Hand to Hand: A Farmers Market In August

At the market today, I watched people move among tables and bins piled with edible things, and I watched the way everything was lifted, turned, touched and weighed by many hands reaching, tapping, squeezing or gripping.  Hands connected buyers, sellers, and the living gems laid out before them.

August, hot and dry, beats down hard in the Central Valley of California.  In fact, not too far from the cold, mist-laden coast, in closer coastal valleys, heat is a daunting challenge for farmers and growers.  Care must be taken to preserve moisture in the soil so that roots are not desiccated and ruined.  Crops must be timed so that peak growth occurs before the severe heat of August comes.  What was green last month is exploding this month with sweet and juicy flavor.

Today, in cool Monterey, we shoppers saw ripened fruit lying in heaps, fresh from Hollister, Gilroy, San Juan Bautista and further south, appreciated that hot sunlight in those areas produced all that vivid glory.  I was excited by all the market offered and the brilliant colors of August.  I joined the crowd of shoppers, my hands telling me what I needed to know beyond what my eyes could see.

Peaches and plums, berries and tomatoes are at their peak right now.  We know this by seeing their varieties and plenty, but we know it because we pick them up and feel them, heft them in the cup of our hands, compare them to past memories of hoisting fruit at markets in other towns or countries, as grandmothers and mothers taught us, or friends and fathers did.

A hand that has lifted a thousand red bell peppers knows that the heavy one with cool firm skin is the one going into the bag.  We shoppers trusted our hands.  With eyes moving over the surfaces and shapes of what the hands were to touch, palms and fingers were moved quickly and lightly, or slowly and very gently grasping tender small things.

Toughened hands of farmers reached across tables to offer parts of pluots, hoist bags of berries and measure the weight of squashes.  Their blunted nails and cracked skin, roughed with dirt and burned by the August sun, handed us our carefully chosen, beautiful food.  Our smoother hands received the bags and boxes to carry home in sacks hung from the crooks of our fingers.  We formed a link - across miles, regions, generations - each time we passed coins for what we'd selected, from hand to hand, on this summer morning in the midst of August.