Each morning recently, when I ask the little AI machine that lives in our kitchen what the weather is out there today, it replies in an increasingly chipper voice, with something ridiculous like:
“Well, it’s a scorcher in Greensboro today! The high will be 93. It feels like 101!”
As we head into the July 4th weekend, this gives me three thoughts:
1) That AI voice will just continue to get more chipper as the heat increases, year after year, until all the humans are dead and the machines can take over without firing a single shot.
2) Can you imagine how awful every single delegate to the Second Continental Congress must have smelled in July 1776? Thomas Jefferson recorded the afternoon temperature in Philadelphia at a balmy 76 degrees, but everyone was in frock coats, waistcoats, knee breeches, stockings, powdered wigs, and cravats. Also, they rarely bathed.
3) We are well and truly into summer. Time for tomatoes.
I have sung the praises of the Southern tomato sandwich in this space before. And I’m certainly going to be agitating for downtown’s Chez Genèse to bring back their spin on the classic. But when I think about summer tomatoes, I think about my great-grandmother and my mother in their home gardens, carefully selecting the best tomatoes before breaking out the soft white bread, cracked black pepper, and Duke’s mayo.
But my wife and I are apartment people, so no garden. I’ve been hitting the local farmer’s markets instead.
There are a lot of great reasons to skip the grocery store’s produce aisle this summer and source the good stuff closer to home. Supporting North Carolina agriculture, regional farms, and farmers, feels good. But you’re also going to be shocked how much better your tomatoes, squash, berries, apples, and peaches taste when they aren’t shipped in from Mexico, California, Florida, or Georgia but come from right down the road.
There’s also something to the farmer’s market experience itself, whether you’re hitting the big Piedmont Triad Farmer’s Market in Colfax, the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market on Yanceyville Street, or the Corner Farmers Market on West Market Street. These places are like chilled-out ComicCons for agriculture nerds. All the passion, all the expertise and, in some cases, all the fantasy.
A common sight these days among the bell peppers, blueberries, and back bacon, are large refrigerators with warning signs: “Not For Human Consumption.”
They are, of course, full of raw milk. The sign is a bit of a wink and a nod. People line up to buy and consume the stuff—and to proselytize about it. This is, in a sense, in the great farmer’s market tradition of homeopathic creams, tinctures, pills, powders, and poultices of the type that got traveling quack doctors run out of small towns in musicals. It’s all part of the charm.
While it won’t cure any specific ailments, I highly recommend the peach preserves from Houser Farms in Vale, N.C. The large jar I picked up last weekend won’t last the month in our house, where I’m using it for everything from morning toast and turkey sandwiches to summer cocktails.
They reminded me of the homemade preserves a friend gifted us last year, made with fruit from the public orchard on Greensboro’s recently completed Downtown Greenway. Talk about local. We’ve been thinking about picking some things there ourselves. Maybe we’re garden people after all.
