Market adds layers to sense of community

My most recent visit to the farmers market fell on the heels of teaching a two-week course in field botany at the Cobscook Community Learning Center in Lubec. The walls of the central building at CCLC are filled with Wendell Berry quotes and colorful posters that speak about building community. The classroom building is surrounded by 54 acres of woodland in various stages of ecological succession, the perfect laboratory to teach high school students about the natural community that surrounds their lives. Not a day went by that I did not remind them of why we were there, to learn about the local plant community so that we would know it and, in knowing it, feel connected, want to nurture it, protect it.

After those two weeks of intense immersion in helping my students acquire a sense of place, I needed to reconnect with my own community. Saturday morning at the Blue Hill Farmers Market did the trick.

We are met by a grower of garden perennials, the remainders of this year’s crop in one-gallon nursery pots spread around him on the ground and on the open tailgate of his truck. The plants look forlorn, still in their pots under the hot sun. These plants need a garden, I think to myself. A sign in one of the pots announces the reduced price, $5 each. He’ll make no money at that price, only avoid the cost of carrying the inventory over until next year. We have no interest in adding more plants to those already waiting at home to be planted, but I wish him well, acknowledging the hard work that went into the growing. “They need to be in someone’s garden,” he says, as we move on.

Vegetable growers and artisans share space in a large covered shelter with open sides and outside, under the morning sun. Toward the back of the shelter, a woman demonstrates her craft of chair caning, taking the time to answer my questions while her nimble fingers, scratched and scarred by the work, weave the rattan. Nearby two fiddlers and a guitarist play foot-tapping bluegrass, smiling in appreciation as listeners drop dollar bills into a violin case open on the ground. We stop to watch and listen, adding our bills to the growing pile. One of the fiddlers, a woman wearing overalls, says “thank you” with her eyes and the slightest nod as she plays. The music stays with us as we move around the shelter.

We move slowly from one vendor to another, a table of small wooden toys, another of cut flower bouquets; bins filled with freshly washed onions, stalks of broccoli, red new potatoes, fennel bulbs, lettuce and peas; creative displays of wooden hand puppets, hand-painted greeting cards, framed paintings and photographs, brightly colored silk scarves; a long central table filled with fresh breads and blueberry pies. Outside, we are awed by a collection of hand-carved wooden bowls.

We leave with two bunches of cut flowers, the makings of the evening meal, and a renewed sense of the talents and skills of our neighbors. We leave with the deep satisfaction of having looked into the eyes of the woman who labored to produce the food we will eat that night and the man who grew the flowers that will lift our spirits during the coming week. We leave feeling connected to the place where we live.

For many years now, I have viewed horticulture as a means of connecting with and learning about the ecology and economy of the place in which I live. In my own gardens I grow regionally native plants. In my teachings I stress the need to create landscapes that are ecologically functional and to avoid use of those non-native plants that pose a threat to natural areas. And on Saturday mornings in summer, I go to the farmers market.

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