Farm Stand

While visiting my sister, the Kitchen Empress, last week I got to experience some of the food-related perks of Michigan living. To start with, little downtown Ann Arbor has no fewer than four chocolate shops – the serious old-fashioned kind where they pull taffy in the window and display row upon row of bright red candy apples as well as the newer, swankier kind with “European-style” chocolates and post-modern names like “Schakolad.” My favorite food adventure, though, was the farm stand.

We’d been to the supermarket the night before, but KE had said we should wait to buy our eggs from a local farm stand. Since it was well after dark by the time we left Ann Arbor for her little cottage, located on a lake about 20 minutes outside of town, I figured we’d have to wait another day. I was quite surprised when we pulled into what seemed like the driveway of a private house.

“KE,” I whispered, looking around the dark yard, the silhouettes of small outbuildings showing up in the light cast by her headlights, “don’t you think the farm stand is closed by now?”

“Grab your camera and come with me,” she whispered back. I followed her into the yard, expecting a sleepy farm wife to come out brandishing her rolling pin at any minute. She led me over to a tiny wood structure with a peaked roof. “Fresh Eggs Self Serve,” the sign read. Comprehension dawned.

We opened the fridge and pulled out a dozen of what would turn out to be the freshest, most golden-yolked eggs this side of Eatwell Farm. “Please put money in lower left drawer,” said the sign inside. We left $2.50 in quarters in the designated drawer and, loot in hand, drove off into the night, as silently as we had come.