Farmers markets are a win-win for growers, consumers

Here they stand, stall to stall, farmers with their bounty poised ready for the discriminating shopper.

A woman with her bunches of asparagus, each spear no longer than the next.

A man with his lettuces: moist, curly, crisp.

John Lane camps beside a duck. Live. Muscovy. Either a culinary temptation or an aesthetic attraction — depending on one's preference — but in synch at Columbia City's Farmers Market.

Because this market, like farmers markets everywhere, is meant to salute the small farmer as well as cater to the local neighborhood. In this part of the city, a foothold for Asian immigrants, Lane and his Muscovies fit the bill.

"She loves ducks," Aimy Truong, a fifth grader, says about her mother, Hanh, who's just paid Lane $18 for a pair of brown Muscovy hens.

"She wants the duck eggs," explains the daughter, translating her mother's Vietnamese into English. And so it goes. Foodies, gourmands and those of us who can't tell a Black Seeded Simpson from a head of Esmeralda flock to local farmers markets to satisfy wholesome eating habits as well as palates pining for variety.

"I live for the day the market opens," says Jeff Bergman, a loyal patron of the weekly market.

"I live close to PCC and that has a lot of great stuff but it's really nice to go and see 12 different kinds of apples," says Jacqueline Siegel, whose must-have item, when available, are the sugar snap peas.

Pea vines (but not those snap peas just yet) made an appearance earlier this month at the Columbia City market. May trumpets the start of most markets throughout the state, transforming parking lots and other open spaces into destination spots for sensory adventure. The aromas: green garlic, cilantro, roasted peanuts. The tastes: cherry-apple cider; pepper-smoked coho.

Shoppers answer cellphones: "I'm here at the market!"

Shoppers, with their Radio Flyer wagons and canvas totes, ogle damp bundles of produce.

"What a gorgeous site," says a woman studying a spread of Tolt Gardens heirloom lettuces.

There are 3,700 such markets in the country — a number that's doubled in the past 10 years. There are more than 100 in this state; 23 in King County alone. Gone this year is the White Center market, a victim of poor planning and a lack of staff and money, according to organizers. But there is now a Sunday market on Broadway on Capitol Hill, as well as a Friday market on Madison in the Central Area, in the parking lot at Mount Zion Baptist Church.

Farmers markets are of two molds: those with crafts vendors and those without. Some have strict rules on what percentage of vendors can sell processed food (i.e. sticky buns, preserves) or whether concessionaires are allowed.

A lifeline for small farmers

In this state, the majority of the markets are members of the Washington State Farmers Market Association. Total sales for the 89 member markets last year was $22 million, scarcely a crumb of the state's overall $29 billion food/agriculture industry.

Only about 1,500 farmers out of 36,000 statewide sell their fruits, vegetables, nuts, honey, meat, poultry, cheese and eggs at local farmers markets, according to the state Department of Agriculture. But the markets are lifelines for many small farmers across the nation whose average net income, according to federal statistics, is just $23,159 a year.

"Let's put it this way, I'm able to make a living," said farmer Steve Hallstrom, unofficially known as The Lettuce Guy at Columbia City. He sells his produce only at farmers markets.

"I sell what I grow. I grow what I sell. I didn't want to be under pressure to force things to grow because some restaurant had put in an order," he explained.

Vance Corum, a part-time marketing specialist at Washington State University in Vancouver, helped start more than 70 farmers markets throughout the country in the past 25 years. His first, in the Los Angeles-area basin, began for reasons that were nutritional (getting fresh produce into lower-income areas) as well as financial (supporting local farmers).

Given the novelty of farmers markets at the time, it took some convincing for farmers who weren't used to the idea of selling in this way, Corum said. But in time, more and more farmers came on board; neighborhoods saw the markets as community-builders; and a new generation of consumers got reacquainted with the origins and production of food.

"There's a kind of 'face on food' issue these days," agreed King County Farmbudsman Steve Evans. "More and more people want to know where their food comes from. And when you go to the farmers markets, you can see the people who've grown it. You can talk to them about how it was grown, where it was grown, and if you don't like the answer, you can go on to the next booth. Sometimes, you can even get the farmer to grow certain things."

Which is a sort of how Lane, the man with the duck, landed at Columbia City. After 28 years working as an airplane technician for Boeing, Lane was forced to retire five years ago because of a bad kidney. He had planned to do, well, nothing, until a co-worker of his wife, Pam, suggested: You have so much land. How about raising Muscovy ducks?

The co-worker was a Laotian immigrant, said Pam Lane, a woodworker. "They have a superstition that if you eat a duck that quacks, it can break up a family," she said.

Muscovies hiss, instead of quack, John Lane learned. And their meat is lean and tasty, according to some duck Web sites, although Lane hasn't eaten duck since sometime in the 1950s.

And on his farm he had a duck

The Lanes live in a blue Tudor-style house outside Snohomish, and the only things growing at the time on their six acres were some flowers, cucumbers and tomatoes. So John Lane bought nine ducklings through an ad spotted in The Little Nickel. He fed them organic feed, let them waddle around an acre and bathe in children's wading pools. When they were grown, the co-worker bought seven.

"I realize what I'm raising is a comfort food for a lot of people who weren't born here," he said.

Lane — nicknamed "Grumpy" by his first grandchild ("I'm not sure if she was trying to say 'Grandpa' or she had me pegged") — sold 300 ducks last year. Most of the transactions occurred at Grumpy's Farm, then late in the market season last year, Lane decided to publicize his ducks by staffing a stall at Columbia City.

He sells them live, as permitted by county health officials, although Lane realizes — with the exception of some of his South Asian customers — not everybody wants something so fresh. One day soon, however, Lane hopes to sell frozen duck, a popular request. A group of poultry growers are campaigning for a first-of-its-kind USDA processing facility for small-scale farmers in Western Washington.

At the market, he sits in a camper's chair, wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, hospital pager in his shirt pocket (he's on a waiting list for a kidney transplant). One duck sits in a cage at his feet. The rest are in his pickup, a more practical farm vehicle than his old sedan.

He is hardly a grump, particularly as he answers the same question over and over, most often by the children at the market, children sucking on honey sticks and slices of Mt. Fuji organics, kneeling and pointing. "What's that?"

"It's a duck," says Lane, as some parents shift uncomfortably because the next question is typically, "Why?"

"Some people buy them for food. Or for eggs. Or sometimes as pets," Lane explains.

Before the Columbia City Farmers Market opened for the day, as producers preened their tomato starts and positioned their morels, Lettuce Guy met Grumpy.

"Do they eat slugs as good as mallards?" Hallstrom asked, eyeing a hen.

"OK. I'll take two."

Florangela Davila: fdavila@seattletimes.com