Farmer’s Markets

My Dad was a vegetable farmer. I remember it well, as my sisters and I would wake at the break of dawn, slip into our jeans, blue workshirts, straw hats and gloves, walking quietly out onto the fields with my Mom and Dad to pick and crate the crops my Dad grew.

Depending upon the season, our vegetables ranged from cucumbers, carrots, parsley, red onions, pumpkins, and melons. Somehow nothing has ever tasted as good as that one perfect casaba melon that my Dad would save for us to taste when we took our first break of the day. Sitting in the shade of his pickup truck on the cool sandy soil, my Dad would hand us each a slice of that perfect fruit.

To feel a connection to my roots, I often take a drive over to Salinas just to hear the sprinklers swooshing, to smell the dark rich earth and to watch the workers laboring in the fields. It reminds me of a simpler time in my childhood when I wasn’t aware that vegetables were sold in markets. I thought everyone just took a bowl outside to the fields, and picked what was needed for that night’s dinner.

Life here on the Central Coast is surrounded by the nation’s foremost agricultural growers in Castroville, Gilroy, Watsonville and Salinas. There are four farmer’s markets a week, offering fresh organic fruit, vegetables and florals.

So if you see a girl at a farmer’s market with her own bowl, it could be me.