It’s National Farmers Market week and today we visited Lansdale Farmers’ Market. We are lucky enough to live in an area that has 3 different Saturday Markets within a 20-minute drive, each one is unique in their own way but the theme is always the same, fresh local produce, groceries, baked goods, and people whose livelihood depends on the soil.
It’s becoming a theme now, me trying to get people out of their comfort zone of big-box grocery stores. There is a whole world out there of passionate experts, butchers, bakers, growers, brewers, farmers. You just have to spend a little more time and effort to get there.
We live in an interesting historical anomaly: since we started agricultural practices around 10,000+ years ago, it has only been in the last ~200 years that we’ve shifted from 90% of us farming to only 2% today.
This has been a massive cultural change. Your local baker used to be one of the most important (and regulated) members of the community; today, bread is just another aisle in a store.
I’m proud to come from a family that has been farming in America since the late 17th century, and working on a dairy farm through my high school and college years was a formative life experience.
I’ve gone off on a tangent here; my point is that we have an enormous disconnect today between the food we consume and the people who make and grow it.
So tomorrow, go to your local farmers market, talk to the farmers and bakers about their food, what they recommend, and how they create it. And I can promise the food is better, and it will make you feel good.
