Today was my first day at a farmers market, and I was considerably surprised at the size of the one in Des Moines. We saw just about every vendor there and talked with a few folks about what they were selling, even buying our lunch and some snacks from them. Interestingly at this farmers market, at least, not all the food was local and some of the students were actually told that items from other markets were repackaged for resale. Equally surprising, to me, was that many farmers did not sell organic, cage free, hormone free, etc. types of food everyone associates with farmers markets. Many people sold normal, conventionally produced goods. I was surprised that it also seemed a good number of people actually came to the farmers market just to sell cooked goods or even artwork like metal sculptures. After going to the farmers market, we went to the Living History Farm, for a walk through Iowa farm history.

The walk in farm was a historical tour with farm houses from the 1700s to the 1950s. We got to learn about oxen (which apparently are any cow trained to be a work cow), see some of old Iowa, and understand a bit of the progress in agriculture. While in the 1850s town we even bought a few bottles of Sarsaparilla and sassafras drops. It was really interesting to see farming from the past, but honestly it was a bit difficult to grasp for me just because the tour system was almost tuned to average life of the era more than the farming life making it a lot of information to take in. Lastly we spent some time with the Neubauers on the farm cultivating the soil. It was great getting to hear some real talk about some of the politics in farming as well as a bit of the decision making, primarily how much is left to a bit of guess work since weather and price fluctuations are so difficult to estimate. I look forward to getting to talk with Scott, Brent, and/or Denny more about how farming operates in a lot of different ways and enjoyed getting a small bit of conversation while riding in a tractor for the first time.