The Farmer's Market

I work in downtown Minneapolis and every Thursday they have a Farmer's Market all along Nicollet Mall. It is fun to go down and look at all of the fresh grown veggies and smell all the wonderful smells. I don't buy much since my garden produces enough. Besides I don't know where it was grown and how fresh it is. I think a lot of people assume that everything is grown locally, but that obviously is not the case - not when they are selling things like Bannanas, pineapples, avocados, etc. And even things like watermelon that could not possibly be ripe locally yet. Some things it is pretty obvious that they are fresh and some of the vendors speak English so you can ask them, but I think some of the produce in the store is probably fresher. I don't buy much produce in the stores either since I grow so much, but I have got to check the prices on a few items - there were several people today selling fresh raspberries at $5 a pint! Oh my God, I cannot believe that. My kid picks and eats a pint of raspberries daily - I would go broke if I had to pay for them - and they only had red ones, none of the wonderful tasting yellow and black that we have in addition to the red. I wonder how much they are in the store if they are that much at the Farmer's Market - for some reason I always thought the Farmer's Market had better prices. And they were selling jars of currant jelly for $4.50 each. Wow. Last year when I was unemployed, I did sell a few jars of jelly, but I would have felt guilty charging that much. Maybe I should buy a hobby farm and sell at the Farmer's Market myself instead of working in an office all day.......wait, this reminds me of my catering business that I tried several years ago when I lived in AZ. While it was quite successful, it was no fun. Cooking and baking is a wonderful hobby, but when you turn it into your business, all of the joy goes out of it. I bet the same thing would happen with a hobby farm. I think I will just keep things the way they are for now. But I will still go and walk through the Farmer's Market every Thursday - it beats eating lunch at my desk.