Not a Farmers Market

Opinion

Sept. 2, 2017

When my grandfather was a teenager, he left his family and fled the Turkish Muslims. He didn’t know where he would end up or how long his journey would be. He took only a few possessions. One thing he carried with him was seed — cucumber seed. He wanted to be sure the thin, twisty cucumbers he knew in Armenia were available wherever he ended up. Even as a single father in Detroit during the Depression, he kept a garden in his yard, making pickles from the cucumbers he grew.          

When I was a child growing up in a Detroit suburb, every Saturday morning in the summer, my father was out of the house by 7am to head downtown to Eastern Market. If my three siblings and I were awake, he would take us with him. My sisters came along a handful of times. My younger brother tagged along once in a while. I never missed a Saturday. To me it felt like my father knew every farmer, and many of them would greet him by name. “Harry,” they would call, “I have cucumbers I just picked last night.” One of my most profound childhood memories is eating crisp, sun-warm cucumbers while we walked through the market looking for the right tomatoes or the best watermelon. Later in his life, I took my father to Eastern Market.

Thirty years ago, when I moved to Traverse City, one of the first routines I developed was going to the Farmers Market on summer Saturdays. In the 1980s and 1990 it was a place for farmers and not much else. I quickly got to know a few of them well. My personal source for cucumbers was Flossie Armstrong  (yes, that is her name), who came every Saturday and most Wednesdays. At her farm they picked everything on Friday and made the two-hour drive from Standish to Traverse City. When my daughter was a child, she came with me, and we ate fresh cucumbers from Flossie while we walked the market.

I bought a range of things from Flossie over the years, but every year at the end of July or early August she would tell me the week before the cucumbers were ready. When I arrived the next week she would have a half-bushel of fresh pickling cucumbers waiting for me. In addition to having been on the vine less than 24 hours before, they also were half the price of anything I could get anywhere else.  

Flossie isn’t at the Sara Hardy Farmers Market anymore. After 33 years of coming every Saturday, Flossie Armstrong came for the last time in 2015, when the wizards of smart in the DDA decided that only local farmers could be part of the market. They passed the rule to make room for more local farmers, but that isn’t what has happened at all. If you visit the market now, you can find several vendors selling baked goods. There is a line at the 9 Bean Rows stall every Saturday (Pro tip: bring more help). I love 9 Bean Rows — you will not find a better croissant in France — but they are not Farmers. I can get great, fresh baked goods at Bay Bread just a few blocks away.

At the Sara Hardy Market you can buy candles, soap, floral sachets, and all sorts of cute little crafts for your home. Even a few of the larger Grand Traverse and Leelanau farmers are gone. There are growers. They bring lavender, flowers and all the types of organic lettuce you can imagine. There are tables where a few vegetables are displayed like jewels — and similarly priced. A few even have cucumbers in a pint container, for $5. There is no other cucumber marketplace in the state where a pint of cucumbers will fetch $5. 

The market has become a trendy social spot for hipsters to wander while they sip their Americanos. They sing the virtues of the local produce, when in fact they are just paying a premium for the luxury of buying their produce in at a market where image reigns over quality and value. The same week that sweet corn ears were $5 a dozen at the Hardy Market, I bought local sweet corn from Lucky’s for $.20 an ear. It was delicious.

I’m certain there are a few dedicated farmers at the Sara Hardy Market, but they are lost in the cloud of distractions created by the DDA in their effort to create a tourist attraction where there was once a thriving link to Traverse City’s rural past. The market was where the country enterprise came to the city. Now it’s a craft fair for women’s studies majors.

The first weekend this August, when it was time for canning, I went to the Hardy Market early. There were five vendors selling pickling cucumbers. They were selling them by the piece, for as much as $1 each. None of them looked particularly fresh. I ended up at Meijer. They had Michigan pickling cucumbers on sale for $.69 a pound. The produce clerk brought out a fresh box that had arrived that morning. The cucumbers still had the pollen dust on them like they did at the Eastern Market 40 years ago. My bagfull, about a half bushel, was $7.  I asked the clerk where in Michigan they came from. He said, “We get produce from all over Michigan. I think these are from Standish.”

Thomas Kachadurian is a photographer, designer, and author. He lives on Old Mission with his wife and two children. He is a member and past president of the Traverse Area District Library Board of Trustees.