Not Quite Yet
But soon…I promise, Spring is on the way. Well, I hope so. Maybe?
As a market vendor, it’s been a brutally cold season yet I’ve only missed one week due to inclement weather. Temperatures in the teens has been the norm for weeks. The market itself has remained opened weekly without any mandatory closures due to snow, ice, or single-digit cold. Patrons have been stalwarts, bundling up, dashing in, even taking advantage of the ongoing curbside service. As far as business continuity goes, it’s been great.
This week temperatures have been in the low 60’s. There’s over 11 hours of daylight. Hints of green are appearing. Then I look at my weather app and it tells me we’re going to dip back into a trough of cold for the weekend. Seems like we just can’t catch a break.
According to the calendar, there’s thirty more days until spring. A lot can happen in a month. My Pennsylvania Dutch roots have taught me there’s always an Onion Snow, one last dusting of white after the green shoots of onion starts poke through the dirt. March has ushered in several blizzards over the years dumping more than thirty inches of snow. My plows and snow shovels remain vigilant.
One thing is for certain, there’s only three more Sundays I’ll be driving into the blinding sun. People may grumble about pushing their clocks forward, but if it means not batting my visors back and forth as I wind my way south I’m all for it.
This weekend will also be the last market of winter hours at Bethesda Central Farm Market. Patrons will be able to get their goodies a half hour earlier so they can get on with their day and I will have to tighten my morning routine to be at market, set up and ready to go. I’m just grateful last week I was able to have my technology warm enough to function by the time customers poured in. Nothing has been more frustrating than a credit card machine that refuses to turn on. Few carry cash anymore, even when you give them a valid reason.
The best signs of spring that make me happy are online if you can believe it. They are the pictures from all the markets’ field farmers with greenhouses loaded with what will become their spring harvests and summer crops for the coming market season. I’ve seen flats of spinach, Swiss chard, collards, and mustards. While sprouts have satisfied my need for greens during the bleak months of winter, but I can’t wait to shamelessly use a large bunch of kale in a pot of bean and sausage soup. For now I’ll have to stick to root vegetables.
Could it be that our always on/always available modern lifestyle is what has led to rampant unhappiness? You want strawberries? No big deal, just pick some up at the store even though they’ll be tasteless tiny sacks from Mexico. No, I’d rather wait in anticipation for those first juicy local fruits packed with fresh-picked flavor that deliver unsurmountable joy, well, at least until blackberry season and then cherry season and then peach season. Never have I seen anyone giddy over pairing hot house tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, but when those big colorful beauties show up there’s never enough mozzarella to go around. We need something to look forward to. Shopping at the farmers market and eating seasonally is the remedy. For now those insulated coveralls are hanging on the hook ready for more chilly market mornings. As much as I’d like to give them a good washing and pack them up until next year, not quite yet.