As the Days Grow Longer, Our Farmer's Market Begins to Grow in Attendance in Muskegon @PureMichigan

Saturday, January 24, 2015.

She was offering wine for taste, and she had a smashing smile she flashed as I entered the door. "Nice positioning", I said to the woman from Oceana Winery, and I found myself strangely disarmed. So I didn't mess around with tasting and I bought an eleven dollar bottle of Traminette. I have to admire the woman who took charge at Tartan Hill Winery, which made me think of sour wine, and changed name to Oceana. Then she added a tasting room on the lakefront in Pentwater, taking her winery off the down low. I asked for her to hold the bottle while I shopped. And then I asked for intelligence since she stood across the aisle from Amish Bob's baked goods. "Did they have four dollar blueberry pies"? And she had the story, "Yes, and they sold them out right away. There's only a big apple pie left".

So accepted my loss, and asked the three Amish women tending the table, "Where was Amish Bob?" "He's at a meeting", the most outgoing woman offered. "He was at a meeting last week!" So I paid nine dollars for an apple pie with tiny apple shapes cut out of the crust. I asked the women to hold onto the pie until I finished shopping. Holding onto purchased goods is a nice touch at the Farmer's Market. The supermarket has shopping carts.

A different man was running the Aldea Coffee table, and he was using beakers and funnels and filters to make pour over coffee. He admitted, "I'm going to leave the coffee technology to my partner until I can get up to speed". I paid two dollars for my coffee, gave him two dollars for a pay-it-forward coffee and a dollar for a tip. That's going to be an expensive habit, buying one and giving one, but the Aldea coffee guy today told me how he visited with the coffee growers, and showed me the names he put on each bag to show who grew what coffee. I felt I was helping promote agriculture in Honduras where Aldea promotes farming. 

My blueberry guy was leaning over his cooler, and I reserved a bag. He had felt a bit ill last Saturday, and so he just stayed in bed instead of getting up at four in the morning. I learned to location of his farm near Duck Lake, south of Whitehall, if I ever had to restock during the week. He was in the middle of a book on leadership, one of four books he was currently juggling.

I stopped last at Kasza Sugar Bush, and I asked why he missed last week, the attendance taker at the market. "I was at a meeting". I joked, "Amish Bob went to meetings to weeks in a row. What's up with all these meetings"? He laughed. I bought my small package of maple leaf shaped candies.

I made my way back out of the market, picking up my three pounds of frozen blueberries, my cup of coffee, my apple pie and my bottle of traminette. I had plenty of pleasing food for stocking up my kitchen until next Saturday.

Painting by Mary Sundstrom in style of Lewis Cross and Annabelle Livermore