Catch-up 3: The Urban Pastoral

Christmas Eve was a wonderful day for a bike ride to the farmer’s market. It was cool and clear out, and the market was far from crowded. I guess the hordes of holiday shoppers went to the Pike Place Market instead. I also had the pleasure of the wonderful company of my sister [Bad username or site: “sytharin” @ livejournal.com] and [Bad username or site: “annikusrex” @ livejournal.com], who are two of the people I greatly enjoy going on bike rides with. While I took the above photo, they decided that this style of photography should be termed "Urban Pastoral."

While at the market, strolling around and admiring vegetables, breads, dried mushrooms, and cheeses, I found it comforting to hear RAC echo my sentiments about the quality of farmers markets in Seattle as compared to what we've experienced in California. Simply put, the farmers markets in Seattle are head-and-shoulders better than anything we’ve encountered in California. I suspect this is a product of two things. The first is how the agricultural economies and populations are structured in the two places. While Seattle-proper is experiencing a housing crisis, there’s still a lot of small-scale farming in the immediate vicinity. There’s a bit of the same sort of small-scale farming near the Bay Area, but a much larger population to absorb high-quality goods, so, for instance, I never see the tasty Marin French Cheese Company cheeses for sale at the farmer's market. To some extent, we might find better and more interesting things at the Oakland farmer's market, but it's a haul to get down there so I still haven't been yet.

The second reason is determined by cultural differences in what constitutes a "farmer's market." It seems that instead of favoring the unusual, organic, and high-quality, the farmer’s markets in the Bay Area just sell…California-grown produce. The same stuff that gets sold to the national market, grown on large-scale farms and bred for durable shipping. A lot of the people who go to the farmer's market in El Cerrito are Asian families that are looking to buy fresh produce at the lowest possible price. They aren't interested in heirloom goods and varieties grown via small-scale production methods.

The farmer's market distinctions really show up in the baked goods. I've had some wonderful baked goods from bakeries far north of the North Bay, and I’ve heard that San Francisco proper has a toast craze going on, but in the East Bay it seems like just two big bakeries dominate the “crusty artisanal loaf” scene, and one of the two isn’t any good. Meanwhile, the University District farmer’s market had multiple places selling different varieties of baked delights of a quality and price that would quickly make me switch away from baking my own bread. scrottie is also fond of the Essential Baking Company's rosemary bread, even available at the store next to my parents' house, which we enjoyed on the train ride back to California:



Don't get me wrong - it's even more difficult to find crusty artisanal loaves of bread in other parts of the country, let alone artisanal loaves made with whole wheat flour. It's just that things in Seattle and Washington are better.