Farmer’s markets are some of the only places you can still spot a 73-year-old man holding a watermelon like a baby and buy shrimp from the back of a van. Farmer’s markets are the hidden gems of a city, where you can get an amish donut that is bigger than your entire face and buy things straight from the hands that grew, made, picked and packaged them.
It is really an underrated treasure – being able to look the person in the eye whose tomatoes you are sniffing and know that they put in long days and a lot of TLC to grow each one. The very best thing about farmer’s markets is that they are one of the only American institutions that still celebrates the art of passing down a craft. Vendors create, grow and carry on the trades and traditions of their own parents and grandparents.
The West Tennessee Farmer’s Market is home to many vendors who do just that, and Anna Yoder is one of them. Many people know her as “The Jam Lady,” carrying over 30 assortments of homemade jams and jellies. She stands behind her booth in a dark, long dress and a crisp white apron, her white bonnet bobbing up and down as she talks to her customers about where she found the fruit for this week’s batch of muscadine jam. Her booth is simple – a modest table and some wooden shelves – lined with jars full of Anna’s creations. Anna makes all of her jams at her own home, using the skills passed down by her family.
“When I was about sixteen, my mother taught me how. I learned way back then,” she said.
When Anna started selling at the market in West Tennessee about four years ago, she only had a few jams for sale.
“I started with a few jams and I brought blueberries. I’d pick the berries and bring those in to sell them, and then I just added a few jams to it. And I kept adding a few more jams!” She said. “I just keep adding and maybe someone asks for a certain kind and I make it, and if they like it I keep making it!”
Anna is not the only vendor that learned the craft early. Dave, of Dave’s Flowers, is well-known at the West Tennessee Farmer’s Market for his colorful booth that boasts all sorts of flowers that he has grown in his personal greenhouses.
“My grandmother, she was always digging in the dirt. So as a kid I was always helping her. And you know, she had petunias everywhere so as a little boy I was always out digging in the dirt with my grandmother and just having a good time with her,” he said. “We’d go pick peas together.”
Dave’s sunglasses sit on his head, and his hands are stained green from handling all of the flower stems. He talks about the zinnias this year and how it took him a good while to convince them to bloom. He has lived and worked all over the country but believes that growing things has always been a gift of his. He worked many types of jobs before coming to Jackson, but when he got here, he began work at a greenhouse and it was made clear to him that horticulture was his calling.
“Farming is in my blood. My grandfather was a farmer… I remember being a small kid on a tractor with my grandad,” he said. “It’s in my history. I kind of steered away from it for a while and then something just told me, ‘This is where you belong.’”
Dave has been selling his floral arrangements at the West Tennessee Farmer’s Market for five years and plans to continue for a while.
History is the thing that is most alluring about a farmer’s market. It is the recipes scratched out on old yellowed paper being passed down through generations, and it is childhoods spent on grandparent’s farms that lead to an understanding of a life calling.
Farmer’s markets are special because they are some of the only places that honor such legacies – the time and the effort that not only the present vendors put in, but also the vendors’ parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who did the work before them and taught them the secrets of the trade.
Photos courtesy of Janelle Vest
