Fresh produce beckons

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July 25, 2010

KEVIN CULLEN Commercial-News The Commercial-News Sun Jul 25, 2010, 04:00 AM CDT

One of the many advantages to living in town is being able to ride my bicycle to the farmers’ market. The twice-weekly event has been a fixture in the town where we live since the 1840s.

One block was laid out extra-wide to accommodate the fruit and vegetable vendors. For many years, they hauled their produce downtown in horse-drawn wagons. Now they come in vans and pickup trucks.

Almost every Saturday morning, from May through October, I head to the market. It is a highlight of my week.

I have the perfect bicycle for it. It’s a Raleigh trade bike, made in Nottingham, England, back in the 1930s or 1940s. A trade bike, sometimes called a “butchers’ bike,” has a heavier frame, and a big front rack made of steel tubing. Most were owned by small shops back when delivery boys brought your purchases to your door.

The rack is bolted to the frame, and it holds a detachable basket for fruits, vegetables or meat. The design is ingenious, because the basket — unlike a normal bicycle basket — doesn’t shift when you turn the handlebars sharply. There’s little danger of tipping over and dumping everything on the ground.

I like to ride this thing downtown to do my shopping. A trade bike is rare in this country, and many people have asked about it.

But enough about the stupid bike, already!

There are probably 40 or 50 vendors at the farmers’ market, most of them with big gardens or small farms. They often charge a bit more than the supermarket charges, but their stuff is fresher and the farmers are nice and they appreciate your business. I don’t know their names, but I like to chat with them.

Last Saturday, for instance, I bought a dozen ears of sweet corn for $3 from a radiant young Amish woman, wearing a bonnet and a long blue dress. Her children were as beautiful as she was. Her husband was dressed in black, wore a black hat, and had chin whiskers.

Each ear of corn was fat and juicy, with white and yellow kernels together, and it was picked that very morning. It was like eating candy. Nobody has better sweet corn than we do.

Then I bought a cantaloupe from an old guy with a truck full of cantaloupes and “Sugar Baby” watermelons. Mine was perfect and dead ripe. Nobody else in our house likes cantaloupe, so I was forced to devour the entire thing in two days.

I got some green beans from another farmer, then stopped by a stand run by a local bakery and bought some blueberry scones, which turned out to be awesome. Finally, I bought three big red tomatoes.

By then, the basket on my old black Raleigh was full. I pointed her east, clicked the shifter into first, and pedaled the eight blocks home … happy to be part of an old-fashioned tradition that calls me back, again and again, year after year.

Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.

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