At the beginning of this summer I was asked to join a Farmers Market Co-op by a couple of friends of mine. What is a Farmers Market Co-op you ask? Have I gone all country and bought a bunch of live chickens or a section of a recently butchered cow? No dear reader, I am not "in the dell" yet.
A Farmers Market Co-op is a group of no more than 12 individuals who decide to band together to buy produce in bulk for cheaper prices and then divide their plunder amongst themselves. You don’t have to have a ton of friends to do this. I don’t know most of the people in my group – I was invited by a neighbor and in turn invited some friends of mine. An organizer split us up into 6 pairs and a different pair goes shopping at the Farmers Market of their choice every other week with $120 ($10 per member). Then the pair splits up the produce into 12 equal piles and shoots an email to everyone to pick up their pile and drop off their $10 to cover the cost. It’s actually quite fun. A few weeks ago it was my turn. I went shopping with Ashley Blackwell and my roommate at the Jefferson County Truck Growers Association Farmers Market. We got a lot of great produce at great prices but I was still disappointed that I never got to see a “truck grow”. There’s always next time.
There are several different places to shop at the Farmer’s Market. There’s an indoor area with a larger variety of produce very similar to a grocery store.
You are likely to pick up a peck of Peter Piper’s peppers with stickers marked “Grown in Chile” here.
If you are more in the market for locally grown produce than the long carports with local farmer’s trucks parked under them is the place for you. Local farmers bring whatever they picked the day before to sell each morning.
This is Bubba.
Bubba sold me some peaches. There were a lot of overalls at the outdoor market. We figured that was a good sign.
Bubba also sold me some okra. Two baskets of okra. My roommate and I fried ours. Probably a Yankee’s nightmare but it was quite tasty.
There’s more of a variety than you would think with the locally grown produce. We saw grapes, tomatoes, green tomatoes (we fried those too), squash, onions, eggplants, etc. The produce changes with the seasons as it is all grown about 10-30 miles from the market.
Then we decided to go blueberry picking. Much cheaper than the grocery store and you get a much better tan. All the blueberries you can pick for $1.50/lb We went to Smith U-Pick which is run by Joe Smith. Super nice people. They provide the buckets.
And then we got our country on and went tractor ridin’.
After having hundreds of people pick peaches at the Smith’s the blueberry bushes on the front of the property were very picked over. Luckily we got the inside scoop to ask for a ride to the super secret blueberry bush patch on the back of the property. So Joe drove us back there in his tractor.
We picked beaucoups of blueberries – we were picking for 12 after all. We got 19 lbs of blueberries for $28.50. Not bad my friends, not bad at all.
Then we divided up everything evenly. The dogs and cat were no help at all but oversaw the entire process just the same.
Ashley was a lot of help.
After all was said and done everyone got 5 ears of corn, 10 large okra, a plantain, 3 eggplants, 3 cucumbers, 2 yellow squash, 1.5 lbs of blueberries, 3 large peaches and 3 lbs of greenbeans all for the bargain price of $10.
It was a lot of fun and it’s great to get locally grown fruits and veggies every other week. I highly recommend creating your own farmers market co-op and if you want to know the best way to fry up some okra, give me a shout!
*Magnolia Creek provides residential and partial-hospitalization treatment for eating disorders including anorexia and bulimia. 1-888-762-4665.
