A farmer’s market, measured solely against its definition, is a market where farmer’s sell their crops. That would be the literal interpretation of what a farmer’s market should be. Marco Island has a rather robust farmer’s market that takes place every Wednesday in a field sort of behind the McDonald’s. It is a very large market. There are pastry makers selling their pastries, and there are pickle makers selling their pickles. There are also vegetables and paintings and framed photographs offered for sale. The Marco farmer’s market is one of the larger such gatherings I’ve ever frequented, but what it is can’t make up for or displace what it isn’t. The Marco Island Farmer’s Market as I see it isn’t a farmer’s market at all.
My parents don’t seem to understand this. They go buy large quantities of tomatoes, cucumbers, and various other vegetables and fruits, and they are happy there. They buy these things, as do other people, under the possibly mistaken understanding that these are crops picked by Joe Farmer, loaded into the back of Joe’s truck with help from Joe’s homely wife Hilda, and transported down bumpy roads to the market. This is the romanticized notion of a farmer’s market. The Marco market is one where produce is delivered in crates out of the back of refrigerated box trucks that not long before they pulled onto the grassy patch in Marco were leaving the loading docks of a warehouse. The tomatoes were not picked that morning, as one might believe, rather the crate that the tomatoes live in was picked off the loading dock and stacked in the truck. This is not romantic, and this is not my idea of a farmer’s market.
When my family would spend two weeks in the northwoods of Minnesota every summer during my youth, part of the fun of that trip was a stop by farmer Moffit’s farm stand. I think his name was Moffit, but if it wasn’t, it’s doubtful anyone reading this will recognize my error. Mr. Moffit and his wife were the sort of farmer’s that everyone who frequents farmer’s markets envisions as the procuring cause of their box of tomatoes. Mr. Moffit was old. Like carbon dated old. He was always old during those trips in the same way that I was always young. My parents and my brothers and I would leave Lake Geneva at night and race through the dark Wisconsin and Minnesota countrysides until we hit Detroit Lakes sometime the following morning. We’d stop at a bait shop to see if there were any fish on ice from the early morning exploits of the local fishermen, and then we’d twist and weave further East over the country roads towards Strawberry Lake. As with the tradition of stopping at the bait shop, we’d also stop at farmer Moffit’s humble stand that stood next to his old white farmhouse. We stopped there often, and he was always kind, if quiet. After a while, the bait shop no longer had fish in the window, and one year Mr Moffit’s vegetable gardens were overgrown and unkempt. Traditions, sadly enough, tend to bend under the weight of age.
Mr. Moffit’s farm stand was a true farm stand, and if Mr. Moffit and five or six of his farming friends pooled their produce under the shade of a larger tent, they would have made for a fine, and correctly termed, farmer’s market. While Marco Island’s market is more of a wholesale food sale, Lake Geneva does its best to fill the farmer’s market void created by large scale abominations like the one off Collier. The primary farmer’s market in Lake Geneva is held every Thursday morning on the narrow strip of grass in front of the Horticultural Hall (Broad Street). This market is relatively limited, but it is authentic. The guy selling his honey suffered the bee stings necessary to collect it, and the guy selling birdhouses has stain under his fingernails that proved he brushed the Minwax himself. This is what I want out of a farmer’s market- one where wares are delivered via the trunk of the owner’s car not the back of his company’s refrigerated box truck.
But to claim that the primary farmer’s market is the only place to get your country fresh produce would be misleading. Besides, the Lake Geneva market is on Thursdays, which proves that it’s not making much of an effort to cater to vacation home owners anyway (town is probably too crowded to hold this on the weekends and not disrupt the controlled chaos of a summer weekend). The best produce markets are not found on Broad Street, instead they are found at Pepper’s Farm Stand on County F just North of Fontana, and at Pearce’s Farm Stand just a bit further south than Pepper’s. These are the stands that require your attention, and these are the purest variety of field to table operations that Lake Geneva has to offer. There are other stands too, like the one that pops up in the summer months on Highway 50 in between 67 and Theatre Road just north of Williams Bay. There is a quality little stand set up by a hobby farmer on Bailey Road, also just north of the Bay. There are stands galore, each offering a discerning vacation home owner the ability to entertain with local produce in a way that proves to your friends and family that you are not only stylish and generous and wise, but you are also a responsible locavore of epic proportions.
If you’re in Marco this winter, and it happens to be a Wednesday, follow the flow of white Cadillac sedans to the farmer’s market. Enjoy the offerings, but do not confuse this sort of gathering with the authentic farmer’s stands and markets of Lake Geneva. If Mr. Moffit were still alive, and I were to fly him to Marco to meet with me and peruse the offerings, we would both shake our heads in disgust. But if I were to bring Mr. Moffit to Pearce’s farm stand outside of Fontana, he would inspect the corn and squeeze the tomatoes. He would smile and he would nod, and with that, the authentic Lake Geneva farm stand would be authenticated by the king of the farm stand himself.
Photograph by Ideal Impressions Photography