A big guy in a hunter orange boiler suit, bright orange Crocs, and a long white beard plays the piccolo there every week. I call him Prison Santa.

A kid who can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen sits on the curb with a guitar. He seems like just one more embryonic hippie until he starts to play, and he wails the blues with such ferocity and chops that I wonder exactly when he sold his soul.

One guy sells honey and brings glass panels that enclose thousands of bees hard at work.

Several Amish families, all with preternaturally serious sons and daughters in old-fashioned black hats and bonnets, sell heirloom tomatoes, microgreens, and “hand pies.” Damn, those are some good hand pies.

Bouquets of zinnias and dahlias, coxcomb and cosmos. Sunflowers, lysianthus, lantern flowers, daylilies.

The guy who was here a few weeks ago with a kiddie pool full of string beans now has a kiddie pool full of corn.

Ostrich meat. Ostrich eggs. Comically large ostrich bones (for dogs). Coleman coolers full of rainbow trout.

Do you have any more sugar snap peas? “Sorry, those are done with for the year.”

“Hey, you should come down to the farm tomorrow. Raspberries are peaking this week!”

“Hot cheesy bread! Come and get your hot, sexy cheesy bread!” There’s a line ten people deep and rows of portable ovens. (I’ve succumbed to the cheesy bread before. It made me finally understand why some people call delicious food ‘sinful.’)

A rainbow of jams lined up in a row.

Purple potatoes and white eggplant. Yellow tomatoes and red carrots. It’s Bizarro produce!

The usual demonstrators are out. Free Tibet. PFLAG. Libertarian Party. Pro-wind power. Anti-wind power (the turbines are noisy and kill wildlife.) The “Raging Grannies,” women who sing off-key odes to health care reform. Host a foreign exchange student. Share the road with bicycles!

“Would you like an apple fritter?” Yes, I certainly would. Bliss is the Sunday paper and an apple fritter on the front porch.

Chiogga beets and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, four kinds of kale, long stalks of lemongrass and bunches of Thai basil sit alongside tame little heads of lettuce.

A sign reading “Pattypan Squash” makes me smile. Pattypan. A sign pleading “Free Zucchini!” cracks me up. (I have been sneaking zucchini into almost every meal for weeks now.)

One of the artisanal chevre makers is the reigning national champion. Cheese competitions are serious business around here.

Arrive early enough and you’ll see the restaurant buyers pulling their Radio Flyers around the square, strategizing tonight’s specials. They usually scoop up the best stuff before 7AM.

The herb sellers who were here in early spring with the morels and asparagus are still here among the honeycrisp apples and hardy mums. People are still buying.

Coffee carts are apparently recession-proof.

There’s barely room in my bag for the broccoli and red peppers. Can you hold this baguette for a second? Thanks. Do you think we can eat all these plums? Should I make a tart?

“So, where do you want to go for breakfast?”