Farmers Market

March 17, 2004 - Green Stuff For Sale

There is a farmer’s market almost every day of the week in Santa Barbara, every week of the year. And, unlike other foods like french fries, tortilla chips, and pizza, stuff grown on a farm is seasonal. On the farm, you can’t grow strawberries in October, and you can’t grow corn in March. So, while the vendors and customers are pretty much the same throughout the year, the items for sale change. Each week becomes a transitory experience not to be repeated until our mother earth has done a complete rotation around the sun.

The dedicated staff of edhat.com went to Tuesday’s farmers market on lower State Street (between Haley and Ortega), to capture this seasonal moment in time. We rubbed elbows with local small farmers, once the backbone of our country. We also rubbed elbows with shoppers and tourists as we fought our way to samples of strawberries, oranges, tangerines, and apple pie. And, of course we counted, taking inventory on each of the 37 booths that were selling at the market. We did not differentiate types of flower or types of lettuce. Our tastes are just not that sophisticated.

Two months ago, we had to go all over town to find 29 different types of bottled water for sale. Yesterday, we only needed to stroll 2 downtown blocks to find 58 different types of agricultural products. We saw apples, artichokes, arugula, asparagus, avocados, beans, bee pollen, beets, blueberries, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, cactus, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cherimoya, cilantro, cucumbers, dates, dried fruit, dry beans, eggs, fish, fava beans, flowers, garlic, ginger, grapefruit, grass, guava, honey, juice, leeks, lemons, lettuce, live plants, mizuna, mushrooms, nopales, nuts, onions, oranges, parsley, passion fruit, peas, radishes, rappini, sauce, spices, spinach, sprouts, strawberries, swiss chard, tangerines, tomatoes, tat soi, and yams.

We also found apple pie, date bars, olive oil, chips, sauce, and cheese.

We noticed, but did not count the other small businesses working the farmer’s market. There were plenty of musicians playing for donations and one guy who would do back flips for a dollar.

To add to our egg price comparison story last week, one egg vendor was selling jumbo grade A eggs for $3.00/dozen, and the other was selling large grade AA eggs for $3.25/dozen – prices definitely on the high end of our survey. The grade A egg sellers didn’t know the difference between A and AA when we asked. The dedicated staffers found a website telling us that it had to do with the firmness of the whites. AA’s whites are firmer - a good thing.

As to the results of our survey, the average booth sold 3.8 different types of goods, ranging from 1 to 15. The most prevalent product was cut flowers, followed closely by lettuce and strawberries. The strawberry season, which is just now getting started will be in full swing by next month and continue on until July.

The contest was easy for some today, 5 people got the correct answers in order. They were Pazzo, Mcatalaj, Sbkah, Angelica, and Pololady. We put the 5 names into a salad bowl, closed our eyes and selected Pazzo as the winner. Pazzo, which means “mad man” in Italian wins a choice of movie tickets, coffee card, or a half-flat of strawberries.

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