Greenmarket
Sara and her farm are our winter neighbors in Union Square. I'm always flattered when a fellow farmer trades here and look at the hat she knit from the wool.
If the truth be told, I don't shop at every stand in the market but I do have my vices; Hawthorne Valley sells one of them: a "Luscious Lemon Cupcake" made with corn meal and frosted with a sugared quark that will teach you how to read and write Dutch by the 2nd bite. And it's biodynamic too.
New York City's annual Dance Parade, so proclaimed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, came down Broadway and passed Union Square last Saturday. This year there were 5,291 dancers in 60 dance styles from Algerian to Zydeco. I kept my eye on the belly dancers.
I worried that Fatima from Astoria would be in the parade still nursing a grudge—awhile back, Tasting Table NYC had proclaimed a new "hottest belly in town": lamb bacon—and I feared she might hold my sheep responsible for such disrespect and try to get even by terrorizing my customers with her "nihilistic belly rampage" in and around the stand. Stranger things have happened in Union Square.
In 1916 anarchist Emma Goldman rallied a crowd of garment workers for birth control in the North Plaza of the Square, long set aside for political gatherings, and now where Greenmarket farmers unpack their produce 4 days a week.
Behind Emma, in the very rear of the photo, you can see the Decker Building (2nd from the left) where, in the 70's, Andy Warhol made art inspired by tomato soup cans in The Factory which was located on the 6th floor. The building is directly across the street (which the dancers paraded down) from where I set up my stand on Saturdays. Ghosts are everywhere in Union Square.
In the juvescence of the year came Christ the tiger --T. S. Eliot
The winter was cold and long; taking coats off, our limbs were innocent of sun. Sunday was Orthodox Easter and lamb came on strong. New York springs are short, days between extremes, too perfect for business, days when you feel you don't have to buy anything.
But it finished early. Light rain began to fall about 3 PM—this emptied the market—the rain came down harder and soaked us as we loaded the truck. Now it was a race to get out of town and through Jersey before Rte. 17 was deluged. But when I got to Mahwah the rain was coming down in sheets, traffic crawled and made waves across the flooded roadway, the wipers were helpless, "cant you see the tears roll down the street." Stevie Ray Vaughn was on my iPod, Hanna was here, I was halfway home. Secretly, I like the rain, it soothes me.
But contrary to the forecast—Hanna stalled—the rain stopped around 5:30 AM as I sped toward New York through the wealthiest bedroom communities of New Jersey: Saddle River, where Richard Nixon slept after his White House years; and Ho-Ho-Kus where John McCain should doze instead of in the White House. As far as I know George Washington never slept in New Jersey.
Zoe, Monica and I set the stand up, we put the yarn and lamb out, and we waited for the rain or for the people to come—usually it’s one or the other—but neither came. It wasn't the weather that kept people home, it was the forecast. I guess New Yorkers were sleeping-in and dreaming of pleasant indoor distractions to keep them out of the rain.
Bad weather forecasts are as bad as bad weather. Everybody blames the weatherman for them, but a forecast with a chance of rain of 30% means that it will rain in 30% of the forecast area. So if it rains on you, don't blame the weatherman, it might be sunny on the other side of town—you'll never know—you can’t be in two places at the same time.
There have been few really bad Saturdays days so far this year, but this looks to be a zero-sum day. Rain won't hurt the wool as it dries out and unsold lamb comes back frozen; but vegetable growers lose sales and their harvest too—vegetables are perishable—when they're ripe and ready, you pick'em or lose'em, raindrops to come or not.
"Gonna take a walk down to Union Square, you never know who you're gonna find there..." Run, Run, Run The Velvet Underground and Nico.
Saturday at market was warm with a high of 43, good weather for selling wool. My cell phone rang about 1 PM; it was Clara back at the farm telling me that ewes from the breeding group were walking out on the frozen pond. When I heard this I saw sheep plunging through the thin ice like children. The horrific thing about frozen pond rescues is that more often than not the rescuer falls in and dies too, or this tragic aspect is what makes it news.
Clara said she shook a feed bucket at the sheep and they came off the pond, but when they realized the ruse, several walked back on the ice again. Clara didn't know what to do. I knew what to do, but I couldn't fence them back from the pond until tomorrow. I wouldn't get back to the farm until after dark.
But what to do now?
Then it hit me, "Break the ice!" around the edge of the pond, I told her, and that should keep the sheep on shore. Use heavy stones, a sledge hammer... She said she would try; I went back to my market customers preoccupied with visions of foundering sheep.
I called Clara back at 3 PM; she said the ice was too thick to break but she was keeping an eye on the sheep and so far they were all well. I thanked her. When night fell, Dominique and I packed up. It had been a good day at market. We got back to the farm about 8 PM detouring around a maddening traffic jam in Jersey.
On the way to the barn we drove past the pond. Dominique gasped, "Look, the ice is broken." My heart sank like a sheep. But when we got closer what we thought to be broken ice was thinner, darker ice near the pond's overflow. The ice on the pond was intact. The ewes were safe. We looked at each other and shook our heads in either belief or disbelief, I'm not sure which.
The day had begun at 3 AM but it wasn't over yet, we had to feed grain to the sheep. We carried pails of oats to the ewes illuminated by the headlights of the truck. When we stepped over the net fence the hungry sheep swarmed around. Their long shadows flashed across the yard disorienting us like a disco strobe.
Sheep being fed are loud and cacophonous; with a pail in hand they will rush you, bang into your knees, knock you off balance then sometimes push you face first into a trough feeder all the while desperately telling you how hungry they are, and butt in the air you will cuss them. It was good to be home.
The farm stand in Union Square, New York City on a Saturday in October. Many 1000's of people will pass by on a nice day. Greenmarket is one of the oldest modern farmers' markets in the country having been there for 31 years and it is probably the busiest. But of course farmers' markets have been around for centuries; wherever you found a town square you might find a farmer and his produce.