When a farmers market goes wrong

This morn­ing Wal came back from drop­ping Squidge off at bal­let to tell me there was a farm­ers mar­ket in the neigh­bor­ing vil­lage. It was a warm sunny day and we had planned on sand­ing the liv­ing room all day. We decided to head on down to check out the mar­ket after pick­ing Squidge up.  I’m always bang­ing on about shop­ping loca and sup­port­ing small indy busi­nesses so I read­ily agreed. I oooh and aahed over the veg. I tasted some yummy horse­rad­ish mus­tard and then worked our way over to the pie stand. The cheese and onion pie sam­ple was del­ish but Wal decided he would like the meat and potato pie. We looked around a bit more and then I saw the nuts. I have been crav­ing salted cashews for a few months but they’re sooo high in pro points. Well I though I’ve been doing really well this week so I’d treat myself. They didn’t have any salted but they did have spicy. I was sold.

What a dis­ap­point­ment! They were stale! I had never heard of such a thing. How long does a nut have to be sit­ting around before they go soft? I’m think­ing a pretty long time!  I was a bit (read a lot) peeved but thought it was a sign from Weight Watcher’s that I should back off from the nuts. Once we got home I put the pie in the oven and got the rest of the things ready for lunch. We bought a small pie but I fig­ured we could have a salad with it. Yummo right?  Eeerm WRONG. The pie should have been called Potato w/ dirty mince pie pan water pie. There was not one bit of meat in it. I guess if I didn’t find any meat I shouldn’t have been sur­prised that they couldn’t be both­ered to sea­son the flip­ping thing either. I was bland and taste­less. Just bland mashed pota­toes in a bland crust.

So here is my rant. In a time when we’re all try­ing to be green, local, sup­port small busi­nesses why would I go back to the farm­ers mar­ket? I have a green gro­cer in my vil­lage. I can prob­a­bly pick up some horse­rad­ish mus­tard at our local deli. I’m still sup­port­ing local busi­nesses.  My green gro­cer doesn’t just stock local veg but  it is an inde­pen­dent small busi­ness so I feel I’m doing my part. If the farm­ers mar­ket is going to grow and thrive the items they sell there need to be good. I won’t go back and I’m won­der­ing how many other peo­ple have had the same experience.

If I knew who ran the mar­ket I’d con­tact them. It would be great if we had a reg­u­lar farm­ers mar­ket there, one that was thriv­ing. Sell­ing sub­par goods is not the way to do this.