Farmers’ markets were very much a part of the scene when I was young.
They seemed to fade through the years as we became more of an urban society with fewer farmers and gardeners growing food crops. We have more and more tended to rely on food produced by large farms far away, and shipped long distances to our grocery stores by train or truck. Our area at one time produced apples by the trainload, and large quantities of peaches as well. The marketing of our apple crops was one big reason railroads came to our part of the country. My own family has a background of tending apple orchards and peach orchards. The Nichols and Holcomb families had a number of “orchard men.”
The idea of producing food locally and marketing it locally has always appealed to me, although I can’t claim to have participated in gardening for themarket or in the marketing of produce from my own garden. I have been, and hope always to be a customer of such enterprising local producers and marketers. So much of our fruit seems to come from California or Texas or Florida. That may be the way it has to be, and the weather and the soils “out there” or “down there” may be more favorable.
But I’m often thinking, “You know, we can raise many of those fruits in Arkansas, too.”
Most of the people who settled in our area in the 1800s were looking for land as a means of making a living for their families.
That didn’t always mean farming to make money; it meant farming to make a living, to feed the family, toprovide for the necessities of life, and to provide for a few comforts of home. I think most people in those days had a first-hand sense of their connection to and reliance on the land and its productivity. People produced much of their own food in their gardens and truck patches.
I guess I never asked for a precise definition of a truck patch. The people I remember as having “truck patches” usually had an area that they considered their garden, and which they expected to provide for the needs of their family; but then they would plant larger patches of certain crops with the idea of making a good amount of the produce available to sell. I remember tomato patches, from which the tomatoes would go to the Pea Ridge Canning Plant, and there were bean patches, and strawberry patches, and water melon patches. Of course, in the 1940s there were stillmany orchards producing apples and peaches, and there were berry patches producing huckleberries and raspberries, and enterprising people who picked wild blackberries, gooseberries and mulberries. I remember too, that some of the local stores would buy produce from the local growers, so much of the produce was really fresh from the garden, and hadn’t been shipped from a thousand miles away.
Roadside stands were common sights when I was a boy. They were especially common for selling strawberries and apples and peaches, but often had other garden goods for sale as well. Orchards often had semi-permanent stands where they offered their fruits for sale to the public. Many also offered the “pick your own” option. You could pay the higher price to buy what had been picked for you, or you could pay a more moderate price and go outand pick the strawberries or the apples or the peaches for yourself. We nearly always picked our own. It was often an adventure, especially if you came across a snake, or a mouse ran up your pant leg, or you encountered a black widow spider, or a wasp nest.
Wasp nests were the worst for taking the fun out of picking your own.
I’m especially remembering how the farmers and gardeners and truck patchers would sell their goods around the Bentonville square. The square is all different today, and I had thought they didn’t do farmers markets anymore.
I recently learned that farmers markets there are becoming bigger than ever.
I’m remembering when all around the north side of the square there would be pickups and trailers lined up to sell produce. We always bought our watermelons there. We did’’t buy the sweet corn or beans or beets or carrots or potatoesor tomatoes because we grew our own at home, but we did buy peaches and apples and cantalopes and watermelons.
It is interesting to hear from Rogers and Pea Ridge and Springdale, where the farmer’s markets are growing and reviving. I’m all for it. While more and more of our land is being converted to streets and roads and housing developments, I like to see some things happening which remind us of our need to care for the land, to keep our land from wearing out, from eroding, from losing soil nutrients and losing the means of replenishing those nutrients.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 06/12/2013