Jonny-cake: a recipe

As Velora stirs, I  pour cups and cups of boiling water into the batter.

“Stop!  I think that’s enough.  It’s supposed to be think and plop onto the griddle.”  She adds a bit of milk and spoons the mixture onto three preheated griddles each covered with a generous layer of oil.

I must admit, I’ve never cooked Jonny-Cake either.  The batter looks like an unappetizing serving of mush to me.  Though mandatory as childhood winter breakfasts, those pasty portions of oatmeal or mush never much appealed to me.

Somehow, we manage to serve all the guests.  We even get compliments, though I consider them nothing more than polite necessities.  As always, the cooks eat last.

“Remember, these are not pancakes,” Velora warns as she pours maple syrup over my serving of Jonny-Cake.  I would never mistake this misshapen mass of the lightest yellow for the elegant, thin round of a pancake.

I poke it with a fork.  It is soft, still gooey inside but brown and crusty around the edge.  In my mouth, the combination explodes with taste and texture.  The Jonny-Cake is warm, smooth as custard, crispy as bacon.  All is bathed in the limpid forest taste of maple syrup.

Here’s the Davis family recipe for Jonny-Cake.

1 cup white corn meal

about 2 cups boiling water

1/2 T salt

a little milk

a little sugar if desired

Combine corn meal and salt in a bowl.  Add enough boiling water to reach the consistency of oatmeal.  Add a little milk.  Drop on greased griddle by tablespoons.  This will make 12 Jonny-Cakes. Cook 5 or 6 minutes.  Keep skillet well-greased with corn oil.   

More Jonny-Cake

The Stonington Historical Society has recently reissued The Davis Homestead, a local memoir of life on the farm in lower Pawatuck written by John Davis, Whit Davis’ father.

Originally published in 1986, the book contains accounts of the Davis Farm and the family's history dating back to before the American Revolution.  This memoir is not only a family history but also a major window into our collective early colonial life.  

To celebrate the arrival of the new edition, the Historical Society hosts a morning event at the Palmer House. Whit Davis, a vibrant, white-haired man now in his 80s, is to cook Jonny-Cake using the farm’s flint corn meal.

As so often happens with Whit, he is quickly surrounded by a crowd and absorbed in telling some vivid anecdote.  He moves with the group from the small kitchen to an adjacent parlor.  It seems the cooking assignment for the assembly of fifty will fall to Velora, Whit’s wife ... and myself. 

Before being called to the other room, Whit measured corn meal, salt, and sugar into a large ceramic bowl to make a triple batch.  On a side table, a small electric coffee pot heats water to a boil.

“Remember, Velora, that water must be boiling.” Whit cautions. “That’s what cooks the corn meal.  Frying just crisps up the edges.”

With Whit busy and the Program’s hostess eager to start feeding her hungry crowd, Velora reluctantly begins to mix the batch.

“I’ve never done this before,” she whispers to me in a tone of slight worry and small conspiracy. “I’ve only watched Whit do it.” 

Johnny cake

Several different varieties of modern hybrid sweet corn, first developed in the early 1800s, are available at Stonington’s Farmers Market in August. “Butter and Sugar” with its sprinkling of white kernels and more numerous butttery yellows, is my favorite.  Pure white “Silver Queen” is another local preference.

In Stonington, Indian corn has not been altogether forgotten.  This old style corn is usually thought of as multi-colored and decorative.  But the local variety, called dent of flint corn, is less pleasing to the eye.  The kernels are dun colored and indent along each seed’s axis as it dries.

Two local farms still grow the legendary Pequot maize.  Whit Davis grows a field of flint corn at the Davis Farm in Pawcatuck.  After harvest, the corn is stone ground into corn meal at a local water-powered gristmill.  Whit and his wife Velora sell one-pound bags at the Saturday market.  Each of them wears a red bib apron embossed with white letters: David Farm.  Founded 1643. 

Ground corn saved the Pilgrims at Plymouth during the winter of 1620. Easily prepared and nutritious, ground corn was served up as “journeycake” by both native Indians and Colonials.  The name evolved to “Jonny-Cake” (or johnnycake).  It remains a local speciality.

The spring after their arrival, Squanto taught members of the Plymouth colony to plant flint corn five grains to each planting hill.  “One for the blackbird, one for the crow, one for the cut worm and two to grow.”

Sweet corn cooking customs

On August 4, it’s still 80 degrees at midnight, too hot to sleep inside.  I walk outside to join Buff the Cat, who is asleep on the glider.  Drowned fruit flies accumulate in the dregs of my wine glass; few mosquitoes are about.  The hum of my neighbor’s air conditioner keeps his house at a constant 72 degrees, but I forgo artificial cooling and settle into the comfort of soft pillows.  Buff and I stretch out side by side and surrender to the bliss of sleeping outside.

If heat, humidity, and hurricanes are the downside of August, an abundant stock of fresh food, especially sweet corn, is the upside.  People line up when the first ears appear at Saturday’s Market toward the end of July.  Those ears disappear within minutes.  Only the earliest shoppers get the first corn.  But by early August, Farmers Markets and farm stands have established a reliable supply.

Southern New Englanders cook their corn according to widely divergent local customs.  Some like to grill ears still in their husks, soaked first in a pal of water.  Others assign a reliable family expert to strip husks and carefully remove unwanted silk.  The best cooking method and proper amount of time to cook remain under debate.  

Personally, I prefer a shallow covered saute pan, minimal water and minimal cooking time.  I very briefly roll ears of shucked corn in a thin bath of boiling water.  The process warms the ears rather than cooks them.  Though melted butter is the preferred dressing, I don’t use it.  Butter clouds corn’s fresh taste and leaves an oily layer I find unpleasant.  For me, freshly ground salt and pepper suffice as flavorings.  Two, even three, ears of corn accompany breaded fillets of summer flounder, lemon mayonnaise, and pencil-thin green beans for a summer supper.  

Heat, humidity and a possible hurricane

August in Connecticut means heat, humidity, and possible hurricanes.  The month also brings the season’s most colorful flowers. Gone are the pastel shades of early summer.  August bouquets shout for attention with intense color: cherry red zinnias, flashy orange stems of croscosmia, huge heads of yellow sunflowers, dinner-plate sized dahlias in hot pink and fuchsia, tart plum shades of gladiolus.   

August is also the peak of the vegetable season.  The month brings the largest quantity of vegetables and the greatest assortment of tastes to our Farmers Market. There are mountains of corn, mounds of sweet-acidic tomatoes.  Baskets of shiny purple eggplants, long green zucchinis, pungent heads of garlic, sting bags of red onions ... all are ready to combine with heady basil to become a famous French late summer stew: ratatouille. 

Mid-summer (celebrated on August 1st) is the skewed middle of a bell curve that begins for me in May and ends in October.  because of uncertain coastal weather patterns, our local food and flower supply hang in a precarious balance during this time of year.

If a major storm moves up the coast, our summer season ends abruptly.  Strong winds, heavy rain, high tides --- the combination will put an end to the growing season.  I feel uneasy and fragile during August, this month of overwhelming abundance when uncertainty rules. 

Conversations are as important as sales

After a hand-shake to seal the sailboat deal, I give Sandy a small bouquet.  “It’s a thank you in advance for your help getting the boat sold.”  Sandy laughs.

“The person we have in mind used to own a Laser.” Tucker says.  “She had a really stressful job.  She’d get out of work late, after dark. In order to blow off steam, she went for a sail.  Used to stuff light sticks into the batten pockets and take the boat out to Latimer Lighthouse by Fishers Island.”

“Can you image what that looked like!” asks Sandy.

Well, yes, I can ... but I’m skeptical.  With a fifteen-foot fiberglass hull, the Laser is a single-handed racing boat and a day-sailor. Tucker knows the qualities of the boat well being a top international competitor in the class.  The boat has neither bow nor stern lights; nor running lights port and starboard.  Three glow-lights in sail pockets are inventive but definitely not Coast Guard approved.  I sometimes think sailors have a many tall tales as fishermen. 

Later in the morning someone drops by to inquire about renting my home for the winter.  Another offers a heads up on an interesting house which might soon come up for sale.

I may be the “Flower Lady” who sells bouquets at a Farmers Market, but I am also a part of a rich network of people who use this time and this place to exchange information and help each other solve mutual problems.  Here, conversations are just as important as sales. 

Conversation make a difference ...

Should we expect a buying opportunity also to be a social opportunity?

To participants in Farmers Markets, conversation is extremely important. According to sociologists, people who shop at a Farmers Market engage in ten times as much verbal exchange as those shopping at a big-box store.  

At a market in late July, I pay close attention to the number and types of conversations I engage in.  The amount of information exchanged and the number of problems solved amaze me.  Here’s what that morning looks like.

Emmy is a distinguished woman.  Every hair is in place.  She stops by to say she’d consider taking Buff The Cat for the winter while I travel to California.  Else, a mutual friend, told here I need a caretaker. ( “Hostess,” Emmy calls the position.)

A few minutes later, I see Else and thank her for encouraging Emmy to consider my cat as a houseguest.  Else does not remember any such suggestion.

“Don’t think Emmy ever had a cat.  Don’t think she’d do well with one.  More a dog person, really,”  Else says in her brusque, good-natured way.

My next conversation is with Tucker, president of the Stonigton Small Boat Association, and his wife Sandy.

“By the way, Tucker, I’m looking for a buyer for my Laser.  Any ideas who might be interested?”  I ask.  After several windy, white-knuckle racing seasons, I have decided to acknowledge that I am underweight and over aged for the boat.

I know just the person for the boat!” Tucker replies.  “Consider it a done deal.”

Meet and greet at the Farmers Market

It’s not only freshness and quality that drop out of the food equation when we shop at huge grocery stores.  We also lose human connections -- with local farmers who grow especially for us and with our friends and neighbors as we meet regularly to participate in the ancient ritual of going to market.

Our Saturday Farmers Market in Stonington is a beehive of activity where people meet neighbors, and farmers indulge in brief bits of education.  By contrast, the local supermarket is a box with a high ceiling where speed and efficiency rule.  Well-oiled carts wide aisles, and brightly lit display cases loaded with over 30,000 items --- all tout the same themes: shop fast, pay less.  Human interactions take a back seat.  Greeters at the door (part-time workers probably earning minimum wage with few benefits) are the only hints that human interaction just may be important.  But most greeters are weary or bored.  We easily ignore each other.

At a superstore there may be over thirty aisles of food but no conversation.  Maybe a “Hello” or “Have a good day” brackets your food transaction. Or maybe not.  If you process your purchases through the increasingly popular self-checkout center, you will get a greeting only if something goes wrong.  Only a machine malfunction brings a clerk who oversees four to six stations to assist you. 

But, is it really important to serve up conversation with the purchase of food or flowers?  Is it possible to raise the bar and put social needs on the same pedestal as economic needs?

Vegetable perfectionism

The perfection of grocery store produce came up for discussion one summer day when Elisa Whitman worked with me as a garden apprentice in my food garden.  Professionally, Elisa teaches biology and environmental science at Stonington High School.  She is a vivacious woman with a great sense of humor.

“Look at this zucchini!  This eggplant!” she says, picking up vegetables just harvested from the garden.  “They look just like the ones at the grocery store!”

We both laugh ... at first.  But it’s a sobering point to consider: a grocery store, not our own mouths, set the criteria for perfection.  We not only have learned to judge excellence by the eye instead of the taste buds; we have also learned to hold unrealistic expectation about what produce should look like.

A similar bias holds true for varieties.  In other words, if your grocery store carries only Anjou and Bartlett pears, the appearance of a brownish Bosque or a small hard Sickle pear seems different and unappealing.

After all, some vegetables and fruits are naturally larger or smaller than the average.  But grocery stores display only the industry norm.  Oversized or undersized items seem odd when they do appear.

This expectation of perfections sets the stage for starlet strawberries and tangelos that could win tango contest.  Everything is bright, perky, uniform, and flawless.  How does a domestic tomato compete with the champions at the store?  Especially if it rained last night after a two-week dry spell, and the poor thing split its sides in relief. 

An apple is never just an apple

Big-box food retailers would like to convince us that an apple or a pear is the same no matter how it is grown or where we buy it.  They want customers to accept corporate branding as the assurance of flavor instead of our own taste buds.  Despite what industrial agriculture wants us to believe, however, an apple is not just an apple.  Each apple is the end product of a way of life.

Applies are not the only food item influenced by corporate food giants.  Take the tomato, for example.  A taste test quickly proves the point.  Juice oozes from a Thistle Farm tomatoes, while I need a serrated blade to pierce and cut the skin of a South American winter wonder found at Wal-Mart.  I may have to settle for an off-season import, but nothing will convince me that those two tomatoes are the same.

When we shop at a big-box food center rather than a Farmers Market, we lose control over freshness, quality, and variety of our foods.  Instead of an apple picked by hand by the orchard’s owner and delivered to market the next day, industrially produced fruits and vegetable arrive unripe and weary after a long journey from a far-away farm.  Then, in hangar-sized regional distribution centers, produce is “ripened” artificially with carefully regulated doses of ethylene gas. 

Fortunately for big-box stores, apples exposed to ethylene for 24 to 48 hours will ripen more uniformly than in the orchard.  With a little more ethylene, above the two days already endured, even less mature, rock-hard apples will begin to turn red.  Now, these perfectly-sized fruits that have been perfectly ripened are ready for reshipment to a local super-sized food store. 

Apples from a different world

Where we buy out food determines what we buy.  In other words, I will not find a Purity Farm apple in a supermarket; or an apple from a big-box food supplier at a Farmers Market.  Each apple inhabits a totally different world.  There are no crossovers.

For me, the biggest contrast in food-purchase environments is between a Farmers Market and a Wal-Mart Supercenter.  Wal-Mart began selling food in l988.  Within twenty years , it became the largest grocer in the United States.  There are 5,000 Wal-Mart outlets and 3,400 are “Supercenters;” that is, stores that combine the sale of  furniture, clothing, and garden supplies with food products.  Each of these stores is the size of four football fields, or four acres under roof. 

Did you know that Wal-Mart’s annual revenue is two percent of the United States gross national product?  Wal-Mart, if ranked by revenue, is the world’s largest corporation.  In terms of revenue from all products, Wal-Mart is four times larger than the next largest company.  Its revenue is eight times the size of Microsoft. 

When I enter my local Wal-Mart Supercenter with its 38 aisles of food, I enter a world where I may buy more food for less money, but I also leave behind my local food supply.  Small local farmers do not participate in Wal-Mart’s food empire.  Small farms are not designed to see to such a giant.  For one thing, small farmers cannot provide the uniformity or the predictability Wal-Mart wants -- let alone the quantity.  Consider the specs for a No. 1 Bartlett pear described by the California Fruit industry: “2 1/4 inches round after the crown and before the base, showing no flaws, and displaying an even yellowish color.”

An Apple Tasting

The next morning Liesbeth and I finish our usual early morning stint at the McC’s garden.  I invite her for a cup of coffee and some apples.  Sunlight pours through tall south-facing windows.  A muted blue-green plaid tablecloth covers the round kitchen table.  Each of the five apple samples from Paul’s orchard has its own clear glass plate, a label, and a blue-handled knife ready to cut it open.  I approach the collection just as I do a session of wine tasting.  I bring a combination of ignorance, curiosity, and anticipation.

Yellow Bell Flower 

Our favorite apple by far is the “Yellow Bell Flower.”  It’s a very large apple, yellow with a red bush on the outside, pale lemon-yellow flesh inside.  Paul says it was “considered ancient in 1817.”  It’s crisp to the bite with a fulsome flavor that could be further enhanced by cooking.  I understand why Yellow Bell    Flower is a favorite pie apple. 

Golden Russet

Second on our list of favorites is the “Golden Russet.”  Small and greenish-brown, the apple feels a bit mushy when squeezed.  I am not impressed with this ugly little thing until I bite into a piece of it.  It’s surprisingly tangy and has been used to make cider since colonial times. 

 Two apples tie for third place: “Thompkins County King” and “Baldwin.

In last place is “Fameuse” also called “Snow Apple.”  It is a large red apple with perfect snow-white flesh.  Both Liesbeth and I find its texture and taste insipid, be we are not in the majority.  This apple dates to the 1500s and is still popular today.

As I sweep remnants of our tasting into a pan to make an apple dessert, a lady cardinal arrives at the birdbath.  Here to drink, it seems, and not to bathe, but a change of mind sends her into the basin for a stiff-kneed dip.  Head first, she tosses the water over the top and onto her back and wings.  A robin arrives.  The cardinal departs for a branch in the birch tree.  The robin, a more sensuous bather, squats to get as much of herself as possible into the water, then splashes enthusiastically, sending waves of water over the side.  I chuckle at her antics as I add a topping of oatmeal, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter to complete the desert. 

18th Century Purity Farm (con't)

Paul Desrochers is an inventive fellow who wears coke-bottle glasses.  He manages several other local orchards, as well as his own.  Paul’s ingenuity helps him solve many orchard problems.  For instance, he created a five-wire deer fence supported by cedar trees felled in his woodlot.  He also used old hay bales to house bumble bees.

“Bumble bees are our best pollinators.  But we also keep honey bees.”

Paul’s resourcefulness also led to the development of special pruning techniques to keep trees small but productive.  Neither he nor his much shorter wife ever climbs a ladder to pick fruit.  Cherry trees grow under a special netting system Paul invented but still considers a work in progress.  The couple uses limited spray on fruit trees and no herbicides.  All the small fruit -- strawberries, raspberries and blueberries -- are grown organically.  

“We hand pick bugs and toss them to the trout in the pound.”  Paul jokes.

Along with heirloom apples, peaches, and cherries, the couple grows, at JoAnn’s insistence, apricots and nectarines.

“I have to ration my apricots or there will be a stampede at market!”  Paul says with a grin. 

Modern fruit varieties grow on a terrace a bit farther down the hill.  Instead of growing independently as individual trees, like the heirloom apple trees, these contemporary varieties are planted at a slight angle.  Then their trunks are attatched to two tiers of wire.  This highter density Europenan-style planting pattern, similar to techniques used in a vineyard, allows the trees to come into production in their second year and into full production in five years.

“A close-planted orchard of modern apples can produce 1,000 to 1,200 bushels per acre,” Paul explains. “On the other hand, an orchard of free-standing heirlooms produce only 400 bushels per acre.  But the heirlooms are very popular.”

Before I leave, Paul steps into his walk-in cooler which maintains fruit quality after harvest.  He pulls out several varieties of apples for me to take home.  

18th Century Purity Farm

The next day, I head up to 18th Century Purity Farm in Moosup.  Squaw Rock Road runs along a ridge that overlooks Route I-395.  It is mostly ledge rock and big houses, a strange place for a farm.  Then I come to a small valley that falls away through several terraces.  Each level is planted with apple trees, or blueberry bushes, or strawberries, or asparagus.  Farthest down the hill is a field of potatoes.  The current farm covers 45 acres, but only ten are cultivated.  The rest is woodlot.

JoAnn and Paul Desrochers greet me when I arrive.  JoAnn wears a well-worn, wide-brimmed straw hat and an ample smile.  The pair started Purity Farm in April 1996.  Paul has recently retired, but when I first met him, he worked full time on second shift at a local company that produces high-tech batteries for space vehicles and deep-water submersibles.  The pair share selling duties at ten Farmers Markets each week.

As we walk down the hill to the first terrace, I hear the hum of traffic in the near distance.

“A lot of the original farm -- 100 acres established in 1738 -- is buried under that road,” JoAnn explains, pointing to I-395.  Her family has been growing apples here since the 1870s, but ancestral roots go back even farther: her family arrived in Moosup in 1699.

We arrive at a small orchard.  Several well-spaced rows contain free-standing trees that grow about eight feet tall. "These are the antique varieties we grow," Paul explains, pointing to hand-painted signs under each tree: Baldwin, Arkansas Black, Rambo.  Of the 62 types of apples in the orchard, forty are heirlooms.  An heirloom variety is generally defined as a type of apple grown prior to the 1930s.  A popular heirloom is Red Delicius, introduced from Peru in 1874.  In contrast, there are newer apples such as Gala, a native of New Zealnd that has gained an enthusiastic following since the l970s. 

Starry Night Farm

Later in the week, I visit Ibby Archer at Starry Night Farm.  Though most farmers at Stonington's Farmers Market raise their crops using organic methods, Starry Night Farm is the only farm in the group certified as organic by the the United States Department of Agriculture.  The farm has been Certified Organic since 2001.

Ibby hesitates when I ask to visit.  “There’s lots of weeds,” she apologizes.

“Sun and rain equal weeds,” I reply. “Don’t worry, we are both in the same business.”

We sit on her stone patio surrounded by overgrown perennial beds.  Spiky blue echinops tower over the weeds, along with bright yellow blooms of Jerusalem artichoke.  Ibby’s farm operation represents one of the important innovation at Farmers Market, the introduction of value-added products. 

“My speciality is garlic-scape pesto,” she explains.  “Scapes are those curly stalks that grow from the top of hard-neck garlic in early summer.  The bulbs are attempting to create flowers and seeds.  Most farmers grow garlic for its bulb, so the scape is usually discarded.  I harvest scapes from my own land and pick more from other local garlic growers.  In all, I froze almost 100 pounds of scape this year.”

On a weekly basis, Ibby rents a certified kitchen at a local church to process the crop.  After chopping the scapes, she adds oil, nuts and cheese.  Small plastic containers with a Starry Night label hold the pesto.

“I use a church kitchen because my home kitchen is not certified for commercial cooking,” Ibby explains.

In January, 2013, California enacted the Homemade Food Act which amends the state’s Health Code to create a new category of food operation called “Cottage Food Operations.” Thirty other states have similar laws. These regulations allows home preparation of foods available as direct sales to customers or as value-added products sold at Farmers Markets.  Hopefully, similar laws will soon spread to all states.  

Conch bait

A buyer from the local fish wholesaler, Gambardella, speaks up for a larger horseshoe crab catch and a longer season. Located at the Town Dock, the business is a major force in Stonington.  When a Gambardella daughter marries, the whole fleet is in port to celebrate.

“Cut up, horseshoe crab is good bait for conch,” the buyer reminds the DEP representative.  “Right now, we have to buy lots and lots from out of state.  Might as well give our Connecticut boys a chance to earn some money here.”

An environmentalist from the Audubon Society objects to enlarging the size of the catch or extending the length of the season. 

“Shorebirds have evolved to time their migration to the availability of horseshoe crab eggs,” she explains.  These pearly-green eggs are laid in holes, on sandy beaches, then buried.  A single clutch contains thousands of eggs.

One fisherman says in a loud aside, “Birds are birds.  Let them eat bird seed.”

On the other hand, a local shellfish farmer has no objections to a longer crab catch season since horseshoe crabs feed on his thumbnail sized oysters called “spat.”

"Those crabs are attracted to spat like flies to a spill of coke,” he says.  “They’re as bad as rabbits in a carrot patch.”

All this discussion surrounds a creature that predates dinosaurs and will be cut into quarters for conch bait.  But then I remember what Bobby told me about conch.

“As a kid, I used to pick conch off the beach and give them to the old Italians in town.  Now I get $60 a bushel for them.”

Haddock is back

Bobby Guzzo explains to me the ten-year time frame to rebuild New England fish stocks.  “Haddock is already back, and we’re only six years into the program.  Believe me, I’m seeing a lot of fish out there.  But if we continue for a full ten years to renew the stock?  Well. we’ll probably have a lot of fish, but there will be no men left who know how to fish for them.” 

I attend a state of Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection public hearing to learn more.  Fishing stocks are on he decline throughout the world.  Some biologists estimate current fish populations are only ten percent of their historic levels.  Even though the United States imports 60 percent of its fish, the American fishing industry is still a multi-billion dollar operation.

As usual, even a dire environmental situation has its skeptics.  Fishermen sit on one side of the room; conservationists on the other.  The DEP representative sits behind a table.  In front of him is a seventeen-page document.  To facilitate discussion, every line in the report has a number, 711 lines in all.  Each line specifies new mandates for species, poundage, and seasonal time  limits.  With strict quotas on popular types of fish such as cod and flounder already in place, fishermen look to diversify into other species.  Horseshoe crabs and spiny dogfish are discussed at length. 

Horseshoe crabs!  Who can take this strange arthropod as a serious crop?  The creature looks more like a small brown tank than a regular crab.  But local fishermen harvest 32,000 of the annually, a large number but well under the 48,000 allowed by the State. 

Stonington fishermen

Bobby Guzzo, captain of the Jenna Lynn, chafes under the federal regulations that govern his work.  He shuffles through a pile of papers looking for a copy of the regulations to show me and notices a power switch is off.

“Jeez!” he says.  “They’re gonna call me.”  He points to a small box on the wall then flips a switch.  The green power light comes back on.  This GPS devise constantly tracks and reports the boat’s location to the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.

Bobby launches into a recap of the regulations.  “I used to be able to fish 48 days in the winter for flounder and cod.  Now they’re cutting us back to 24 day.  Not only that, they say they’re going to cut us back on time we spend in a protected area.  We'll have 50% less time to fish.  And they are cutting the poundage we can land.  It used to be 1,500 pound, but they might change that amount for this winter’s catch.”

“We waste so much!” Bobby says in frustration.  “The Jenna Lynn’s nets are 100 feet wide.  A single drag can take an hour or more.  Once the nets are back on board, the catch rides along a conveyor belt and we sort it.  We’ll pull in three sizes of fish.  Some three-dollar fish, some two-dollar fish, and some one-dollar fish.  So which do I keep?”  He shrugs to indicate the economics are self-evident.  “It’s not like walking through a garden to harvest tomatoes, you know.  I get what I get in those nets.  So I take my three-dollar fish home and throw the rest back.  Some of them might make it after I throw them back, but not a lot.”

The "Calla Guy"

For the most part, I sell flowers to women.  Most men ignore the suggestion to consider a purchase of flowers, or defer the decision to their wives.  But when a man succumbs to the allure of flowers, I have him hooked for the season, so I give these male buyers nicknames.

“The Lily Man” stops to inspect the quality of my early lilies.  We agree that this summer’s crop does not measure up to last year’s.

“We had a wet spring,” I explain.  “In May and June we had almost double our average rainfall.  Lily bulbs hate wet feet.  They tend to get a disease that distorts the flower and turns leaves brown.”

He shakes his head sadly.  I imagine him trying to recreate the scent of lilies which he purchased last summer on a weekly basis.

My calla lilies are scooped up by “The Calla Guy.”  Red-headed and freckle-faced, he hovers around my table with queries.  When will the elegant waxy flower appear?  My supply is still spotty in early July, but he wants to buy a small bunch for $5. The blossoms are puny, I decide to ask only $3. I know he'll be back each Saturday for more.

“Callas were my wife’s wedding flower,” he tell me.  “And her mother carried them for her own wedding.”

He brings his daughter along each week to the market.

“See, honey.” He leans over to show her the bouquet. “We’re going to make Mommy very, very happy.”

One man passes my table with disdain each Saturday.  He does’t respond to my greeting but waits until I am engaged with another customer.  Then he stands back six feet or so and paces while he judges today’s assemblage of blooms.  He resists the delicate Queen Anne’s lace, the fragile profusion of blue hydrangea, the scented glamour of oriental lilies.  In late August, I bring my favorite orange dahlias.  They are as big as dinner plates with petals as orange as Cinderella’s coach.  Along the length of each spikey petal colors change from orange to yellow.  He spots them from across the market lawn and all but shoves people aside to get to my table.  He buys them all.