Top 10 PSU Saturday Market Survival Tips

Do you go to the PSU Farmer’s Market [the Saturday Market at PSU]?

Or maybe the question these days has become, “Can you handle going to the PSU Farmer’s Market?”

In addition to foraging for free-range grass-fed cage-free naturally non-hormone treated dandelions and pre-pubescent nettles (we indeed made nettle soup for the first time this year), the Farmer’s Market – Any Farmer’s Market – is part of our family culture. Both of our children are growing up learning how to sniff a melon and gently squeeze a peach (the 13-yr-old in me just snickered. It’s OK, you can too.)

Oh the sounds of ping-pong balls bouncing on the hardened mouths of milk bottles, the smell of cotton candy wafting through the beams of a wooden roller coaster, the screams of terrified plump, vomitous children sitting in spinning tea cups driven by the powerful hands of the childless uncle.

Wait. That’s something else.

These days however, it’s hard to tell the difference. And you know what? I don’t actually mind – well, mostly. I think.

We went to opening day at the PSU Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago, knowing that it would be overcrowded, knowing that the vendors would likely be out of the best things they started the day with, and knowing that we’d spend more diving-for-recession dollars than we intended to fork over. Check, check, and oh Garçon? Check please.

So how do we survive the PSU Farmer’s Market, when we actually go?

Before we venture into the fray, we gather the heads of the Metroknow Nation and formalize a strategic alliance, an end-to-end, brick-and-mortar shopping plan of attack, and a Catch-22 failsafe for mutually assured organic foodiegasm. In other words, we prepare ourselves by accepting that conditions will be crowded, children may be terrifyingly easy to lose track of if we don’t pay dogged attention, and that in general it’s going to take a little patience to squeeze through the PSU Market Gauntlet. But that’s just the pre-game show.

That said, we do it. We go, and we take friends from out of town. Yeah, we’re those people sometimes. Don’t hate me because I’m hospitable.

Metroknow’s Top 10 PSU Farmer’s Market Survival Tips

Maybe it’s better to start with what we DON’T do:

• We don’t bring our hinge-legged hind-quarter sniffing hair-shedding gifted and talented pooping child, a.k.a. our dog
• We don’t bring the pre-global warming V12 quad-cab double-wide 128oz. soda-bucket holding, fossil fuel drilling and self-refining, “hey let’s go for a bouncy run with a gurgly goopy infant!” mega-stroller (though we do still have one, for which the HD-DVR Infrared GPS XM portable satellite indentured contract doesn’t expire until 2016)
• We don’t wait in a line 35 people deep with two screaming loves of our parental lives for a 12oz. Americano with room (our recession coffee drink of choice) – we bring our own damn home-brewed shi shi drinks
• We do NOT elbow our child into the Killer Dave’s booth (yeah you heard me) for a free sample (do they even have samples anymore?)
• We make every effort to prevent our 2-year-old from running amok in the aisles of hardened, simultaneously closely cropped while partially unshaven slightly disjointed cycling arugula hunters, lest the flailing child become a specimen of parental bad judgment, losing an eye in an unfortunate run-in with a 1/2-inch studded belt wrapped around an angsty hardcore forager’s straight-leg-jeaned and secretly tattooed thigh (can I get a high five)
• We do NOT wear our muddy boots as a statement of how we’re keepin’ it real in the ‘burbs, yo
• We do not whine and complain (out loud) about paying for parking, nor about the crowds, nor about the obstructionist activities of dueling “suggested donation is $5″ wink wink nudge nudge balloon artists (though they are rapidly becoming the mimes of the Western world, making me stew in wild, moody “I have no mouth and I must scream” mini vocal embolisms).

Here’s what we DO, uh, do:

• Put our patience on, say please, thank you, excuse me, and “oh dear yes those asparagus tips do make me gassy – I shouldn’t dare try one.” – and then do.
• Talk to the person we buy from, assessing whether the source matches what the signs say, and make the best decisions we can. “Just ‘cause it’s on a folding table don’t mean it’s good ergonomic eatn’.”
• Generally trust the vendor to tell the truth. Because if I have to choose between a mega-corporation (America’s most powerful citizens these days) and someone I can look in the eye, I’ll take the latter for obvious Haliberton/Monsanto/Phillip K. Dick reasons.

And one more:

• Prepare to pay six bucks for a pancake and stick of bacon requested by my precocious pink-obsessed beautiful 2-year-old, and do so gladly, knowing that it’s part of our entertainment budget (like we have an entertainment budget – but it does have a nice ring to it).

For us, it’s worth it. Mostly. But I can’t wait for our local Farmer’s Market to open in May. And I think the neighborhood locals at the PSU Farmer’s Market —in my case, anyway —can’t wait for that either.

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