farm fresh fancy

summer came early this year.

here it is just june 29, and we've already had consecutive warm days.

woo.

hoo.

you have to understand, we don't count on summer weather until july 5. if we get sunny and hot anytime before that, people don't know how to act.

they complain about it being too warm, or too bright, or too dry.

it's none of those things, by any reasonable standard, but weather in the PNW is not comparable to the rest of the country.

just to the east, however, on the other side of the cascades, people depend on hot, sunny weather -- and not just for conversation.

they grow and transport and sell the stuff we in the urban areas like to call "food." fruits and vegetables and organic chicken and holistic cheese and steroid-free floral arrangements. yes, those are edible, too. (aren't they?)

we live within walking distance of the magnolia farmer's market. it's an enthusiastic conclave of noise and color and people and pets and politics that seems to send everyone home happy.

the strawberries and rainier cherries are amazing. huge and sweet and priced like gas is $4.55 a gallon or something. which is to say, startlingly expensive.

some of the customers grumble that it's all cheaper at qfc or albertson's. which may be true, but is wildly irrelevant, isn't it? at a time when food of indeterminate origin is packing a salmonella punch and maybe an e. coli gift-with-purchase, locally sourced comestibles are less a luxury than self-preservation.

if you can afford the luxury, that is.

we wonder, idly, what'll happen when gas hits $5.50 or $6 bucks a gallon.
it ain't cheap to drive a loaded-up truck over the cascades every weekend -- and somebody's gotta absorb that cost. whom do you suppose will be the first to blink: the growers, the customers, or the saudis?

it's a rhetorical question. for now.

so far the relationship is still mutually beneficial -- the vendors keep coming back, and the locals keep showing up, cash in hand.

but summer in the PNW is just beginning, and crops are coming in, and migrant workers are working full-time, and growers have a limited window to make what they can, and oh-by-the-way, oil hit $140 a barrel on friday.

if anyone can say they know where the tipping point is, you can bet lots of folks will be eager to hear about it.

our trip to the market yesterday was the stuff that summertimes should be made of. we put on shorts and t-shirts and sunscreen and walked around our neighborhood. children ran and played, adults sat back and watched, time slowed. it was warm and sunny and memorable and simultaneously indistinct...just another day, the way summer days are supposed to be.

we were able to set aside, for a few hours, what we think we know about prices and economics and markets and variables beyond our control.

summer has come early to seattle. we hope it settles in and stays awhile.

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addendum: not many people in this neighborhood have air conditioning. around here, we just don't need it all that often. as a result, most people currently have their windows open.

if someone sneezes two doors down, we say "gesundheit."

and if the nubile next-door neighbor has a sleep-over guest...um, we hear that too.

we live in a great neighborhood.