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Good books, old friends

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By Kara G. Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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It is a wonderful year-round resource for fresh foods and flowers. But I like it best at harvest time when almost every stall is occupied by local farmers and gardeners proudly displaying their results from the summer growing season.

Not being able to decide whose sweet corn or peaches to buy, while trying to ignore the tempting pastries from the bakery counters, is a nice dilemma to have.

Even if I do not really need anything, sometimes I just enjoy strolling through the stalls, absorbing the tantalizing aromas and observing more knowledgeable cooks carefully examine the goods on display and converse with the vendors about them.

Undoubtedly they are swapping cultivation techniques, recipes and food lore the like of which can be found in several cookbooks which have farmers' markets as their themes.

While searching library and online bookstore catalogs for information about these cookbooks, I was pleasantly surprised to discover two books which focus specifically on Michigan farmers' markets and stands.

Ann Arbor Fresh! (Agrakane Inc., 1998, 200 pages, $15.50), is a compilation of recipes and stories inspired by Ann Arbor's Farmers' Market and Kerrytown Historic District shops by Ann Arbor residents Raquel B. Agranoff and Lois Kane.

Celebrate the Harvests! Michigan Farm Markets and Farm Stands (Wm. B. Eerdsmans Publishing Co., 191 pages, $14.99) is a general guide to farm markets and stands throughout the state by Grand Rapids residents Don and Nelle Frisch.

Ann Arbor Fresh! intrigued me most because I logged a fair amount of time in the Kerrytown shops during the years it took me to complete my graduate work in library and information studies at the University of Michigan.

Granted, I spent most of my weekly commutes in campus classrooms and libraries, but at the end of each semester I would treat myself to an expedition to Kerrytown. I usually spent at least an hour at Kitchen Port browsing the eclectic cookbook, dishware and cookware collections.

Unfortunately, I never made it on a market day so I was eager to learn from Agranoff and Kane what I missed.

Agranoff is co-founder of Ann Arbor's Moveable Feast Restaurant and author of two other cookbooks. Kane is a freelance writer and former columnist for the Ann Arbor Observer. Their well-researched recipes and stories are only intended to show the specific appeal of the Kerrytown market. But a great deal about farmers' markets in general can be inferred.

Divided into sections for appetizers, soups and salads, entrees, side dishes, desserts, sauces and "embellishments," the recipes cover everything but will not appeal to everyone. Like Ann Arbor cuisine itself, they tend to be sophisticated. Many would probably require a visit to a specialty food store as well as an outdoor market to find all the ingredients.

Their profiles of 35 Kerrytown shop owners and market day vendors show the determination, diversity and originality that have helped the market to thrive since 1919 and the shops since 1969.

If you are a fan of Zingerman's, Kitchen Port or other Kerrytown stores, you will not want to miss the authors' brief but informative portraits of them and their founders.

Yet their interviews with several of the market day vendors, fully demonstrating the difficulties and rewards of an antiquated and outmoded occupation in our increasingly nonagrarian economy, provide this book's most intriguing reading material.

As Agranoff and Kane suggest, it is the best and freshest variety of seasonal produce and "the pure sensual and communal pleasure of simply being there" that continue to bring customers to farmers' markets.

But what keeps the small truck farming businesses coming, especially to a city like Ann Arbor where not only chain groceries but several specialty food markets and stores give them competition?

The authors provide an eye-opening account of a typical market day from a vendor's perspective.

"Market days are extremely difficult for the vendors. They spend the day — and often a good part of the night before — gathering, washing, and bundling their produce and flowers. They get up in the wee hours in order to arrive at the market before 6 a.m. Often it's miserably cold and rainy. They stand for most of the day. They must be congenial no matter what the circumstances or how trying the customer. Why do they do it? Because they love it."

The farmers, like their customers, are "people who enjoy the gregarious hubbub of the marketplace." As the authors' interviews reveal, they are also people who love the land, the farming profession and are willing to work very hard to preserve their way of life.

Judy and Dale Bennett sell vegetables at the market from their farm in Petersburg. Judy tells the authors that she and her husband work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week during the growing season to maintain their vegetables and flowers. In the winter, they sell firewood and Christmas wreaths.

Several others profiled work more than one job or run multiple businesses to make ends meet. But market days, when they get to congregate with other people who appreciate quality fruits and vegetables as much as they do, makes it all worthwhile.

As Virginia Hammond, an organic farmer who has been hawking her produce at the Ann Arbor market since 1952, says, "‘I don't make that much money but I feel the people need good food.'"

I had originally planned to give equal time to Celebrate the Harvests! But its failure to even mention Flint's market led me to the quick conclusion that it is hardly a comprehensive guide to Michigan farm markets, stands and harvest festivals.

Written by two freelance writers whose only credentials are a love for fresh food and farm products, the recipes are more down-to-earth than those of Ann Arbor Fresh! and conveniently arranged by season.

However, their hurried, amateurish descriptions of their favorite markets, stands and festivals fail to bring them to life the way Ann Arbor Fresh! does Kerrytown.

Published by small vanity presses, neither of these paperback guides win points for their generic, low-key presentations. Still, the trendy black and write line drawings which accompany the recipes and profiles in Ann Arbor Fresh! are preferable to the unremarkable black and white photographs in Celebrate the Harvests!

Your local library will try to obtain either book for you through interlibrary loan if they are not available on the shelves. Ann Arbor Fresh!, with its insightful analysis of a farmers' market from both customer and vendor's point of view, is the only one I recommend.

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine's contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She has a master's degree in information and library studies from the University of Michigan and works for the Genesee District Library.

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