market monogamy
approaching the farmers’ market with fidelity in mind
By shannon hayes • photography by paul o’hanlon

For six years now, my husband, Bob, and I have risen early every Saturday from mid-May through mid- October, loaded our car with freezer packs and coolers of meat, then wound our way down through the Catskill Mountains to the Pakatakan Farmers’ Market (known locally as the Round Barn). For six years, we’ve held the same booth at the front of the barn, staring out at summer clouds and lush green hills in the interstices between customers. My Aunt Katie held the same meat booth for 13 years before that.

In an era where the small farm is coming back and the locavores are welcoming them, it is not uncommon for farms to bounce around to different markets, testing the customer base and deciding whether or not the management policies are amenable, and whether the time commitment and sales will prove profitable. With so many potential opportunities, I suppose my family seems a bit like geese. We mate for life.

What goes unseen is that our monogamous relationship goes two ways. Our market, and its customer base, has committed to us, in sickness and in health. We entered our relationship together, almost 20 years ago, when I was still in high school here in upstate New York, fastidiously scrubbing myself each morning, lest the aura of our livestock should linger on my body when I got to class, subjecting me to public shame. The humiliation and confusion tied to my family’s vocation reached outside the classroom. Forty years prior, farmers held status in Schoharie County. They socialized together, cooperated with harvests, shared labor and lent expertise.  Then came the agricultural revolution. One by one, they got big or got out. Many who stayed in business preyed upon the exiting families, snatching up their land and equipment, feasting on each other’s carrion. We stopped being friends. We grew to mistrust each other.

The inability to cooperate and lend support made our livelihoods even more marginal. By the 1990s, the passion for the lands owned by my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, my mother and father, was little more than a potential tax write-off against the offfarm earnings that were required to sustain our family. There was no such thing as a local market for our food. It seemed as though our community didn’t want us.

That was when the Pakatakan Farmers’ Market, the first in our region, held its inaugural vendor meeting. My mom and Aunt Katie attended and signed up for the spot that my family still holds today.

Owing to my aunt’s weekly excursions, before I left my adolescence, the space she held at that market became sacred. Around the perimeter of that booth, I didn’t feel ashamed of my family’s vocation.  Standing there watching her, for the first time, I saw non-farmers value what she did. She knew her customers by name, and they in turn kept track of her life, of my cousins, of her successes and failures on the land. That market showed me that a life on the farm might be possible, that there were people who honored my rightful place there. Thirteen years later, when Aunt Katie offered us the booth, Bob and I didn’t hesitate taking it over.

On our first day selling, as Bob and I worked to keep up with the customers, refer to our price sheets and add up purchases, a sharp voice whispered in my ear, “You need to memorize your prices.” I turned and came face to face with Dennis Hill of Shaver-Hill Farm, the maple syrup producer in the booth next to mine. “Next week is a holiday weekend. It’s gonna be extra busy.  You won’t keep up if you don’t get some of them prices in your head.” Conditioned by a cultural lack of civility among farmers, I thought he was sneering at my ineptitude. He wasn’t. He was trying to help. It was something I had to get used to at the market. The farmers here cooperate with each other. We cover one another’s booths, refer customers back and forth, raise money if someone meets up with trouble. We protect each other’s business by limiting the amount of competition, and then those “in competition” work together to make sure that our customers’ needs are satisfied.

Our farm and the market are not the only parties in committed relationships. The veteran shoppers have long ago ceased exploring other markets. We at the Round Barn have become “their farmers.” We return the fidelity. We know our regulars, hold their favorite cuts off to the side, worry about their health, celebrate their victories and cry over their losses.

The local food movement has been exciting to witness: surrounding farms seem no longer as threatened by development pressure; new markets pop up all round us as fresh young farmers find a viable livelihood; more citizens grow deeper connections with their food; glossy magazines glamorize the routine. It is all, admittedly, very sexy. But for those of us who’ve been in long-term committed relationships, who have benefited from that commitment in sickness and in health, the sex appeal wears thin. We opt instead for the venerable promise of “til death do us part.”

Editor’s note: The Pakatakan Farmers’ Market takes place every Saturday, from 9 a.m.–2 p.m., through mid-October at the Round Barn, Route 30, Halcottsville.