While the weather at this week’s tailgate market was overcast and gloomy at best, the mood on Mill Street in Sylva was anything but morose. The first annual “Produce Pageant” was carried out by a respectable showing of growers and customers with a sense of playfulness and enthusiasm lasting all morning long. With categories including “most beautiful vegetable,” “best personality,” and “ugliest vegetable,” entries were displayed on the sidewalk along a designated section of “tailgate row,” where customers could vote for their favorites by placing a penny in baskets corresponding to each of the contestants entered by this week’s participating vendors. On display were shiitake mushrooms, ruby chard, eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes, watermelon, carrots, crook-necked squash, okra, marigolds, and ornamental and winter squash. With Pageant Master-of-Ceremonies Cathy Arps keeping things moving, and with the pageant’s “Miss Congeniality,” Autumn Demonet, soliciting voters, posing for photo ops, and keeping spirits high, ballots were cast (in truth, pennies were tossed), and with a total tally of 177 votes (or $1.77 - which went into the donation coffers to help keep the Farmer’s Market up and running) winners were crowned. For “most beautiful,” the winner was an almost pink neon variety eggplant; for “best personality,” two spiral-entwined carrots; and for “ugliest vegetable,” a wart-riddled and slightly decomposing Turban squash.

And what “Produce Pageant” would be complete without a visit from Mr. Potato? - who appeared mid-morning and human-scale in top hat and formal dress to the delight of all, especially the children, who followed him around all morning, tugging at his “skin” - reminiscent of scenes from the children’s book The Pied Piper of Hamlin.

And out of the gala atmosphere and the Scottish mist of the morning emerged another character from local lore and farming fame, none other than the “Guru of Garlic” himself, David Starr, from over at Union Acres in Whittier. Setting his labeled display of harvested varieties of exotic garlic cloves out on the unused space of my truck’s tailgate, we began a conversation that escalated with each passing customer for the remainder of the morning - everyone having something profound to ask or humorous to say about the subject on display.

“There’s no epiphany tale, really, as to why I began growing garlic, other than that I’ve always liked it. You can ask anyone I’ve known, and they’ll tell you,” David says, with a broad, suggestive grin spreading across his face. Not to let the perfect segue slip by, Neil Dawson from Dawson’s Green Nursery over in Tuckaseegee, who is talking with us, immediately picks up on David’s statement, adding: “I used to work with an old fella, many years ago who was bad to drink white liquor and eat fresh ramps - which was a deadly combination of the heat from the moonshine and the power of the ramps. Why, you could smell him coming from a hundred feet away!”

Meanwhile, a local man has slipped up to the tailgate of my truck and is looking closely at and fondling leaves from my basket of fresh-picked basil.

“What’s that?” he says, interrupting our little garlic convention and pointing to the basil and then taking up a handful and putting it to his nose - “marijuana?”

“No, that’s just fresh basil leaves that I picked this morning - good for throwing in your stir-fry or salad. But you can take some home with you to smoke if you like,” I respond to his sincere question, with Neil and David laughing quietly to themselves in the background.

As customers come up to our tailgate covered, now, with bowls of the garlic cloves that David has brought to sell and to give, as samples, to the growers, they begin asking him a wide range of questions. He introduces each variety by focusing on its interestingly foreign or descriptive name.

“There’s ‘Asian Tempest’ which lives up to its name and is the hottest kind of garlic that I grow. And there’s ‘Purple Italian Easy Peel’ which, as you’d guess, is the easiest garlic to peel. And then there are varieties like ‘Rocambule,’ - which always sounds to people like I’m saying ‘rock and roll,’ so I just call it that. And then there’s ‘Nootka Rose’ - which has a beautiful rosy hue to the peeled cloves and is one of my favorites, as it grows large, keeps well, and is not too hot so that you can eat it raw along with (Horn of the Bull) Mordello red peppers - which I also grow and which are a perfect compliment.”

David Starr, who in an earlier incarnation was a librarian employed by the Sylva Public Library, is now a gardener/farmer and has been growing garlic in quantity (although not as yet commercially, as he says he hasn’t quite figured out the most efficient marketing scheme) for four years. He grows seven varieties as a matter of course, and experiments each year with new and different varieties. “I’m always looking for the best varieties, those that do well here in the mountains,” says David. “And I’m interested in keeping what I consider the best garlic alive and circulating. I save my seed and replant each year - strengthening the strain. All my garlic is grown organically, and I fertilize my crop with goat manure from my wife’s Nubian goat herd.

“I use garlic in everything!” he continues emphatically. “It’s an important ingredient in pesto,” he says, pointing over at the basket of “marijuana” basil on our tailgate and laughing. “Garlic and olive oil is a great combination, and can be used in any number of ways - salad dressing, a sautee base, hot sauce for pasta or potatoes ... Why, I’ve even been known to eat garlic sandwiches!” he pronounces sincerely, almost blushing.

As he converses knowledgeably with customers throughout the morning - emphasizing that garlic is healthy, easy to grow, with no real diseases or pests to worry about and is a good companion plant as a deterrent to pests and disease - the supply of harvested cloves dwindles to only a few, as people have been buying them to either enhance their Saturday evening meal or to plant this fall in anticipation of a 2002 summer crop of their own.

With the Garlic Guru and the Beauty Pageant, a drab day has been transfigured into another learning and laughing experience here 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.

Interested readers can contact David Starr concerning garlic or gardening at 828.497.4964 and/or the intentional community of Union Acres by email at: carrstarr@juno.com.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News