Thursday, September 20, 2012

Tailgate Market? Farmers Market?

Farmers Market?  Tailgate market?

In all my previous writings about "farmers markets" I never dreamed that the word would mean different things in different parts of the United States.

Not until I arrived in western North Carolina, that is.

In my adopted home of the Triple Cities in upstate New York, a farmers market is anywhere local farmers gather to sell their goods. We don't have any permanent market structures here in my part of upstate New York, so one day out of the week farmers may gather in a county park, another day in a town park, still another day in a private parking lot. Or on a city street.  In my neighborhood of Westover, they gather at the YMCA.  They set up a booth near their truck, and out come the goods.

Even "downstate", 150 miles from where I live, they call these events Farmers Markets.

Not so in Western North Carolina.

In Western North Carolina, what we in the Triple Cities call a "farmers market" is called a Tailgate Market.  Here is a sign announcing a farme....I mean, a tailgate market, held yesterday in the parking lot of the Asheville, North Carolina visitors center.

A few blocks away, another tailgate market set up in the parking lot of the French Broad Co-Op. (The French Broad, for all of you with less than clean minds, is not what you think.  It is a river that runs through Asheville.)
Meanwhile, what is a Farmers Market?  It is a market in a permanent building, such as the one I visited in Raleigh (the state capital) in March of this year.  Or the Western North Carolina Farmers Market in Asheville, which I will blog about another time.

Does it matter?

Yes, because we communicate with words, and I never realized I may have been confusing some of my readers.

Whatever you call them...I love visiting them whenever I travel in the summer.

What do they call these markets where you live?


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