There’s something for everyone at the tailgate market this week. With a real mix, now, of organic and non-organic growers bringing in their produce and goods, there are baked goods, herbs, soaps and salves, flowers, landscape plants, canned goods, honey, an expanded assortment of garden produce, and even watermelons from Neil Dawson’s place over in Webster! — and everyone is selling out. It’s a hot, clear mid-August day and two young girls have set up a lemonade stand along the curb of “tailgate row” and are drawing some of the biggest crowds.

With the clock on the historic Sylva courthouse in its perpetual position of 12 noon, Harleys rollin’ up and down Mill Street on their way to Cherokee, and the music tent back up and running after a couple wet weekends, Sylva is experiencing its best week thus far for vendors and buyers, and there is a festive feeling in the air and conversation is high-spirited.

Under Molly Shaw’s VW bus awning there’s a lively conversation going on about her “Incredible Edibles.” The hummingbird harvest is in and she’s brought in her hummingbird bread. “No, my bread is NOT made from hummingbirds,” say Molly in response to a customer’s tongue-in-cheek question.

“Oh, we thought that maybe it was kinda like blackbird pie, or something,” the customer comes back, laughing.

Meanwhile, down at Becky Lipkin’s station a crowd of women has gathered in dynamic conversation. “I’m puttin’ that basil I bought here last week on my tomato sandwiches," says a slight, older woman who has been walking around the market all morning carrying two large shitake mushroom logs she’s purchased from Christie Bredenkamp.

“I like my fruit just the day before the gnats get’em,” says another slightly younger woman. And Becky replies, without hesitation, “I like mine that way too, but I like my corn when it’s still got a little ‘pop’ in it — like bitin’ into a tick.”

With the women’s group “going on” next door, and “Tee Tee” from Florida in her white Sienna cruisin’ the curb hoping to spot something from her car, I’m busy selling produce. “I’ve got everything you’ve got in my garden,” says a wisp of a man in a big green and yellow John Deere cap as he purveys the baskets of vegetables positioned on my tailgate. “I’ve got all that, but I ain’t got okra. I’ll take everything you have.”

While I’m making change for the okra sale, I can hear Becky’s voice rise above the animated buzz of the market noise and traffic. She’s addressing a middle-aged woman who is walking up the sidewalk toward her truck with a tote bag in one hand and a large wad of money in the other. “I love to see folks walkin’ around with money in their fists, ready to drop it,” she says so everyone can hear. The woman flashing the greenbacks is drawn into Becky’s crowd and emerges a few minutes later with a heather plant and a couple of the largest acorn squashes any of us have ever seen.

It’s about 10 o’clock and John Beckman from Unahwi Ridge Farms has unloaded a large catapult contraption from out of the back of his pickup, and he and Johnny White have manhandled it out into the street. With business coming to a screeching halt with the unveiling of Beckman’s “Zucchini-pult,” all eyes are on the action in the street. “This device was designed to take care of all those vegetables that come out of the garden that you don’t want,” announces Beckman like a carny barker. “All those volunteer squash and pumpkins from the compost pile. And this thing is also good for fast home deliveries,” he continues as the crowd comes alive with laughter.

After a lively demonstration of his invention, and with the street alongside the railroad tracks littered with oversized, smashed squash, and everyone along the vendor’s strip cheering, Beckman takes a few bows for the crowd and delivers his acceptance speech one-liner: “We know how to have fun down at the farmer’s market!”

After all the hoopla has died down and business begins to pick back up again after the interlude, an elderly man standing beside my truck and pointing over to the creek on the south side of the parking lot, says: “Why, you can launch that zucchini into the river for all I care! That’s about all them things are good for.”

Yes, there is something for everyone, and it’s been a festive day at the tailgate market — where the conversation and the tales are as puzzling as they are endless, and as interesting as the food is good.
(The Sylva Farmer’s Market would like to extend an invitation to all members of the Jackson County community and surrounding counties to participate in the Labor Day weekend Farmer’s Market festivities which will include the first annual “Produce Beauty Pageant.” Prizes will be awarded for “most beautiful,” “best personality” and “the ugliest vegetable.” Come one, come all and vote for your favorite foods.)

 

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The Smoky Mountain News