Farmer's Market entry

Farmer's Market banner, displaying the days and time it's open

-          It’s a nice weather here in Garden Grove, and just around 11am is when I arrived at the Farmer’s Market.This Farmer's Market is located in Garden Grove Boulevard and Historic Main Street. In comparison to the Farmer’s Market in Irvine, the one in Garden Grove is a lot smaller, since not a lot of people go here as much.  The merchants here are mostly consisted of Mexicans, with a few asians, and some whites.  I saw some of the labels on the fruits and vegetables, and one thing that caught my eye was the location of the where they got the food from; Oxnard, CA.  I asked the worker where Oxnard was located, and he told me it was located in Central Valley, so I automatically thought “oh okay, it’s central California.” I also asked him how the food get transported here, and he said “well I usually drive with a truck, back to back 3 times a week, but it’s fine, I like it.” Can you imagine, driving about 4 hours back to back from Central Valley to Orange County? Not only do you have to drive over 100 miles to get to your destination, but you  also have to face traffic in the freeway, and humid weather in that Central Valley. 

Sweet Strawberries, grown in Oxnard, CA

 Food samples of plums, peaches, strawberries, etc.

Wide selection of vegetables

Along the aisle of fresh fruits to take the heat away from me, I got to try some white nectarine and yellow nectarine, which tasted pretty sweet and refreshing.  I did not see any meat or seafood products there, so this farmer's market has purely fruits, vegetables, popcorn, basically any food except for the meat.   One thing I noticed at the market was that there was a fan, with water constantly spraying over the vegetables; I thought that was a good way to keep the products fresh and clean, avoiding the heat wave from the sun.  One of the things Pollan said in his text In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is to "eat well grown food from healthy soils." (169)  He basically wanted us to eat food that is grown on soil that is healthy, where nothing is processed or modified.  Looking back at all the food that I have tasted at the market, the fruits tasted really fresh, and most of the food were grown in central California where most of the farms are located.  Because farmer's market is based on season, summer is usually the season where the farmers go into hard labor to plant seeds and fertilize them with good soil.

Chile Lemon Nuts

Variety of nuts sold at Farmer's Market

Besides the fruits and vegetables sold at the market, I decided to try some of the nuts that the merchants were sampling off.  If you look at one of the pictures I took with the Chile lemon nuts, that tasted pretty hot and sour, but in a good way.  I looked at the prices for these nuts, and I was not as surprised as how expensive it is: $4 per pound.  I notice that a lot of these items at the farmer's market are moderately expensive, because these are items that are grown organically.  Unfortunately, I did not buy anything here at the market because they were a bit pricey for me, but at least I got to try out some samples!