I was on the mainland yesterday visiting my friends Steve and Katherine at their farmstand. Among the many topics we discussed was, what I will call the Farmstand, or Farm Shop, Ethos.¹ The Farmstand, or Farm Shop, differs from a Farmers’ Market because they are semi-permanent structures on or adjacent to the farm itself, they are generally open for more than one day a week, can be open for longer than the immediate season, and become somewhat of a destination in themselves.

Farmstands, or Farm Shops,² typically sell the produce, meats and products produced on the farm they are associated with, although sometimes many farms may collaborate on a joint venture, each contributing complimentary products. This is all basic stuff most consumers grasp when presented with the concept of “Farmstand”. I grew up visiting a rustic old place by the side of the road, just in front of a cornfield. Every year throughout my childhood it was the same. Old cash register, whitewashed building and produce racks, some of which were covered with torn and faded vinyl shelf liner, and a dirt floor. The produce came and went with the seasons, as did the number of sticky, fly tapes hanging from the roof. I’m not sure where the power came from out there, but there was enough to power the register and the 1940’s vintage oscillating fan which sat high up in one corner of the covered, wooden stand. To me it meant summer and meant great food would follow each visit there.

What came up in discussion yesterday wasn’t this image from history, but how in the local area there are basically three different visions of the “Farmstand” and how they affect consumer’s perception of what it means to buy locally. Firstly, there is the latest incarnation of what a Farmstand or Farm Shop has become–the mega-crammed, ticky-tacky, tourist trap. Many of the products sold there are, despite the labels and marketing, not local or rural but are imported knockoffs or commercially processed. The sell produce which they buy in, alongside the meager products of their own operation. Often these operations have radically different pricing structures–one, high priced model for their own goods and then super-cheap prices on trucked in stuff to get you in the door. Quite often the whole shell of such places–the paved parking lots, or neon signs and roadside Burma Shave campaign Style billboards, and new, Barn-esque style buildings leave you wondering how they are paying for it all. These places sponsor “Harvest Daze” celebrations in the Autumn and have mock-pumpkin patches–set up so no one gets dirty–and giant air-filled pumpkins for the kiddies and hay-rides around a circular tracks lined with hay bales, corn shocks and leaf piles. It seems more about the marketing and gloss, the distilled, cleanly image of farming. They have as much to do with the actual production of food as visiting a filling station does with oil production.

The second vision is at the opposite end of the scale. This, however, is the Farmstand you’ve heard about. Perhaps you’ve met the farmers at the Farmers’ Market, bought and enjoyed their food. Their products are for sale in the Co-Op. They command a premium price, but having met the farmer you buy into the vision. You pick up a brochure, pile into the car and head off into the back of beyond to buy directly from the farm! After passing lush fields and grazing cattle, woodland glens and babbling brooks the country magic is hard at work. Yet, as you reach the farm you are met not with the vision you have built in your head, or have had built for you by clever words. You are met with the guts of the vision, as it were. The muddy track into the farm is rutted and stony. The fields around the Farmstand are dingy, overgrazed or have their fences falling in. You park next to a manure covered tractor. Even though the sign at the road says “Open” no one is around and you are left to poke around in the open, dusty machine sheds and chicken houses. Inside the Farmstand the vision returns, comfy and cosy you are treated to mulled cider or coffe and tea. You can select your produce and meats and visit. There are goods from neighboring farms for sale. When you pay, you are hit by the premium that is being charged for the vision which brought you here in the first place. A bit shocked, a bit dazed you fumble back to your car never to return. Perhaps you will continue to buy the high-priced, locally produced goods from them through the markets in town, perhaps not. On thing is you won’t be returning to the farm itself again. Ever.

The third vision represents something of a middle ground between the two. It is an honest vision and fortunately reflects what most Farmstands or Farm Shops are like. Here you seek out locally produced goods. You’ve met the farmer at the Farmers’ Market, read an ad in the paper, or have seen a tasteful sign on the road. Either way you are invited out to the farm. The stand is simple. Perhaps in the corner of a barn, or purpose built. Whenever you go there, there are other people ahead of you. You are left wanting to return, again and again. And it’s not just the selection and quality of the produce, the price or desire to support a particular farmer. It’s not the other, honest products for sale, either. You return to these stands–be it for meats, dairy goods, produce, berries, artisanal crafts–because they deliver and match the vision you have. You get what you expect.

This came to me as I was speaking with my friends. They have one of the coolest Farmstands around. It is always neat–no matter what stage of farming they are in. It is always inviting and enticing. And yet, it is extremely simple–just a few tables in a rustic barn, covered with their produce and willow baskets. Their reality matches the vision I have when I am going to a farm to find ingredients. That reality and vision make me want to support them, their efforts and use their excellent products. When I do so, it gives a vibe to what I create as well.

So here we have my Farmstand Ethos. The challenge is how to get Supermarket shopping consumers–most of whom are caught up in vision #1 when they think of going to a farm in the country to buy a few tomatoes when the in-laws are in town–to accept and support vision #3 without being discouraged by brief encounters with the vision #2s of the world.³ When most people hear and think “Organic Milk” they almost always envision black and white Holsteins munching away on lush pastures and hand-milked my buxom maidens (well, perhaps that last part is my vision. . . .) That is what the “vision” of “Organic Dairy” is in its purest sense. When presented with the industrial organic reality of confined cows on feedlots being fed organic grains and trucked in silage they should be rightfully outraged. They are being charged a premium for a lie.

There is a growing trend of dissatisfaction with conventional agriculture and commercial, corporate control of the food system. As more people seek out local, organic, regional products Farmers, Chefs and Consumers already in the know must work doubly hard to ensure vision #3 doesn’t loose out to the false glitz of #1 or the flim-flam of #2. If the only way to know your food is truly safe is to buy locally from farmers you know, can trust and can visit, than you should at least be presented with a true, honest image of that farmer surrounded by their hard work, dirt under the fingernails, smudge on chin, happy to see that you came to their farm. Anything else will just send the fence-riders and weak-spirited back to the comfort zone and corporately controlled blandness of the Mega-Mart.

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1. While Ethos is defined as “The distinguishing character, beliefs or moral nature of a person, group, or institution” or alternatively, “the distinctive spirit of a culture or an era”, I think we can apply the term here, albeit loosely, to the make up, character and feel of a self-run, independent agricultural enterprise which people seek out because the foods, items and goods for sale are of a local, rural and self-made nature. [↩]
2. I’m not really sure of the distinction beyond perhaps that the term “Farm Shop” is used more often in the UK and connotes something a bit more upscale than a fruit and veg stand. [↩]
3. Don’t get me wrong about Vision #2. The farmers who work hard to create a premium product and market it well and charge accordingly deserve every penny they earn. They are over-time extended as they get bigger to make more demand for their products and loose sight of the intersection between their reality and the vision they are creating. It is this dis-union between the high cost of the product which the vision makes acceptable and the murky reality which hides and clouds the acceptability of such a high cost that often drives people away, not usually a deficiency in the quality of what they produce. [↩]