On Saturday, October 10, I went to the farmers market at the Veterans Building in Santa Rosa for vegetables. It's a parking lot at 1351 Maple Ave, by Brookwood, and for a few hours it fills with white tents. I brought one bag and filled it.
Triple T Ranch & Farm
Triple T has a black banner with gold lettering: organic produce, est. 1983, and a line that says we grow what we sell. In October the table is a color chart. Yellow and green squash, eggplants, winter squash, small pumpkins lined up along the top, heirloom tomatoes in cardboard boxes, green peppers in baskets.
I took tomatoes, bell peppers and eggplants. The tomatoes were superb, and the peppers and eggplants kept up. If you're going to buy one thing here, make it the tomatoes. More on the stand in October at Triple T.
Coyote Family Farm
I don't have a photo of the Coyote Family Farm table. I should have taken one. What I have is the cucumbers: they smell like cucumbers. That sounds like nothing until you try to remember the last time a store cucumber smelled like anything. I also took basil.
Basil is the easiest thing to underbuy at a market. I'd get twice what I think I need.
Getting it all home
Tomatoes go on the counter, not in the fridge, where cold dulls them. Basil sits in a jar of water like flowers, because the fridge turns it black. Eggplants and peppers will wait a few days. Cucumbers are the one thing I'd eat first, while they still smell like cucumbers.
The rest of the lot
One stall I can't name. The banner says Farm Fresh Produce, with a pickup truck painted on it, and the table has buckets of sunflowers and pink blooms, bundles of eucalyptus, apples in baskets and greens. If you know whose it is, I'd like to know.
Butter and cheese from Pacheco Family Ranch got their own story: Better Butter, Off a Folding Table. Mushrooms, bread and soup are in Three Stalls, One Thing From Each.
Everything on this list is also in the store. The cucumbers were the proof that it isn't the same list.