Things I Learned at Farmer's Market 5/22/2010

John M., who called me last week to ask about sleeves for flower bunches, was on his way to Wichita this morning to sell peonies at the Farmer's Market there when he had a nasty encounter with a train at Elmer, the tiny little burg with several residences and a railroad. The accident left John unscathed, but his van totaled.

So he came around to the Hutchinson market to see if he could set up there. No luck. Every stall was full. Three other people were also turned away. I don't know what John did with his peonies. I hope they went back into the cooler and will be OK for selling next week on Memorial Day weekend.

I suspect this day will live in John's memory as a horrible, no-good, very-bad day.

************************

Another vendor who set up outside gave up when the fierce south wind promptly dismantled his signs, etc.

************************

Someone who surveyed our offering of leaf, butterhead, French crisp, and crisphead lettuces asked, "Which one would make the best wilted lettuce salad?"

"I don't know," I had to tell her. "I don't make wilted lettuce salads."

"What do you do with lettuce?" she asked.

"I use it for salads and sandwiches."

"Oh."

Can you believe it? A lady that is apparently unfamiliar with the use of fresh lettuce for salads? She had no noticeable foreign accent, so I assume she is a bona fide American midwesterner. How this could escape her is beyond me.

*********************

Harvey told me today that last year his greenhouse tomatoes produced about ten times the volume of his outdoor-grown tomatoes.

He plants Jetsetter, and still had some beautiful plants to sell today. However, he said he's going to quit watering them. "You know what happens when you do that," he said.

*********************

Last week Mark R. was one of the city dignitaries who spoke on the occasion of the market's opening for the season. He's the arts guy whose title I can never remember. Today he came back and bought all the Uproar Rose and Wine zinnia plants I had left for sale--8 six-packs.

Hiromi waited on him. "Did he buy some last year? Did he know what they were like?" I plied Hiromi with these questions.

"I don't know. I don't ask questions like that. He looked like he was in a hurry." Hiromi couldn't imagine why this was important to me.

Just curious. Incurably.

Last week two people asked if I would be selling these zinnias, and I said yes. I'm afraid they'll be disappointed to have missed out on them.

**********************

Frieda had sold out of her hydroponic tomatoes before the morning was half over. She told me she had fewer tomatoes this week because in last week's cloudy weather they had ripened slowly, but I'm sure she didn't mind being able to close up shop with half the morning left to be at home.

**********************

Dave has a new grandson, born this week in Japan. His wife is going there to help take care of the new baby for a week or two. During this time Dave's market stall in Hutchinson will be empty while he works the Wichita market.

***********************

Sheila's son, the youngest of eight children, suffered a concussion several weeks ago when he was hit by a speeding baseball.

He had an indentation on the side of his head where the bone showed a rock-on-a-windshield breakage pattern. Sheila has had EMT training, and by the time she arrived at school after she got the call saying he had been hurt, she caught on quickly that he was fading fast when he was unable to answer simple questions. She had someone call for an ambulance, and things went downhill fast. By the time he arrived at the hospital in Hutchinson, he was unresponsive, so he was quickly transferred to Wichita.

Apparently the bleeding that caused all the dramatic symptoms early on subsided fairly quickly, and he improved fast without surgery. He missed only one day of school, with a weekend of recovery time right after it happened. He still has short-term memory problems. Two or three items on a list is all he is capable of hanging onto right now, apparently. All in all, everyone is glad is wasn't worse. The school, however, is acting to prevent a recurrence by putting new protocols in place for indoor batting practice. Helmets are now required.

**********************

Sheila works as a substitute teacher.

She takes a dim view of the school district's decision to leave the school year at 187 days rather than move it back to 180 days at a savings of $70,000. Their way of dealing with funding shortfalls was to not renew the contracts of three teachers.

Sheila admits to having an Irish temper. She's worked hard at learning not to get mad and yell, and had a chance recently to share her acquired wisdom with a student who responded with anger when other students teased and baited him to see his reaction.

"Do you need to sit down for a while?" she asked him during P.E. He did.

She told him she saw that the others were teasing him, and that, whenever she was teaching, he was welcome to sit down for a while if the teasing made him feel angry. She knew what it was like to struggle with a quick temper, and hoped this would help him find a way to deal with his. Smart woman.

Sheila catches on to the fact that some of the students in special ed stay there because the expectations are too low, and the extra state monies for needy students are too alluring.

One kid's mother was sure a particular worksheet called for way too much writing for her darling to manage, and she begged Sheila for mercy. Sheila was happy to inform the mother that the student was already 3/4 of the way through the worksheet and was doing fine.

Another time Sheila helped a student get a math paper done, and told him afterward that she thinks he's a lot better at math than people think he is. She told him she's a math nerd, and it looks like he's like that too. He got the paper done perfectly in ten minutes. "Don't tell Mrs. _________," the boy said. This illusion of ignorance has some good things going for it, he's apparently discovered.

That same kid, or another one she helped with math, came back with a paper that had all the right answers, but something Sheila had helped him do was not acceptable to the classroom teacher, and he had to do the paper over. Sheila was as upset as the student (It involved a shortcut--crossing out the quantity that equaled zero on one side of an algebraic equation during the problem solving process. ) and offered to recopy the paper for the student. Every answer was right, but the route to the answer was not "right" apparently. Sheila considered it an unnecessary encumbrance for the student.

Hearing the story made me wonder what we're doing at school that constitutes unnecessary encumbrances. I do know that some students do very well with mental calculations, and can actually multiply mistakes when every detail has to be written out--because every written digit or sign is another potential error. If a person has more skill with concepts than details, this kind of requirement can be very frustrating. "Show your work"--the mantra of many math teachers--may be due for examination. For example, could the rule apply perhaps only to problems that need correction? Or to students for a limited time, when a succession of lower scores surfaces? How much of this show your work requirement is based on a student's need, and how much is based on a teacher's idea of what is proper--whether or not it has proven merit?

*********************

Rosalyn told me at market today that she wants to be there as many times as she can before she gets married in June and moves to Oregon.

She has often helped at their family's very busy market stand, and a lot of people will notice her absence and miss her.

I hope those Oregonians appreciate having her there, because it's costing us something to have her leave, and we'd be miffed if they didn't recognize it.

*********************

Jan, the herb lady at the market, was not familiar with Shiso when Hiromi asked her about it.

"Go explain to her what it's called in English," Hiromi told me after he got back from talking to her.

This is more complicated than it might be. Shiso is the Japanese name for what is variously called Perilla, Beefsteak Plant, and Oriental Basil. Like culinary basil, it comes in purple and green varieties. We have both growing in our small greenhouse.

Hiromi has plans of trying it in salsa, ever since he thought he tasted it in the salsa at Chilli's. We've always eaten it in traditional Japanese foods, and don't have a lot of knowledge of how Americans use it.

I've grown the purple variety in the past, and used it as a colorful filler in bouquets. I gave plants to my mother, and it comes up every year in her flower bed. I've long since lost it in mine.

********************

I took only one bouquet to market today. A faithful customer was ready for it, and exchanged the last vase of last year's season for the first vase of the season this year. I give a $2.00 refund on vases of the sort that I regularly purchase for the bouquets I sell at market.

My lonely vase had already blown over once in the stiff wind before the customer arrived, so I was OK with selling it, even though I had thought maybe I would just keep it there to make our booth more attractive. Calling attention to our booth by periodically putting on a damage control show wasn't my idea of good publicity. Other acts in the show involved chasing after a flying foam-core sign board, its affixed signs having already scattered when their map-pin moorings came undone.

********************

Hiromi experiences great insecurity whenever he has to back into the market stall area so we can unload our wares. At his request, I get out and wave and point to direct him, standing precisely where he can see me in his rear view mirror. So today when he returned from making a trip to the grocery store to buy more of the bags we use to package our lettuce, he cheated by parking at the stall nose-in. I wasn't impressed.

"You're welcome to back in," he offered generously. So I did, and was happy with the convenience of having supplies at the ready the rest of the morning.

We're still getting used to having our stalls extend partway outside the perimeter of the building. The stall lines were re-drawn this year to accommodate a double row in the center of the building rather than a single row. Moving the outer stalls farther out was necessary to leave a wide aisle for shoppers.

*********************

I overheard the herb guy Dave tell someone that anytime you plant different kinds of mints together, as soon as the roots run together, everything begins to taste like spearmint.

I have never heard this anywhere else, and wonder if it's true, and if so, why. As I said, incurably curious.

********************

My bouquet today included Clustered Bellflower, Snapdragon, Orlaya, Daisy, Dame's Rocket, Lysimachia, and Silver King Artemisia. Everything except the Snapdragons was from perennials, or reseeding annuals in the landscape.