McMullen: A day in the life of the Sedalia Farmers' Market

I had a pretty good time the last time I made it down to the Sedalia Area Farmers’ Market and for that reason I’m going to try to make it something I do at least once a year.
I guess they liked the stories that I wrote last time well enough because they seemed happy to have me back. For the second time I set up my garage sale camping chair in the main market tent and set about observing another day at the market.

It would have been easy to assume that the light green shopping bags from the market’s inaugural year carried some of sort of discount with them or something because many of the early visitors toted it proudly. The distinct corners of the square bags weren’t so distinct anymore — they had bulged out into a more traditional bag shape from repeated use. It seemed that some of the seasoned market pros preferred to arrive earlier rather than later.
I was greeted with enthusiasm by faithful market fanatic Miranda Appleby, who seemed ready to take on the role of official market spokesperson no matter what anyone said.
“I love it here,” she exclaimed, “It’s awesome.”

But soon enough the problem du jour reared its ugly head: The EBT tokens were running low.

As you might know Bothwell Regional Heatlh Center is matching every EBT dollar spent at the market until the combined total of their matches reaches 1,000 dollars. 30 dollars in fully spendable market tokens will only require 15 dollars off your EBT card for a little while longer but you better get down there fast if you want to take advantage of it because the program is quite popular and they’re already distributed over 600 dollars worth of matching tokens.
And while the people are responding well to the match program they aren’t essentially spending all of them on the same day that they are buying them and that’s led to something of a deficit in specially marked wooden EBT tokens.

But soon a rack of plastic poker chips had arrived and would act as chip substitutes if such a thing became necessary.

Soon Terri Kees took one of the seats beside me with market dog Chester in tow.

“You remember Chester, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, Chester Fancypants,” I replied.

“Chester P. Fancypants,” she corrected.

And the sad thing was that at the time I could remember the dog’s given surname but I could not remember Kees’. I felt a little bad when I asked her about it. I guess Fancypants is a pretty distinct last name for a dog.

I guess turnabout was fair play when one of the volunteers called me “Justin” later in the day.

It seemed that the new market location on the Missouri State Fairgrounds was helping attendance, and that thought was later confirmed by Kees.

“This location has been so much better for the vendors,” she said “Sometimes people are still driving up as we’re trying to close.”

As I introduced myself to some of the vendors that I didn’t recognize I came upon the stand of one Bracken Graves. The back of his red pickup was loaded down with corn on the cob and covered with a plastic tarp. I had already heard about his bi-color corn from some of the people at the market stand.

He told me of his family strain, called Ambrosis, and how he had brought it back. It did look good but the master of the garden in my backyard wouldn’t be very happy if I brought home someone else’s corn. On that day I would just have to take their word for it.

As the day went on it was clear that there were two offerings that were quite popular with the small staff of volunteers that was “working” the market: Val Larm’s famous caramel corn and the neglected aquarium green Yarba maté brew.

The “tea” is brewed from the stems and leaves of the South American mate plant and the result is distinctly green. It was being sold that day at the temporary satellite location of the Common Ground Bakery in Warsaw.

And the market tent was littered with these drinks at all times. I eventually made it back over there to try one for myself since they raved about it. Public samples were prepared in small paper cups but they graciously gave me a full sized one for free. Among the flavors available were lime, peach and peach-lime. I opted for just peach, though the combination flavor was quite intriguing.

And it was quite good. The peach flavor didn’t overpower the drink and the honey sweeter complimented it quite nicely. But it wasn’t the only free sustenance I would receive that day.
A cooking presentation by Bev Hayes yielded a “Mushroom Bruschetta”. It was, essentially, mushrooms that had been sautéed and loaded on a small piece of toast. They were quite tasty — she insisted that the mushrooms had a beefy flavor but the texture was making me think chicken.

And she made me promise to note where the ingredients came from: the bread was courtesy of Common Ground Bakery in Warsaw and the oyster mushrooms were courtesy of Rick and Anita Hanks of Beau Solais Farm.

I was surprised to learn that Hanks’ mushrooms grew from stalactite-like plastic bags.

“It’s like a scene from “Van Helsing”, joked Hanks.

All in all, it was another good day at the Sedalia Area Farmer’s Market. Kees even gave me a poker chip that hadn’t yet been marked “EBT” to keep as a souvenir.

“More people should come here,” insisted Appleby, “There’s great food and it’s really fun.”