There were four farmers’ markets over the weekend, and I worked two, New Hope and Uptown. Sam helped at Uptown. I’d asked if he would because I wanted to see if anybody at the cool-neighborhood market would be interested in my drawings. Selling Barsy’s Almonds is a constant performance, and I figured one of us could take care of business, while the other minded the art.
It turned out that only a handful of people checked out the drawings, and were entirely capable of flipping through the stack by themselves, so I could have handled themarket alone. It was nice to have Sam along, though, and he was a natural with the customers.
Sam opened his bucket of Mad Scientist India Pale Ale over the weekend, siphoning the brew out for the second fermentation. We had a little suspense when he tasted it. There’d been a little clumsiness with the yeast and the equipment sanitizer when he’d mixed the batch, and he said the beer might taste foul. It was great, though: not carbonated yet, but a nice combination of sweet and very bitter. Sam pointed out a faint floral note, and the slight sting from the alcohol. His first original recipe is a success. The used hops went back into the garden, via the compost pile, along with the yeast.
Barbara talked to Scott, a forward thinker and another urban farmer and brewer, at the Kingfield Market on Sunday. A commercial brewing start-up, even for micro-brewing is prohibitively expensive. Scott has plans for small-scale mead production, and believes that can be done with a conceivable amount of capital.
Saturday, at New Hope, I talked to a Princeton farmer who was selling Haralson apples. Taking a hint from somebody who knows more than I do, we picked Haralsons when we got home. Now they get juiced or sliced and frozen.
