"Bobriñe"

Thursday

Today was a slow day at the market, but we got a lot of zucchini or 'Bobriñe'!  I should point out that my first day at the market, being Memorial Day, was a bit atypical of how we ordinarily operate.  While there is a lot of food that goes into the dumpsters, ordinarily we don't need to pull anything out of dumpsters.  There are perhaps forty companies that operate at the market.  The market consists of four main buildings laid out in two parallel lines (http://www.terminalmarkets.com/neweng.htm). On the inside of these two lines there are over one hundred loading sites.  Some are permanently occupied by tractor trailers that have been converted to storage facilities, and others are in a constant state of flux as shipments come and go on 18 wheelers.  There are no definite lanes or traffic control rules inside the market, some of the vehicles are large and some small, some going forward, others in reverse.  Because of all this, at times the market is the closest thing I have ever seen to a live version of the traffic jam game where you have to slide the red car out.  While there are dumpsters around, some aren't very conveniently located to some of the companies, so many employees simply chuck garbage off the edge of the dock and onto the ground.  It is no wonder that we have already picked up three nails in our tires since I have been here.  Up on the docks, many of the workers are latino, they are almost exclusively men, and everyone seems to be hard at work.  You have to keep your wits about you, as there are pallet jacks loaded with onions, strawberries, melons, or any one of a hundred different fruits and vegetables (and some fungi too) zipping by at top speed.  We push through the flap doors, find the go-to guy at that particular site, and see how he responds.  Many times it's, "Not today fellas" and we assure them that we will be back again tomorrow.  Sometimes they do have a few cases or a pallet for us though.  The reasons are as varied as the pallets fruits and vegetables we get.  Some of it is surplus.  Some of it is the wrong size (we get potatoes that are too big, and potatoes that are too small).  Some of it is byproducts (we get the outer stalks of celery from celery hearts).  Some of it is moldy (we get trays of beef steak tomatoes where just one or two are growing mold).  Some of it is ripening too fast (we get bananas that are ok today, but would be bad by the time they are sold (several days from now) since we can sell them the same day).  Some of it has outward blemishes (we get oranges that are flat on one side or have too many spots on the peel).  Some of it doesn't live up to its name (we get vine-ripe tomatoes that are no longer on the vine).  Anything that would make a product unsaleable in the supermarket can lead to us getting it.  The companies are actually happy to give us the food though, as we act as a free disposal service for some of their waste that they would otherwise be paying someone to dump.  

Today we got 3 papaya, 8 banana, 8 plantain, 30 lettuce, 3 potato, 3 orange, 1 celery, 37 zucchini, 9 tomato, 3 mushroom, and 1 onion.  What can one person do with 37 zucchini?  Not much.  What can a bunch of people with a van who see lots of people in a given day do?  Stuff three good zucchini in each two dollar bag, sell dollar boxes of good zucchini, give away a lot of free, slightly damaged zucchini, give some to Agnailu to compost, and save the rest for tomorrow (each of these methods took about 1 fifth of today's zucchini, and we got it all off of our hands!).  Rick claims that Jason's favorite word is saying zucchini in Spanish, and Jason doesn't deny it.

Jim