Story by Corinne Kocher
Photos by Bailey Garrot
Shared Plates
The Athens Farmers Market is full of characters with something to say. To catch a glimpse of this community, we asked six market attendees the same three questions:
1 - What's your favorite part of living in the Athens area?
2 - Why do you believe it's important to know your farmer?
3 - If you were a fruit or vegetable, what would you be and why?
Tanner M.
1 - "The community! I moved here recently, and I got in immediately with this farm [Tanner is a farmhand at Hearts of Harvest Farm]. I've been immersed in the culture of the agriculture and the markets. I play music as well, and I feel like those scenes tie together here. The community and the culture around here is pretty sweet."
2 - "You know what you're eating. If you know the people, you know what you're getting, especially when you're organic like we are. From an energetic standpoint, I feel like there is a deeper connection there in my mind, knowing the people that are producing this food. It makes the food taste better."
3 - [Interviewer: "If your baby was a fruit or vegetable, what would they be and why?"] "I think he might be a chickpea. My sister calls him chickpea, and that fits. Chickpea or snap pea maybe. [baby cries] He likes it. His name? Calen, short for the flower calendula."
Danny M.
1 - "So far, honestly, these farmers markets. I just moved here about a year ago. I grew up in Atlanta, so we had those big farmers market, and a couple small ones but they weren't as fun to go to. "
2 - "So you know you're not eating crap! You gotta know what you're eating - especially with meat and stuff like that. I've learned this over the years, I don't want to eat trash and a bunch of chemicals."
3 - "That is really difficult. I want to say pumpkin, just because I really like pumpkins and Halloween and how spooky they are. And there's a pumpkin right there, see, we look so much alike."
Jim C.
1 - "I live in Bogart, a suburb of Athens. I love things like this market - anything in the downtown area, the music scene, and stuff like that. Sports is big but it's not the biggest thing in my life. I just really enjoy a small town, a college town. It's a lot of fun here."
2 - "I've got friends that come here, they also go to the market in Bishop Park, so I came here. I just think the vegetables are good. I think the tomatoes are terrific compared to what you get at the grocery store. I love the salted pretzels. And I like the beer too, can't count that out."
3 - "Gee… I think I'd be one of these tomatoes. They just taste so much better, they've got a lot of flavor. [interviewer: "So you're saying you have a lot of flavor?"] I am. I'm a very flavorful guy. You've come to the right place, ha!"
Angela T.
1 - Being able to have the bus system. We don't have a vehicle, so it definitely helps a lot. It's accessible, you can pretty much get anywhere you need to go on the buses.
2 - "It's like if you go to a store and you don't like the people there, more than likely you wouldn't go back. So if the farmer is someone you trust, and you can hear about how they grow the vegetables, that's good. That was different for me, because I used to think all farms were the same. I didn't realize there were organic farmers. There are so many different people here that you probably wouldn't come across unless you were at the farmers market.
It was really nice that me and a friend of mine got into the nutrition class program [Farm Rx]. We were able to do that and start getting the tokens to come here and use them. Overall it's been a really good experience. Sometimes my family struggles, with food and everything, but it has helped a lot, it really has. And, you get used to seeing the same farmers repeatedly, so you're like, 'I remember you from last time!' That's really cool."
3 - "That is awkward! I think I'd be a banana. Not just because of the sweetness, but it seems like it's healthy, compared to some fruits - it has potassium. At the same time, it makes me smile because it's yellow and it's really bright. And it's in the shape of a smile. It makes people happy."
Chris L.
1 - "All the people, just the association - I know everybody there has bought stuff from me in the past. They're all so friendly, and I'm just so humbled when they come up to my booth [Rhonda's Blueberries] and buy some of my products, it's wonderful. Because I live out in the boonies and there's nobody to talk to except my blueberry plants. It's just me, I'm a one man band - so this market is my event."
2 - "Oh gosh, it's vitally important. You can't go into any grocery store and talk to the farmer who grew the product. They're never there, and it wasn't picked today or yesterday, it was a month ago or longer. But every product that you see here was harvested today - and it's all organic. You can ask any kind of questions about the product, and there's the farmer that grew it, and he has all the answers."
3 - "I would be a blueberry, of course. I AM blueberry. I live and breathe blueberries, ok? I grow blueberries. I have 1200 mature plants as big as that tent right there, and I planted them all with these hands. I put up an eight-foot deer fence to keep them out and enclosed a five acre field, ran my own irrigation, planted my own plants, and I've been doing it for ten years. I've been a vendor here for nine years at the AFM.
[interviewer: "surprised you haven't turned blue yet!"] "It's a wonder I don't look like a Smurf, because it's one in the mouth, two in the bucket, all day long every day. That's how you know what you're harvesting. If you're eating every third one, then you gotta know something. And if I'm picking inferior blueberries, then I know it. I shoot for extraordinary blueberries, not ordinary blueberries, there's a difference."
Corinne Kocher and Bailey Garrot are the writer-photographer team behind Shared Plates, a blog exploring food in the world and how it gets to the table. Read all of their work at www.shared-plates.com and follow them on Instagram @sharedplatesatl.