Do you ever get wistful at the start of the school year? Do you remember the excitement of being a kid with a new outfit, a new pencil box, a new teacher? (Okay, maybe I’m dating myself with that pencil box, but you get the idea …)

That’s how I’m feeling right now at the start of Farmers Market season. Having been a market farmer for about five years, and having “retired” from that particular endeavor, I have mixed feelings as I see the opening announcements in the newspapers and the signs on the street. Like most endeavors in life, going to market offered a mixture of pleasure and difficulty; it offered its own little community of growers and vendors, by and large a terrific group of people; and chewed up an enormous amount of time.

Wait a minute, you might be thinking … market lasts for only four or five hours or so, right? Well, that’s how it looks to the customer. But prep begins the night before, with many hours of harvesting, trimming, washing, bunching, weighing, bagging, loading the truck. Starting before dawn on market day, the flowers are cut and made into bouquets, the salad greens, kale, and basil cut, washed, dried, and bagged for maximum freshness. It’s best to arrive at market an hour before opening; there’s the canopy and tables to set up, all the produce to unpack and put out, price tags and bags and scale and cash box (each of which can be forgotten on any given day, resulting in a last-minute scramble). There’s the search for one last cup of coffee before market opens … very important! And then, of course, sending your fresh produce home with happy customers. Seeing the same faces coming back to your booth every week means you’re doing it right.

The aftermath is the hardest part. Bone-tired, you take everything down, repack the truck, and then travel back home; unpack it all, clean out the coolers, put it all away. It’s really more like a twelve-hour day. Lots of market farmers do this twice or three times a week, meaning less time to do the actual farmwork. One farmer friend, who does three markets a week, regularly works in his fields into the night with a headlamp clamped on. More than once, he’s fallen asleep out there.

If market prices sometimes seem higher than the grocery store, don’t for a minute think that your local farmer is getting rich; he or she is likely just getting by, but is offering you the freshest, most delicious and nutritious produce you can find outside of your own garden. One of my favorite bumper stickers says, “Support Your Local Farmer, or Watch the Houses Grow.” Go to market, hit the farmstands, grow your own … it’s all good.