Decorah Farmer's Market

These are last weeks items from our local farmer's market(excluding meat). Our farmer's market is nice because it is small and eventually you get to know the vendors you buy from. And we have pretty good variety considering its size. There are vendors who sell meat, eggs, cheese, honey, vegetables, baked goods, jams, and even jewelry. In this picture are green beans, radicchio, endive, spinach, broccoli and lettuce. The flowers are actually from a local Quaker family that does a flower subscription business(you sign up to get a delivery of flowers every week for the whole season-ours was a gift ).

I have one vendor that I buy all my produce from. His produce is organic, though not certified, and is always so good. He also has extremely low prices. I sometimes get frustrated at farmer's markets because they can be too expensive. They charge "boutique" prices for heirloom tomatoes and fancy lettuce mixes. I think that the food should be priced to eat not put on display. However, I do realize that organic and high quality food has a higher cost than conventional food bought in a supermarket and I am willing to pay a reasonable amount more.

Last night while talking with some friends we chatted about how much we would be willing to pay to eat high quality local food. We all seemed to be in agreement that we would be willing to pay significantly more than normal prices. Most of us are willing to make sacrifices(and many are) to try to eat healthy for ourselves and for the environment.