This year has continued to confuse me, and I have come to the conclusion that people are crazy. We are going on our third year of being involved in a farmer’s market, the second year at this market, and I have never seen the types of shoppers that have been coming through the market this year. They are driven by the need for that perfect item that will somehow satisfy the desperate desire for some semblance of control that is completely lacking in 2020.
The food insecurities brought on by the failures of the giant food corporations earlier in the year has brought an onslaught of customers to visit local farmers markets. This trend has continued as food items have sporadically disappeared and reappeared in grocery stores, and meat items are still scarce. With a deep desire to have their food needs fulfilled by the local farmers we are seeing an upward trend of customers in our markets.
While many of these new market clients are taking advantage of the produce and other goods available, there is an unusually high number of clients who want one specific, very odd item. Unfortunately, without these items available they get upset and leave. It’s far from unusual for people to want specific items, and while we cannot provide you with tomatoes in April, we can at least help prepare you for when they will be available. It is also not unusual for customers to want sugar snap peas or roma tomatoes, which are typical items grown. Instead these customers are wanting things like orange jazz tomatoes and purple dove beans. Don’t get me wrong, i love growing unusual items and understand hoping for specific things when I go shopping, but I also go with the understanding that there is a very good chance that wherever I am shopping probably doesn’t have the very rare item I am looking for. They…don’t seem to understand this.
Thankfully we have a large number of shoppers who come through who enjoy our wide selection of goods so these customers are more of an enigma than an annoyance. However, I think it’s important for customers to understand that unfortunately being small farmers we cannot grow 50 types of tomato just in case someone wants some rare variety. So please be kind to us as we peddle our wares because growing and harvesting the goods we bring to the market isn’t always easy but we do it because we love to, please don’t change that.
