Nature's Market

The early bird might get the worm, but is the worm locally-farmed and certified organic?\nBloomington students, residents and guests, in a way similar to Jefferson Airplane's declaration for musical audiences to hear "what the dormouse said," feed their heads, bellies and spirits at the Community Farmer's Market every Saturday from 7 a.m. to sometime around noon at the Shower's Complex located on the front steps of City Hall. \nSmall groups, family units, intimate couples, caring friends and individual neighbors and guests convened for the town's summertime tradition of fresh locally-grown produce and community entertainment at the city's sponsored cultural festival. Harmonicas, bagpipes, acoustic guitars and singing voices blended above a chorus of chatting Hoosier neighbors.\nMirroring a vegetable swap meet crossbred with a Mother Nature flea market and meat garage sale, a mix of southern Indiana farmers, regional small businesses and local farming communes offered community farmer's market patrons flowers in all stages of life, bundles of fresh produce picked or plucked only days before, and fresh meats from local lands.\n"We grow our own vegetables -- everybody has to grow their own, that's the rule up here," said Nancy Sims, a Davis County resident who gathers and cleans fresh-picked vegetables from her husband John's four-acre farm. "(Homegrown) is what makes the Bloomington Farmer's Market unique. People say Bedford has a good market, but you don't know what you're getting there. My husband does all the farming and I help with the selling."\n"And bagging," one market patron contributed while exchanging a few of her hard-earned greenbacks for a stomach-full of the Sims' fresh multicolored produce. \nNancy nodded her head in agreement. John Sims said he devotes about one-and-a-half acres of his farmland for sweet-corn production; about half-an-acre to red, yellow and white potatoes; about one-quarter to both green onions and broccoli heads; and only a couple rows for green beans and sugar snap peas. \n"My main thing is tomatoes. Sweet corn takes up the most ground but tomatoes make the most money," John said while standing among empty wooden crates behind a pickup truck. "I am retired so I produce in the summertime and I hunt deer in the winter."\nNancy also said their veggie stand sold out of sugar snap peas, but she didn't know what time her last bundle exchanged hands earlier that morning. The Sims family, similar to a healthy percentage of both the farmer's market vendors and patrons, do not wear a watch for most occasions.\nOther loose "neighbor-to-neighbor" talk that echoed from the yellow-tinted carport plastic roofs hovering above the Complex's parking lot consisted of "elk meat," "free samples of hot maple syrup" and "fresh strawberries."\n"All my life I've always liked strawberries, but I couldn't grow them. My old lady learned and we've been growing them ever since," said Washington County resident and vendor Ervin Stoll, who worked his own farmland in Northeast Ohio for almost five decades. "Someone said God could have made a better berry but he didn't. I think strawberries are the most beautiful fruit. Bloomington is the best market I've come to in my lifetime." \nStoll said his current farm contains about 30 acres of produce. \nOther smiley-faced market patrons hauled home brown-paper grocery sacks filled to the rim with bushels of turnips, barrels of honey stacked on metal carts and balloons tied to children's wrists. \nBloomington guest Plomen Dinkov, a Bulgarian medical student studying agriculture through an international internship program at Capriole, Inc. -- a cheese manufacturer from the "hills and river valley called Kentuckiana" located in Greenville, Ind. -- said it's difficult to determine the most popular cheese sold at their stand.\n"There is a different cheese for different moods and purposes -- it depends on the people, how do they like," Dinkov said, dressed in a green Bloomington Community Farmer's Market T-shirt. "Some people drink wine with cheese, others cook, others put it in the salad. I'm from Europe and we eat a lot of cheese -- open, eat, finish. Americans keep it a long time -- two weeks or more. No. If I open it, I finish the cheese right away."\nDinkov said cheese is a healthy snack and treat that students, residents and guests can make "the whole day enjoying and tasting the cheese every time you eat."\nCommunity farm market patrons often scuttled hand-in-hand or with hands wrapped around shoulders from booth-to-booth: some toes in flip-flops, some city singles with prancing puppy dogs, some Hoosiers adorning Hawaiian shirts and some family members waving hello or hugging goodbye. \nIndianapolis resident and exotic tree vendor Mike Wu said his Bonsai trees might provide students, residents and guests increased indoor Karma and a single bamboo shaft from his stand can provide building materials from about 20 bamboo shoots if the plant receives ample space and adequate outdoor weather.\n"A Bonsai tree is kind of like a special gift. The owner can make different designs, make the tree smaller or bigger, make a small tree look like a giant tree in a forest somewhere," Mike said. "You can keep one in the house or in the office. It takes many years to grow. It's easy to display from one spot to the next." \nWu plants most of his Bonsai trees several years before he sells them, and he said the average tree at his stand is about two years old already. Wu said the Bonsai trees need water a couple times a week and they should be stored near a window if displayed indoors. He recommended indoor bamboo shoots receive water once or twice a week and they should be stored away from windows. Outdoor Bonsai trees and bamboo shoots can often survive on the weather mother nature produces for any given area, Wu said.\nCommunity farmer's market patrons tended to gravitate around booths to scope out products firsthand and to purchase the vendor's wares. A continual stream of wandering onlookers zigzagged through the market's aisle pathways like vultures scouting for meat bargains and produce cornucopias to consume.\nTrafalgar resident and vendor Vernon Sigman said he reduced his 370-acre farm to about 12 acres when he retired in 1983. Sigman used a scale to measure the weight of some of his more popular produce, similar to about a handful or so market vendors, to maximize the total sharing exchanges he conducts with students, residents and guests. \n"I was born on a farm in Oklahoma in 1925. When I got out of the Navy in 1945 I worked in a factory and a retail store for about three months each, and then I went back to the farm," Vernon said. "I came to Bloomington to go to college, but I've been piddling on a farm ever since. I wouldn't know how to tell someone to get into to farming. I used to make $2,500 cash money a year, but you can't buy a lawn mower with that now." \nVernon said there is no secret to farming other than good crop fertility, proper seed genetics and luck. He sold lettuce and onions, but he said tomatoes, apples and peaches are coming soon to his local produce vendor stand at the Bloomington community farmer's market. \n"I wouldn't know how to tell someone to get into farming -- either you grow up in it or you have a rich uncle," Sigman said while smiling through the entirety of the conversation. "I enjoy farming because I don't have to answer to anyone but me and my customers. I don't have to show up to a job everyday with someone watching me. Whether it's livestock or horticulture, it's your skill that makes it work"