What is not to love about the farmers’ market?

The market is the ideal playground.  There are food samples, music, wide lanes for kids to run, beautiful bouquets to smell.  There adults and kids get to use all five senses.  It’s a celebration of all that is great about Wisconsin.

It sounds like I am waxing lyrical, but I am not.  Watching my kids at the farmers’ market makes me aware of how lucky they are.  When I was growing up, I never went to a market.  Grocery stores with formica floors, canned vegetables, and coolers with iceberg lettuce and hard tomatoes were my introduction to “fresh” food.  The bounty of the market is dizzying.  And as my young Bee declares, “There are 40,000 samples to try!”

Bee loves samples, so does April.  And their first stop every Saturday morning is the “honey guy.”  He’s an older gentleman, perched on a chair, wearing a hat decorated with a bee, holding out small plastic spoons dripping with honey for eager children and adults to savor.  As your tongue laps up the sweetness, the honey names begin to blend together:  choke-cherry honey, wildflower honey, clover and more.

The “honey man” is generous.  He never tells a kid, “That’s enough.”  He never puts a stop to the sampling.  He smiles, names the honey, doles out spoons, and makes everyone happy.  He has the perfect job.

Finally, I put a stop to the sampling, knowing my kids will be flying for the next four hours.  But there are more stops at the market:  the cheese stand, the sausage stand, the chips and salsa stand, the milk and smoothie stand, the band stand.

Moldy Jam, a string ensemble with violins, guitars, mandolins, and voices blend their music into the market’s hum.  The musicians draw in the kids, providing them an assortment of handmade instruments to shake, rattle, and juggle. Some kids dance. Adults sway.  We all soak it in -- honey in the ears -- and clap at the end of the folk band tunes. 

Food and culture combine to make one grand morning.

My kids have no idea how lucky they are to have their routine, to start their Saturday sweet, to sample food that is real and thoughtfully produced.  I want to say thank you to the honey man and thank you to the farmers and thank you to the musicians who all add so much to our lives. 

The farmers’ market not only adds to my kids’ lives, I think it is also life-forming:  introducing my kids to food as it was made to be loved.  And my kids do love it, and they’re going to grow up healthier for it. 

Thank you, Madison farmers’ marketeers.  You are, as my Bee would exclaim, ”totally Awesome!” -- all 40,000 of you.

Susan Lewis is a mom of two adopted daughters, who tries to balance staying at home with staying sane and writing on the side.  She contributes to this blog as a way of recording some of the funnier, poignant moments of parenting young children as an older mom (late forties and holding).  She has changed her children’s names and her own name for confidentiality’s sake. (What kid would want complete strangers to know these stories?)  April, now six, was adopted from China.  Bee, now four, was adopted from Ethiopia.  And Charming, her husband, is an introverted Norwegian-American, who most definitely wants to remain anonymous.  You can contact Susan Lewis at SuLew4blog@gmail.com.