Organic Endeavors: Farmer's Market Excitement, Round II

Well, Saturday was my second and final day at the Cazenovia farmer’s market. It was a rather eventful day – met some new people, learned about medicinal herbs and essential oils (namely, spilanthes and calendula), got my weeks worth of exercise from loading and unloading the millions of plants from the truck, learned some new perennial names, and ate too many cookies.

Here's a pic of the loaded truck. So many plants!

and more radishes, which I've found are quite photogenic.

Bought some cherries from a fruit vendor.

And strawberries. And a muffin.

smelled all of Alison's homemade goat milk soaps...

Oh yeah, the tent next to ours was a wine maker from Syracuse. Best neighbor ever. So, of course, what’s there to do besides put on some charm and delight in a few samples? For breakfast. He even helped (or, attempted to help) me sophisticate my pallet by using a lot of big technical words that I can’t seem to remember now.

Next to the wine man’s tent, however, was the greatest entertainment of the day. Meet the fishmonger. This guy is like an old-timey, New Jersey, Italian town eccentric who, because of his nutty persona that “adds interest” to the market, is an exception to the Cazenovia market rule that the vendors must produce at least half of their merchandise. With a cooler of “fresh, never frozen seafood,” the nameless fishmonger yells….no, barks out deals and assertions about the quality of his seafood in an auctioneer voice. He also sells dog bones, so the sound resonating in my ear all day was: “fresh fish fresh fish, get your fish, 20 dollar a pound, never frozen, get your fish, dog bones.”

Apparently the radishes weren't the only photogenic ones at the market

Well, he took a liking to me last week and sent me home with some complimentary monkfish. This week, as he was packing the cooler and barking out ever-decreasing prices, he called me over again. Finding out that it was my last week, he gifted me with about eight flounder filets and what was left of his clams. So we took ‘em back and had ourselves a fish fry.