Why I still go to the farm stand every week
I have been going to the same farm stand for longer than I care to calculate.
Same gravel parking lot. Same wooden tables. Same particular smell of sun-warmed tomatoes and fresh basil and something green and alive that hits you the moment you open the car door and reminds you that this — right here, this moment — is what summer actually is.
I go every week from June through September. Sometimes twice a week in July when the tomatoes are at their absolute peak and I need more than I bought the first time, which is always. I go on Saturday mornings when it’s crowded and the best things go fast. I go on Tuesday afternoons when it’s quieter and the farmers are there themselves and willing to talk.
I go because the food is better. That’s the simple answer. A Jersey tomato from a farm stand in July tastes like a completely different species from the thing in the plastic clamshell at the grocery store. A farm stand peach smells like summer from three feet away. The corn was picked this morning and you can tell.
But that’s not really why I go.
I go because of what happens when I’m there.
I slow down. That’s the first thing. There is no rushing through a farm stand the way you rush through a grocery store. You stop. You look at things. You pick up a tomato and feel the weight of it, smell the stem end, hold it up in the light. You notice that the green beans look extraordinary this week or that the basil is the best it’s been all season.
You pay attention. And paying attention, it turns out, is one of the things I am most hungry for.
I talk to strangers. The woman ahead of me in line who knows which stand has the best peaches. The farmer who tells me what came in this morning before it made it to the table. The person reaching for the same bunch of basil who catches my eye and we both laugh because of course we were both going for the basil.
I make decisions without a plan. I don’t arrive with a recipe in mind. I arrive with an open basket and a willingness to be told what’s beautiful this week. The zucchini calls to me. The heirloom tomatoes — ugly and extraordinary — demand to come home with me. I buy more than I intended and less than I wish I’d bought and I spend the rest of the week figuring out what to do with all of it.
That figuring out is some of my best cooking.
My mother went to the farm stand. Her mother went to the farm stand, though in those days it was just called going to the market, and you went because that was where the food was and there was no other option.
We have other options now. We have grocery stores open at midnight and delivery apps and meal kit services and every ingredient available every month of every year regardless of whether it has any business existing in February.
And still I go to the farm stand.
Because some things are worth doing the inconvenient way. Because buying a tomato that was grown in New Jersey soil and picked this week and smells like it should is a fundamentally different experience from buying a tomato that traveled a thousand miles and tastes like the container it came in.
Because the ritual of it matters to me. The drive over on a Saturday morning. The coffee in the car. The parking lot filling up with other people who have also decided that this particular errand is worth their time. The walk through the tables. The decisions. The drive home with the windows down and everything smelling like summer.
Because standing at a farm stand table in July with a warm tomato in each hand, trying to decide between them, is one of the small moments that makes a life feel worth paying attention to.
And I am, at this point in my life, very interested in paying attention.
This newsletter is about food. It’s about home and gathering and creativity and traditions and the things we make with our hands and the people we make them for.
But underneath all of that it’s really about paying attention. To the season. To the people at your table. To the tomato that smells like July. To the small moments that most people walk right past because they’re moving too fast to notice them.
I notice them. I’ve always noticed them. And now I’m going to write them down.
Every week. In your inbox.
Starting with the farm stand.
The farm stand is waiting.
— The Jersey Nonna
thejerseynonna.com