Expounding the virtues of the simple Farmer's Market

I love the local Farmer's Market. The only way I can describe it is an explosion of the senses. There are the expected nicities like cut sunflowers and an array of fresh flowers that I don't even dare to try to name; jars of honey and baskets of melons. Boxes of fresh corn and beans and tomatoes beg to be picked up and sniffed. Lemonade and coffee is across the street from the entertainment which is sometimes a folksy guitar and sometimes a wild jamboree of conga drums. There's sausage and goat cheese, and peaches are nearly bursting with juices.

But that's not totally it. It's that once a week, our smallish-to-medium-sized town of today desperately tries, for just a few hours, to return to the neighborliness and coziness of little towns of yesteryear. Now look, I'm the last person you'll find wistfully wishing for the past or expounding how we're going to hell in a handbasket. I have little tolerance for those who think we humans were better, or safer, or more moral in the good old days compared to today. I'm very happy in this century and decade, thankyouverymuch. But I'll admit things have been different in the past - not better, but different. Way different. Before telecommunications and easy travel and the internet, who else *was* there to know but your neighbors? Towns had to have been more tightly knit in the past compared to today. It was your whole world. So while I'm quite content utilizing the technology available today, I do admit that it's fun to dabble in traces of the past.

I'm reading way too much into it, I know. But there's just something fun about nodding at the man you recognize from the week before as he searches through the eggplant, and petting the same dog week after week, and joking with the sausage vendor about his plans for retirement. Now, I can't give you any names of my fellow marketers by any means, but it's a grand chance to play pretend. And besides, we have the most scrumptious lunches on Saturdays now. Fresh ground sausage, string beans, slices of fat tomatoes and cucumbers with a touch of salt and pepper, and the sweetest, juciest ears of corn you've ever had the pleasure of munching.

And there's more to come. With autumn come the pumpkins and hot chocolate and spiced apple cider, and then the wreaths and berries for the winter decorations. Oh the bliss. Oh the sensory gratification.