The South side of the house - this bed has summer and winter squash, bush and pole beans, tomatoes, and onions in it. See below why this and other edible planting around the house this year was not such a bad idea after all.

Today Pat and I bicycled to Old Town to check out the Saturday central farmers market. It was lovely, with fresh local flowers, and gorgeous abundant local produce and other food products, but....

OMG - the prices! Is a pound of green beans REALLY worth $7? A pound of local cheese $18? A bunch of radishes $2.50? Four or five peaches $6.00? I ended up buying one red onion ($1), four ears of very fresh corn ($3), and a little basket of cherry tomatoes ($4), and a focaccia bread ($6). And I felt like a rube with that modest sack of stuff.

We have a nice local super mercado (five minute walk) that has pretty good produce (most of the stuff most of the time - it varies), including some organic, at the best prices in town. On-the-vine tomatoes for a buck and a half, peaches for under a dollar a pound, vine-ripe cantalopes and avacados for a buck each... With the supplement of what I can grow in various nooks and crannies of our often-shaded yard, how can I justify going to the farmers market again?


In the raised beds I put in this year; tomatoes, summer squash, carrots, lettuce, chard, pole beans, herbs...

I want to support local agriculture, and love the atmosphere of the farmers market and the interaction with the local producers, but this seems like some sort of chi-chi uber-precious luxury market in today's economy. Bless their hearts, if this is what they have to charge to stay in business, I hope there are enough people who still have high-paying jobs or credit cards that aren't maxed out to pay these stratospheric prices for a while longer.


Cucumbers climb the trellis I put up for them on an old post.


Peas, cilantro, tomato, beets, dill, and chard along the North fence.

As Pat pointed out, ALL Mexican markets are a farmers market, and the prices are but a small fraction of what we saw today. Here it some sort of abberant extravagance to buy fresh local produce from the producer.

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