One of the anachronisms that I have enjoyed over the years has been a local farm that worked on the honor system. The Hickories is a lovely farm now run by Dina and Rob who sell a wide variety of veg and fruit at their farm stand as well as through a Community Support Agriculture (CSA) group. For the past decade, I would pedal my bicycle from my house to the farm a few times a week to get fresh corn, lettuce, beans or anything else that grabbed my fancy.
When you are dealing with the honor system and a farm stand, it forces you to be a bit more creative as well as social. A self-serve farm stand is like an exact-change lane on a toll road or bridge: you need to have the exact change. Or at least collate the right amount of food to accommodate the change that you have in hand. But that was never a problem for me as I often over-paid or over-bought: I could always use an extra cucumber or an apple or two for the journey back. It was also a chance to become more social with others that you would bump into. You could make change and conversation with fellow shoppers as it made you thankful that such a old-fashioned thing existed.
But fashions change.
A month ago when I first pedaled down to get corn, I noticed a high-school student reading Homer’s “Odyssey,” sitting at a chair at the stand. She was the new attendant. Having her there was more convenient than not as she could make change and I could buy exactly what I wanted, but it somewhat defeated my trip to the stand. What I love about a self-serve stand is that I never really know what I will buy as the crops and prices change on a weekly basis. If I only have two $5 bills in my wallet, I can either just get the corn and a tomato or two that would add up to around $5 or if the squash or blueberries look inviting, I can drop the other fiver. I would never know exactly what I would bring home, but that is what made the trip special and often caused my saddle bags to bulge.
(An illustration of the wolf Fenrir biting the right hand off the god Týr,)
When I bumped into Dina this week, I assumed that the reason to hire a high-school kid was theft and she confirmed it. “We lost around 30 percent last year when everything was added up,” she said. I was not as shocked as I thought I would be but quietly saddened. She added that at the end of the season she will add everything up to figure out what they would do in the following year. Perhaps get more into animals, she speculated.
She commented that the decision that saved them this year was the fact that they tripled their CSA membership, which gave them a good financial cushion against the random revenue of farm stands and markets as well as the tomato blight that is making the rounds of all the local farms.
I thanked her for the information and went back to the stand to pick up my corn and lettuce. It came to $4. I removed four $1 bills from my wallet, handed them to the girl at the stand, got on my bike and pedaled home. My saddle bags had room to spare.
