Montreal’s public markets are lively these days. We should know, it’s where we spend our weekends. You can feel the end of the season is nigh and like any season end, it is characterized by a last minute frenzy, as some rush to fill up on paste tomatoes for their spaghetti sauce while others load up on garlic and onions for the coming months.
To say our market weekends keep us busy is an understatement, even as our markets – i.e. Atwater and Jean-Talon – are readying to close their outdoor (farmer) spaces and focus on their indoor (merchant) spaces for the winter. We too are prepping for an eventual wrap-up, despite our having at least half a dozen weekends left in our current outdoor locations. Given a warm September and forecasts calling for a temperate October, I find myself wondering if the markets should begin to envisage later outdoor closing dates, global warming oblige.
We have been dealing with the vagaries of climate change for nearly fifteen years, and can assure you that the seasons have indeed grown longer, particularly at the front end as we are now consistently able to enter our fields two weeks earlier than when we first embarked upon our farm adventure. While there is upside to a longer growing season, it also brings with it a slew of human resource challenges. All of which will be food for thought during the winter months…
Meanwhile, there are only six weeks of basket deliveries to go, including this one!
