I'm up in my hometown of Tonawanda (in the Buffalo NY suburbs) for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This year it'll be 5770. What it usually means in my family is a gigantic dinner (I'm usually in charge of potato pancakes and, new this year, butternut squash/pear soup), shopping at the farmers' market for ingredients, and lots of sweet things for dinner and dessert. Jews traditionally eat apples with honey, and honey cake, and other sweet things in order to have a sweet new year.
While at the farmer's market, I've started noticing how vastly different prices were at farmers' markets around the country (see below).
Those would have been $2.50, $3 and $3 in DC. I'm not sure if it's the travel difference (most of the farmers' at our market up here come from Niagara County, about a 30-40 minute drive, while many in DC come from West Virginia and Pennsylvania), or perhaps farmers thinking people in DC who go to the market all have higher incomes. For me, it's become rather like a thing I feel I should do every once in awhile- like giving blood or adding more money at kiva.org- in order to support the farmers directly. For some produce, it's more expensive than Safeway and occasionally Whole Foods. Does anyone else see this at your market- vastly different prices than in certain other places?
This year, it's a three-fer to be home, as it's my sister's birthday, and my niece (her daughter) is turning 2. I got her a "Stop cutting down MY trees!" shirt and another t-shirt from weaddup.com, a website with some pretty cool shirts promoting eco-consciousness and giving some of their profits towards that cause. They had a cool booth at Netroots Nation and I couldn't resist. But of course, you have to wear the birthday shirt when you've got it.
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