Pardon my sticky fingers as I write this week’s column, but I’ve been eating a fresh fried apple pie I got from a family that grew the apples themselves and made the sweet treat in their own kitchen. With no preservatives. I found it all at the farmers market, where the local produce wheel meets the road. 

When folks talk about reducing food miles, finding fresh food grown as close to home as possible, nothing beats these meet ‘n greet spots carved out with community effort to bring consumers into direct contact with local producers. Where we can find veggies, herbs and cut flowers harvested just the day before, literally fresh off the farm with no middleman or tariffs.

It’s where you will come across unusual vegetables like purple broccoli, heirloom tomatoes, extra-flavorful, white-fleshed sweet potatoes, mild long red radishes, muscadine grapes, zesty garlics, and spicy turmeric, and other hard-to-find herbs and veggies. Right next to stalls offering heirloom perennials, antique shrubs, trees, and native plants usually not found in garden centers. Right next to local-flower honey, jellies and preserves, pies, breads, and herbal oils, all made lovingly in personal kitchens. Right next to quilts, glassware, pottery, jewelry, bird houses, wood carvings, and other practical crafts. I have even found bags of vermicompost — super-rich composted worm poop that is unbeatable as garden fertilizer.

Every single one of those genres represents entrepreneurial individuals and families who believe in and take pride in what they do, work hard at it, and offer it with hope to friends and neighbors. Every single one is eager to talk about how they pull it off season after season, their favorite recipes, and tips on how you can get involved yourself.   

I am fortunate to be invited to do quite a few gardening presentations at these traditional local markets, statewide, hob-knobbing during tailgate talks done from the back of my antique pickup truck with the full garden in the back. It’s an opportunity to show-and-tell about small-scale container gardening, practical garden tools, personalized garden accessories, and a good bit of chin-wagging with real gardeners about timely, local garden concerns. 

The best of all is when children are lifted into the back of my truck where for over 30 years I have grown flowers, herbs, and vegetables, year-round. The little innocents can pluck leaves off fresh rosemary, oregano, thyme, mints, green and purple basils and other herbs, and describe what they smell like (oregano usually conjures spaghetti). Talk about an easy way to introduce young people — and often their parents — to small-scale home gardening! 

The truck garden sounds silly to a lot of folks, but makes a point, simple and clear, that anyone can have a garden anywhere, even on a patio or porch, without power equipment and a traditional garden with long skinny rows. It isn’t too far a stretch to imagine making it a bit larger, expand it a bit with another large container or two, to accommodate even more food and flowers, without turning the yard into a farm and taking up all their resources. 

And when parked at a farmers’ market, it is a stepping off point from where I can point directly to someone who, if you can’t grow it yourself, is eager to do it for you.

You can easily find local markets online from the MS Department of Agriculture and Commerce; on the home page click farmers market, then the link on the left to an extensive guide to all those around the state. Hope to run into you at one soon, before the pies are all gone. 

Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.