My husband and I recently returned from Italy. As farmers we obsess about food wherever we go: eating it, looking at it in markets, talking about it and how to cook it, seeing it grow, visiting farms and asking farmer’s about it. What can grow here? What varieties do you grow? What do you charge for your products? How are people eating it?

Somehow in Italy the fact that one goes to buy one's food at the market from the people who produce it has not changed. It is very normal. The churchyards are full of produce, leading to flowers, to cheeses and meats, to clothes and secondhand items. This is a meeting place where lives mingle and connect: friends shaking hands, high heeled ladies next to squat southerners feeling tomatoes, questions asked and answered, jokes shared.

Returning to my husband's second family after not having seen them for twelve years, we were welcomed by three generations into their naturally refurbished 300-year-old stone house and into their Italian warmth. The table was the center of activity. Ten family members would reunite at the table for the meals with Maria Rosa, the matriarch of the familia, a “homemaker” in the most gourmet sense. . Each day at around ten a.m. she would wonder, “Wha am I a goin' to cook-a?” and then proceed to cook five burner meals for six to ten people, plus cook for her nine cats and one dog, often while watching her two grandchildren. This would be repeated at about five p.m. also each day. And what meals! Baked artichokes (carciofi) with lemon, garlic and olive oil, pastas, polenta in a copper pot on the wood cook stove sliced and smeared with gorgonzola cheese, minestrones, lentil bakes, salads seasoned with lemon and pepper- always with whole grains and fresh vegetables, five to six cheeses, fresh procuitto (ham), sliced breads, and raw fennel (finnochio) to munch on. The meal was where we recounted old stories, laughed at new wonders of the third generation, shared political musings and discussed art and made plans for the next day.

We would go to the market with Maria Rosa and marvel at the diversity and simplicity of it. There were red, magenta, and white mountains of raddichio, romanesca broccoli, zucchini, fennel, eggplant, tomatoes, clementines, grapes, cabbages, lettuces, fifteen to twenty types of olives, huge wheels of cheese, giant garlic and onion braids, pasta, peppers. By law, each product sold must be labeled with it's country of origin and 95% of products were from Italia.

“But wait”, you say, “the market? In December?” Yes, we were in Northern Italy; it was cold and the market was going on strong as ever. People buying food from those who grew it or caught it. The feeling of walking in Venice in the 1000 year old fish market, the cold morning air, the ruddy faces of the wool layered fishermen hawking their catches, meandering over to the mounds of vegetables straight from the south is a feeling of continuity. This place has always been a market, a place not only of commerce but of cultural life.

At each stall that we visited, Maria Rosa conversed with the vendor. They spoke at length as ten then fifteen minutes would pass. In Italia, there’s always a lot to say. When I go to the store in America, the clerk often doesn't even look at me. Maria Rosa was not only buying the produce, but she was connecting to someone else's life.

Why in America are green markets, tailgate markets, farmer's markets still such a novelty? Why do we have to struggle to make them an integral part of life for “eaters” here? There is so much effort and good work being done in sustainable farming: Buy Local campaigns, eating within your region, Community Supported Agriculture, etc. We are working to reconnect people to where their food comes from. But that is exactly it- we are working to do it when in other places it really is so logical and normal. We must learn to reintegrate markets as integral, not as fringe or as a novelty but as a necessity.

To know that markets exist like in Italy inspire me to grow more food, to grow it beautifully, to present it with art, to talk to people and make lots of hand gestures, to savor each bite in my mouth, to realize that the act of eating food feeds our soul and social life. So with each seed I plant and each bite I take, I remember food really is life.

Nicole DelCogliano and her husband, Gaelan Corozine operate Green Toe Ground Farm and Community Supported Agriculture in Celo, N.C. Check them out at the new open air market this year at La Caterina off Merrimon Ave. in Asheville and at the Burnsville Farmer's Market on Saturdays. Space still available for the 2004 CSA season. Call 828-675-0171 to inquire. www.buyappalachian.org

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