Pike Place Market

For many in the Pacific Northwest, a love of fresh fruits and vegetables date back to childhood memories - maybe eating watermelon at a backyard barbeque with friends or snacking on home garden grown carrots pealed and cut by a loving parent. Personally I remember raiding the Asian plum and Bing cherry trees next to the fence line at minimum once a day during the harvest season.

I cherished the ability to pick and eat freely as children tend to do and my mother cherished her ability easily identify my whereabouts given away by the color of my tongue and fingers after eating the fruits. Nowadays it’s difficult to recreate that process while living within city limits – gone are the days of cherries and plumbs at will.

I find relief in learning how fresh produce can be if purchased through the appropriate channels even while living within city limits. Today I was happy to learn that multiple famers selling produce at City Hall Plaza did so with product that was less than 24 hours removed from local fields, bushes and trees. Sidhu Farms picked raspberries and strawberries just this morning that were available for sale by 10am. There is no mystery why they sold out of many varieties before the end of business today. Dandelion greens from Full Circle Farm were being sold to customers less than 12 hours after picking, as were sugar snap peas from local Hmong farmers. Rainier cherries and Sweet Juliet apricots were also available from farms that were hand picked just Sunday. The colors, flavors and textures were unmistakably fresh, radiating local. It makes one think of where produce was just 48 hours ago when purchased from a chain grocer – probably not still attached to local soil.   

Today the City Hall Plaza Express Market provided me a subtle reminder of the days of my youth. While snacking on a Bing cherry at the satellite Market, I remembered how I once picked cherries from the tree limbs, eating them without second thought. Today it dawned on me that I wasn’t picking the produce myself, but I was able to shake the hand of someone who did.