When is a Texas Farmer's Market...

[Richard Kilgore]

I caught most of a news story on one of the Dallas stations about the city's efforts at renewing the Farmer's Market. Two major issues: in cracking down on code violations, they are now prohibiting tasting samples of produce --- no little slice of apple or peach anymore. Which slams right up against the second problem: a lot of the stalls are not farmers. These folks just buy produce out of a warehouse somewhere and sell grocery store quality produce.

So if you can't TASTE the produce, how can you tell what you are getting? Someone told me a few months ago to look at the people selling the produce. If they look like they haven't had much sleep lately, they're farmers.

Is this a problem in other Texas cities?

[fifi]

Richard... First you have to HAVE a Farmer's Market before you can regulate it. Houston is dismal. The market on Airline is NOT a farmer's market. There are some vendors out in back of Canino's that may be close but I doubt it. About the only thing I have snagged there are buckets of red jalepenos. But I don't think that was the farmer selling them. We seem to have a lot of specialty produce farmers around Houston growing Asian and other specialties, herbs and such but I suspect it all goes to restaurants and the larger "ethnic" supermarkets.

This site is quite useful and they also offer a definition:

Small farm operators: Those with less than $250,000 in annual receipts who work and manage their own operations meet this definition (94 percent of all farms). One good look at the map is informative.

I don't get the "code violations" not allowing tasting. The supermarkets here often have little stands set up with samples of breads, fruits or whatever for tasting.

[elyse]

I have never heard of sampling a slice of fruit or whatever at a market. Is it just NYC?

[Richard Kilgore]

In the Dallas story, they interviewed several vendors and customers. The vendors felt that not being able to offer samples is hurting their sales and the customers were disappointed at not being able to tell what was offered for sale. Sampling has been the norm here for a long time.

Edited October 4, 2003 by Richard Kilgore (log)

[Lita]

I went to the Austin Farmer's Market this morning and sampled tamales, goat cheese, bread, and chocolate tart. I bought two cacti, some locally-roasted coffee beans, a baguette, chocolate chip nut scones, goat's milk soft blue cheese, Japanese eggplants, basil, mint, and had my chef's knife sharpened for $3. My boys got hats made out of balloons. An honest salesman was selling beautiful herb plants, and when I told him that year after year I kill my potted herb plants he told me, "That's how I stay in business."

[foodie52]

Wow: I hadn't seen the knife sharpener there. Does it look like he'll have a permanent booth??

We always sample stuff. Otherwise how are you gonna know what you are getting??

I'm pretty sure that the vendors at the Austin market have to have a kind of proof of authenticity. That was the problem with the farmers' market up on Burnet Rd. They were buying produce and reselling it.

[mcdowell]

I have never heard of sampling a slice of fruit or whatever at a market.  Is it just NYC?

I've never been to a California (or the Carolina's, my other big farmer's market experience) farmer's market where there wasn't sampling...

[Lita]

Wow: I hadn't seen the knife sharpener there. Does it look like he'll have a permanent booth??

It's the Alexander Farms guy, the booth with the hand-carved Mesquite-wood (I think) salad spoons and fresh eggs. He also takes orders for fresh holiday turkeys, which you need to pick up at his farm.

[FoodMan]

Like Fifi mentioned, the Houston Farmer's Market is nothing but a collection of vendors with hardly anything grown in TX. You do find some good buys (fresh fruits and veggies), but normally they are grown in CA, FL or even Mexico!!! The Austin one sounds very interesting.

FM

[gravelpot]

The downtown Austin Farmer's Market, which is just finishing its first season, is a project of the non-profit Sustainable Food Center. As such, they only accept true "farmers" into the market, and only ones whose farm is within 150 miles of Austin (a generous definition of local, for sure, but that's what they had to do to guarantee a critical mass of farms).

The Burnet Rd. "Travis County Farmer's Market", by contrast, is a for-profit venture, and I have only ever seen "peddlers" there, rather than growers.

[Mabelline]

For the DFW area people, there's a good farmer's market out to Weatherford, and a hellish fun First Monday alot easier to get to than Canton. And yep, they hand out gimmes. Parker county grows peaches every bit as good as the hill country, too.

[jwagnerdsm]

We allow sampling at our farmers markets in Des Moines. (We have a new indoor market that is kind of like a very small Penn Station in Philly. My kids -- ages 2 and 4 -- think of the market at their personal buffet: sausage, cheese, apples, etc.). The problem mentioned about people buying produce by the bulk and then selling it isn't unusual. In Iowa, the Women, Infant and Children's program offers food stamps for fresh produce if it is Iowa grown. So, some people claim that they are selling locally grown produce so that they can collect the stamps and redeem them. One way around it is to find a producer you trust and then ask about seasonal products and the reputation of other vendors. These farmers spend a lot of time with one another and, like any "community" there is a grapevine. They know what's going on and will usually point you in the direction you desire.

Smoke Signal's theory is that if you let vendors sell products from elsewhere, it will help to educate the tastes of local consumers and, perhaps, create new markets for foods that aren't currently grown in the locale. Good on the surface, but, I think, a little flawed. Margins for truck farmers are often very small. Often, the price for farmers market produce is higher than grocery store produce. If you allow anybody to bring in anything, you'll undoubtedly have people buying bulk produce at very cheap rates and be able to sell it at a much lower price than locally grown foods. It would encourage the Wal-Martization (silly word) of farmer's market.

Another problem is that anyone who has experienced fresh, locally grown produce knows that it is farm superior in taste to stuff trucked in from South America or whereever. You start pawning this stuff off at farmers markets and people aren't going to be able to educate their tastes in another important way: by experience the tastes of locally grown vegetables. The local foods movement is at a crossroads right now and is set to really, really take off. And not just in big cities like New York or Dallas or Austin. It's taking off in places like Ann Arbor and Gary and Sioux Falls. The way to grow it is to offer the best local food that is available.

This isn't important just from a culinary standpoint. There is real hope that this whole movement will offer small farmers a real chance to stay on the land. That's good for small communities, good for the environment, good for all of us. There's a story in this month's issue of Saveur about the death of the local butcher. In Iowa, there are actually butchers (we call 'em locker plants in small town Iowa) who are thriving because of the local food movement. Free range chickens, beef, and pork needs to be processed in a licensed, inspected facility. So as more people seek out farm grown meats from small producers, these small farmers are getting their animals processed at these small locker plants. Four or five in the state have seen their business grow markedly in the last two years. That's a good thing, too.

If I'm going to a farmers market, I expect it to be filled with farmers. Let the green grocers set up somewhere else. We'll find 'em when we want a mango or papaya or even a tasteless carrot or bland radish.

[Jack Tyler]

I caught most of a news story on one of the Dallas stations about the city's efforts at renewing the Farmer's Market. Two major issues: in cracking down on code violations, they are now prohibiting tasting samples of produce --- no little slice of apple or peach anymore. Which slams right up against the second problem: a lot of the stalls are not farmers. These folks just buy produce out of a warehouse somewhere and sell grocery store quality produce.

So if you can't TASTE the produce, how can you tell what you are getting? Someone told me a few months ago to look at the people selling the produce. If they look like they haven't had much sleep lately, they're farmers.

Is this a problem in other Texas cities?

←

Houston's "Farmers Market" on Airline Drive is a prime example ot that problem. It sits in a small "produce Row" of produce distributors, which supply Houstons supermarkets and restaurants. In the middle of all of this is a large produce-only retail market... and behind that are a couple of dozen stalls where individuals sell small quantities of fresh produce from the backs of their pickup trucks. However, the "farmers", mostly Mexican-American, buy case loads of various produce types right there on the property from the owner of the market and then break it up into buckets. Actually, closer to a true Farmer's Market is the very small operation that Urban Harvest runs in the parking lot of a small office building on Richmond Avenue. It is required that the produce be 100% grown in the Houston area and cannot be bought from a large distributor. Most of it is organic and the prices aren't too bad. Organic brown eggs are $3.00 to $3.50 per dozen, however... while a huge bunch of fresh basil a foot long and 2 inches thick sells for $1.00. The problem with the place is that it seldom has more than a dozen vendors and it's only open from around 8:00 to noon, or so, on Saturdays.

[fifi]

Jack,

Are you familiar with Monica Pope's efforts in the Heights and next to her newish T'afia restaurant? I haven't been yet but my sister has and says that they have the germ of an idea but hardly anything like I have seen in DC or Chicago.

I know that we have growers in the area that are supplying restaurants and places like Hong Kong Market. I would think that we have the makings of a good market. I also think that the chef's here would welcome one place to go pick up their specialties. Houston is so spread out I was even thinking that rotating venues would be a good idea. You know, "it is Tuesday so the market is in West Houston" type of thing.

[Jack Tyler]

Jack,

Are you familiar with Monica Pope's efforts in the Heights and next to her newish T'afia restaurant? I haven't been yet but my sister has and says that they have the germ of an idea but hardly anything like I have seen in DC or Chicago.

I know that we have growers in the area that are supplying restaurants and places like Hong Kong Market. I would think that we have the makings of a good market. I also think that the chef's here would welcome one place to go pick up their specialties. Houston is so spread out I was even thinking that rotating venues would be a good idea. You know, "it is Tuesday so the market is in West Houston" type of thing.

←

The restaurant is wonderful.... and the "seasonal wines" are interesting. Don't know how far I'll go with that, though... I'm a very dry stodgy wine kind of guy. The Midtown Farmer's Market you're referring to, however, is only slightly more ambitious than the one on Richmond Avenue but visually more appealing. The booth from Kraftsman Bakery is a plus there, though. That one is owned by Aries' Scott Tycer (formerly with Wolfgang Puck's in L.A.) and his wife, Annika (formerly with Vallone {Tony's} restaurant group).

The problem with the market is that it and the one on Richmond Avenue are both open from 8:00 to 12:00 on Saturday. I guess they are close enough to hit them both on the same morning. I like the flaky "ugly" pastries sold on Richmond by Janice Schindeler, former Food Editor for the Houston Chronicle. I agree that having a different one open every day would be good... but at least having one open on Saturday and the other open on Sunday would be an improvement.

[Lone Star]

I have been to the small farmer's market at Onion Creek in the Heights a couple of times, but the number of vendors and selection of produce was very small.

Froberg's is a farm market in the Manvel/Alvin area that sells produce they grow and is worth the trip. Just call before you go to see what they have. They are my black-eyed pea source in the early summer.

[joiei]

Richard and Fifi, I would like to invite you up here to Tulsa to see what happens at our Cherry Street Farmers Market. It is all locally grown, the farms have to be inspected, and the vendors take great pride in the quality of what they are selling. We have reached a point where we have to encourage the crafts vendors to head on over to the flea market, and we are restricting the number of caters we are allowing. Everything for sale has to have some connection to being grown in Oklahoma and can not come from any of our neighbors like Arkansas, Kansas or Missouri. Our market operations starts up in April and runs till October. Things just do not grow year round up here.

Tasting is done, even though the health department frowns on it. To do tastes, you have to set up a sneeze guard, which some vendors have done.

So consider this your invitation to come on up to the north side of the Red.

Edited February 15, 2005 by joiei (log)

[Richard Kilgore]

That's the kind of real farmer's market that makes a difference, joiei.

Tom Spicer (Spiceairunlimited.com), who provides superior produce to top Dallas restaurants is continuing to do some interesting things in East Texas. I'll follow up and post more about that.

Tom also told me that the "real" farmers market in Dallas happens in the wee hours. Trucks come in and the lot is bought or they move on to the next destination. The Dallas Morning News did a piece on this mid-night market last year.

Does anyone know anything about the famer's market situation currently in Austin and San Antonio?

[nacho]

Does anyone know anything about the famer's market situation currently in Austin and San Antonio?

←

I'm planning on checking out the downtown farmers' market tomorrow in Austin. As mentioned previously, it's a growers-only market. Here's a link to what is gonna be there this week.

I haven't been to any of the other markets, but it sounds like the Westlake Farmers' Market (now Sunset Valley Farmers Market??) is also a growers-only market.

[Lone Star]

Has anyone been to Kings Orchard in Plantersville?

I read an ad for them in the paper today and strawberries are available 3/1

www.kingsorchard.com

Wondering if it is worth the trip up there.

Edited February 18, 2005 by Lone Star (log)

[Kevin72]

Further DFW Farmer's Market update: Dave Levinthal reports in the Dallas Morning News that there is a movement afoot to get farmers back into the market selling their wares, as opposed to the vendor and wholesaler-dominated scene it is today:

Earlier this year, market managers moved the wholesalers and vendors from Shed 4, a spacious metal shelter at the market's southwest corner now dedicated to farmers, to Shed 1, near South Central Expressway . . . During the peak selling season last year, farmers occupied about 8 percent of the 64-year-old market's stall space, Mr. Thorn said. Come peak season 2005, which begins in several weeks, he expects that number to rise to 26 percent, with farmers traveling to downtown Dallas from throughout the state.

Also are plans to bring in more meat and seafood sellers, as well as live music events.

But the changes are not without controversy of course: the wholesalers and vendors, who have been doing this for years and have kept the Farmer's Market afloat, now feel they are being shut out unfairly by the process, and resent their exile to the more traffic-heavy Shed 1.

I must admit that I'd really grown disenfranchised with the Farmer's Market the last few times I've been, particularly since Central Market hit the scene. I do like the organic butcher that's been there for a couple years now, and I think a few seafood stalls would be a natural, welcome addition as well.

So, are things looking up in your eyes for the Farmer's Market? Would these changes get you to come back and/or frequent it?

[joiei]

if the local farmers are not the vendors, then I have no need to go there. If it is just wholesalers, then I can go to Albertsons or wal-mart and get the same thing.