper yuppie guilt, meanwhile turning blind eyes to the deeper troubling issues?Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13837422349776079900noreply@blogger.com