Integrity of a farmer

The Farmer's Market near me is on Tuesdays from 9-1. It's one of the smallest farmers markets I have ever been to. Right across from a typical California strip mall which includes a Target, a PetSmart and all other signs of a corporate world on the border of Tustin and Irvine, there it stands next to an actual strawberry farm and the old white house that has now been renovated as a historical building and made into a new library.

Today I stumble in there wanting to buy some strawberries. I only have $10 in cash so I have to budget my shopping properly. After I spend my first $6 on three packs of strawberry, I walk more and look to see what else I can fit in with my four dollars. The zard alloos look good. So I take one pound and that's another $2. I go next door to the Asian farmer and she has good peaches and nectarines for $1.75 per pound. I start filling in my plastic bag and give the farmer lady what I have gathered to weigh. It's one and a half pounds. I tell her I only have $2 left and ask her nicely to take a couple of them peaches out. She listens and weighs my bag again. Now we are at .95 pounds. I smile and say thank you to her thinking we are done. She says wait. Then she looks around and adds one small zard alloo to my peach bag. She smiles and says to me in her thick Korean accent to come back next week.

I walk away in awe of the integrity of a farmer I just met.