Saturday, 7 A.M., the Market

At seven the lot contains growers, restaurant buyers, and about forty civilians. At ten it contains eight hundred people, a queue for coffee, and a man playing a cajón.

These are not the same event and the difference is not crowd size. It is that at seven you can talk to the person who grew the thing, and at ten that person is executing transactions as fast as their hands allow and cannot afford to tell you anything.

What you get for the early alarm, concretely. First, the chefs are there, and you can simply watch what they buy — I have never once regretted buying whatever the woman from the Portuguese place is buying, and last week it was green almonds and I did not know what they were. Second, the seconds bin, which appears at seven and is gone by eight: bruised, split or ugly produce at a third of the price, and if it is going into a sauce, a stock or a tart, the bruise is irrelevant and you have paid four dollars instead of twelve. Third, and this is the real one, growers will talk at seven. Ask what is good this week rather than what they have. It is a different question and it gets a different answer, and twice it has gotten me something they had not put out yet.

The tomatoes this week are at the point in the season where they stop being a purchase and start being a deadline. Three weeks left, maybe four. Buy more than you need and put a tray in the oven at 250 for four hours with olive oil and salt and nothing else, and in February you will find them in the freezer and it will change a Tuesday.

One thing I have stopped doing: making a list. I bring a bag, a rough amount of cash, and one open slot for dinner, and I decide in the lot. A list at a market is a way of not seeing what is in front of you, which is the only reason to have come.

Two piles, one table, one grower, one field, picked the same morning. The difference is cosmetic and the price gap is roughly threefold.

The pretty pile exists because a photograph exists. Nobody has ever tasted a photograph.

If it is going into anything that involves heat or a blender, the ugly pile is not a compromise, it is a discount for having no vanity. Buy the ugly pile. Buy the whole ugly pile.

It happened in April and I have not written about it because I did not want to jinx it. He puts a carton under the table on Saturdays and hands it over without a word about it, and we have never once discussed the arrangement.

Two years of showing up. That is the entire qualification and there is no faster route.

I am aware that a set-aside dozen is a small thing. I have moved twice in six years and it is the most rooted I have ever felt anywhere.