New produce stand at Alki

Both the Seattle PI and the West Seattle Herald have had recent articles about the new produce stand at Alki, just in front of The Homestead Restaurant. It seems many of the neighbors are eager to buy something fresh right in the neighborhood, rather than settling for Alki's restaurant row, 7-11's offerings or making the slog up the hill to the Metropolitan Market, PCC or Safeway.

But it turns out the 23-year-old entrepreneur is buying his fruit and veggies at Charlie's Produce, rather than bringing them freshly picked from his farm. Call me nostalgic, a Luddite, old-fashioned, but buying produce from a large warehouse before setting it up in a roadside stand violates every expectation I have of what a "true" veggie stand is all about.

Growing up in the Yakima Valley, fruit and vegetable stands dotted lazy country roads and many major intersections pretty much everywhere we went. Whenever I think of the roadside produce stands of the valley, I remember the dozens of boxes of peaches, tomatoes, plums and pears and the "gunny" sacks of corn, beans and peas my parents would buy by the Chevrolet Carryall-load, just at the peak of the harvest. Then, we (mostly the females) went to work - canning, freezing, jamming, pickling, preserving - to "put up" summer's bounty for the winter. (We also had a large garden and raised animals, but that's another story). With nine mouths to feed, it was not about eating local, going organic or being carbon neutral.

Inevitably, all those boxes of pears (picked "green") would turn golden ripe, their perfume filling the storage room and floating into the house all at once. Then no matter what else was going on, the big black canning kettle came out, the jars all had to be washed, and we all got peelers and paring knives, whether we wanted them or not.

I always tried to think of the end result: the silky smooth sweetness of a canned pear half, still giving off the faint glow of summer, smelling of honey and rose petals, the perfect after-school snack with a bowl of cottage cheese made from the milk of our big Jersey cow.

Store-bought canned pears never taste or smell the same.

Now, the Alki produce stand may offer local and/or organic fruit and vegetables, of the very best quality. The 23-year old entrepreneur sounds like a good kid. But there's something about buying directly from a person who got up early in the spring to watch for frost or to plant and weed, who searched every weather forecast and looked at every storm cloud thinking protectively of the fields, that just makes a produce stand for me.

A few weeks ago, while visiting my mother in the Salem area, I asked her if she wanted some homemade jam. Every summer I try to make her a few batches, sans sugar, due to her diabetes.

We looked all over for fresh berries, but had missed out on the raspberries and strawberries. Then we found a nursery/produce stand outside of Stayton selling blackberries and I bought a couple of pints. Later, we found wild blackberries and picked several quarts.

But all I could think of was finding an orchard or farm to pick some fruit. We saw a sign for peaches and followed, looping around winding country roads, until we found it at last. The smell of straw and hay. Bees buzzing. A barn with fair ribbons and other awards displayed. A Real Farm.

The owner was proud and knowledgeable, eager to let us pick from her carefully tended trees. She offered a knife and reminded my mother to take off her white sweater to protect it from the plump fruit, their tender skins nearly bursting from the juice. We made our choice (cling or freestone?), then went out to pick on the edge of the orchard, my mom almost leaving her cane behind in her eagerness, as she talked excitedly about picking fruit with her grandfather, father and siblings in the Yakima Valley where she grew up.

There we picked, standing under the trees, the ground dotted with fallen fruit, now quickly becoming compost. Bees gorged in drunken ecstasy on the freshest windfalls. The heady fragrance of soft ripe peaches wafting around. Twenty pounds later, we were sad to leave.

My mother was so proud to take offerings of sun-warmed, tree-ripened fruit to her friends that afternoon. "Have some peaches. We picked them ourselves. Right from the tree!"