Indiana--finally trendy

Go Big Red

You can't swing a bunch of heirloom beets these days without hitting a site, a blog, an article or an advocacy group dedicated to the joys of locally grown, organic food. It's exhausting. I mean, who doesn't love tasty vegetables that you know are the product of some kindly farmer's hard work and emotional investment. There's something about buying your vegetables at a market stand from the folks who grew them that makes them taste better than the ones you rescue from under the fake thunderstorm in the Safeway produce aisle.

But a trip to the San Francisco Ferry Plaza market or the Boulder Farmer's Market is a journey through Pretentiousville. The self-righteous yuppies, hippies, and hipsters, oy. The prices, double oy. It's enough to make you want to tackle Alice Waters and beat her to death with Michael Pollan. Love-hate doesn't even begin to describe my relationship with the upscale town farmer's market.

But this weekend I went back to my roots. Literally. I was back home (again) in Indiana and realized something. For the first time in like, EVER, Indiana is cool. The buzz is all about locally grown, community supported, sustainable agriculture and the whole country is trying to make it happen. And this is where it all started. In terms of food, everyone wants to be Indiana.

I walked through my hometown farmer's market and thought, now THIS is a freakin' farmer's market. People grow stuff and sell it here not because it's trendy, and not because it's correct--it's because people GROW SHIT here. They always have. And they can't help it--whatever you stick in the ground here is gonna grow knee-high by July and yield a bumper crop of goodness. There are tables and tables of juicy beefsteak tomatoes, giant roasting ears of corn, pints full of shiny wild blackberries, and let's not even talk about the homemade cheese, beans, zucchini, oh my god I have to go lie down. And you know who is selling them? AMISH PEOPLE, that's who. I defy you to think of anything more realz than homegrown produce sold by Amish ladies.

And everything costs like three dollars. BAM!

No one dogs their home state more than I do (I mean come on), but I have to admit there's a certain satisfaction to watching upscale people pour lots of time, effort, money and activism into trying to live and eat like my peeps have for a couple hundred years. I mean, both of my parents grew up raising chickens and growing backyard vegetables--mostly because if they didn't, they'd fucking starve. And I've taken it for granted for so long. Well, Indiana, I have to give this round to you. Keep on growing, and show the rest of the country what REAL tomatoes and sweet corn taste like.