May 19th, 2023

A few weeks back, for absolutely no reason at all, we woke up on a Saturday morning and decided to walk the couple of blocks to visit our local Farm Market.  Every single Saturday, these hardy souls get up much earlier than we do and set up camp on Venice Avenue.  

Our city blocks off that part of the street in both directions for the occasion and people come from miles around to shop.  Locals, visitors, tourists and for all I know, aliens, descend upon our cutie-cute city to see what there is to see.

It's a year 'round event, every Saturday morning like clockwork, the vendors, (over 100 of them!) construct their canopies, back in their craft trailers,  set out samples of their wares, paste on smiles and good sales attitudes and hope for the best.  

It is literally no more than 3 or 4  blocks from our house and yet, and yet, and yet, we had not visited in probably 5 years.  Geez!  I guess it's sort of like the folks who live in NYC but never visited the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.   But on that particular day, we decided to check it out and see what has changed in the past  half a decade.

Perhaps we didn't remember accurately what it was like  at our first visit all those years ago, but it seemed as if it was more of a craft fair before.  I mean yes, there were typical farm market things like produce and breads and pastries, but before, we both remembered it as mostly jewelry and shark tee-shirts and tie-dyed everything.  Things that, while they are certainly absolutely fine and I'm sure people loved it, did not interest us  and that is probably the reason we did not go back.

This time, yes, there was a little bit of jewelry and sunglasses and clothes, but there were far more food kiosks.  It's not that I'm just a big of an oink - all thinking about food.  It's a farm market.  I don't think it' s unreasonable to assume that there would be farm products sold there.  Right?  I was not disappointed.  On this visit things had changed.   The things we expected were there and a whole lot of other stuff. There were gorgeous fresh from the farm fruits and veggies,  one tent of just honey and bee related products and another of dried fruits, meats and veggies.  It all looked delightful!

There were multiple restaurants represented and several different sorts of bakeries as well (yummy)  There was a local coffee roaster and you could smell that throughout.  Someone who makes their own hand lotions, soaps and shampoos was entertaining a lot of folks and a hand rolled cigar distributor was a huge surprise!  An alpaca everything tent was on hand as well as the plants people with their jungle filled canopy.  

Mushrooms, seafood and hand made pastas!  Jellies and jams and preserves of all sorts! Cheeses and pretzels and bagels and...wait a minute, hold the phone.  Bagels?  Well yes, we did buy two bagels, one for each of us.  We keep trying to find really good bagels down here and of course, still have not found it. BUT gotta keep trying right?

There were ice cream vendors and racks of gorgeous cookies and even products for your pets!  We saw jars of pickles and fascinating salads and pies, oh lordy, the pies.  Me oh my!  Bins of teas, boxes of cheesecakes and the Venice Ale House was there too.   There was even a musician serenading all of us, underscoring the event.  It was delightful all the way around.

All we bought were the bagels, but what a lot of lovely things to choose from.  

I think it's fair to say that we won't wait as long to visit again.  I remind myself that these are all local folks  trying to make their way in as relatively unfriendly world and our support helps to keep them going.  Personally I would much rather spend my money on locally made products than factory made things from heaven knows where.

Is there a weekly farm market where you live?  Do you visit it?  Or like us, did it kind of drop off your radar as even existing?  If you haven't been in awhile maybe it's time to go back and give it another chance.

Meanwhile, Have a perfectly lovely weekend!

Hugs all 'round.