Everything After

Sunday marks another final market for another market season. A Farmers Market is a jewel, a beautiful, shiny bauble, found when you look past the mass produced, mass marketed, artificially flavored ordinary. Farmers, producers and makers gather early, rain or shine, in a parking lot, with tents, tables, bins, and boards, setting up mini storefronts for you to peruse what they dug from the ground, pulled from the oven or stitched with their hands. These vendors are sturdy folk, who not only work long hours to get there, but while there, field endless questions: how was this grown? did you make this all yourself? do you have anything gluten free? why is it so expensive? These questions, and your ability to ask them are one of the most valuable things a market provides: connection.

Connection for me lets me explain my ingredients, where my flour comes from, how it’s grown, harvested and milled and why that makes a difference. I can explain the chocolate I source from those small farmer co-ops in South America providing a true living wage. I can explain the long hours I work each week and the pitfalls that, sometimes humorous, can occur. I can explain how to use the Flatbread, how Expresso is a wheat varietal and not espresso. I get to ask how the week has been and to commiserate when the Pop Tarts have already sold out. I try to keep the line from growing long but sometimes a few extra words are needed. I love overhearing others in that line explaining my products to those around them. Disciples.

When the market season ends, I continue connection with classes and filling weekly online orders. Online isn’t the same, but most of the folks ordering have met me at markets. I know their faces, their voices, how much they love the Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies. I am excited with each order that pops into my email box: “Oh yay! It’s Jean!” I hope that vibe is communicated by the universe to that person’s heart. Even though I love all the connections, as an extroverted introvert, I will be exhausted at season’s end.

This year I took a bit more time off, a few more markets unattended, a few more weeks with no orders, all to have that time filled with family responsibilities, not time for my own care. I’m writing this after a week with no orders, and only one crisis with my folks. I don’t feel wrung out so I am actually looking forward to Dough Day tomorrow. I’m looking forward to classes and the small groups of students gathering to bake with me. We’ll make delicious things and they’ll take plenty home to impress friends, family, or to simply stock a freezer. Then I’ll have time off. I’ll take the entire month of January and maybe some February to do life and a little work, rather than the opposite. This is a consuming work that I do. It is hard but fulfilling. It is worth doing. Thank you for another great market season. xo