The very last day

Today is the very last day of the Provincetown Farmers' Market. Two weeks ago, we lost Orleans, Tuesday, it'll be Sandwich. We are falling into winter all too quickly for my taste.

The season's over; I understand that. Daylight is shrinking, the earth cooling, weather growing more formidable by the day. But that doesn't mean the market has to be over.

My mother sent me this email last week: It's official! she announced. Brunswick will have a winter farmers' market, every Saturday starting November 8th and running through the last Saturday in April. Hours are 9am to noon, in the Maine Barn at Granite Farm, 93 Casco Road.

Brunswick, my hometown, is in Maine. It is certainly colder there, and at a latitude where even less winter sunshine is to be expected, and yet the market is going to persist. There'll be storage onions and squash and winter greens and cabbage, and plenty of potatoes and meat and eggs, I bet, too. Brunswick isn't the first Maine town to do this; its neighbor, Bath, held one last year to riotous success.

There's no reason we can't start generating interest here for people to do the same. Surely we can find a central location—a restaurant closed down for the winter, a school gymnasium empty on a Saturday morning—and a group of farmers willing to continue selling year round. It may take a few seasons, to be sure, but if there are those of you out there willing to help me get started, I say we give it a try.

Comments posted to this blog are emailed to me directly. If you wish to send a private message, you can write me at elspeth.pierson@gmail.com. Let's get started!