At six a.m. on a slushy winter Friday, most of Government Center is lifeless. The normal daytime hustle and bustle of Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market and the North End are alarmingly absent. Amid the chill and gloom, though, is a beacon of light and activity. At the Haymarket on Blackstone Street, the day's business is just beginning to unfold.
Trucks arrive and men dressed in winter clothes jump out armed with boxes of bright produce. On the ground, the stalls come together, each vendor piling his wares in neat pyramids. Others shovel snow and ice, sprinkling rock salt as they go, clearing a path for the customers who will soon fill the market.
Light cascades down from the lanterns hung inside the stalls, and space heaters crank out pools of warmth. The vendors are jovial, joking and laughing as if they have already been awake for hours, which no doubt many of them have.
These vendors perpetuate a long Boston tradition. They search the Chelsea Produce Terminal all week for the best deals they can find so that come week's end they can sell their customers fresh produce at the lowest prices possible. The Haymarket, open every Friday and Saturday from dawn to dusk, has provided Bostonians with fresh, cheap fruits, vegetables and fish for over 100 years.
The Haymarket is a perfect place to stock up on nutritious fruits and vegetables, especially in winter and spring when farmer's markets are closed. With the release of the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans advising 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, many complain that produce is too expensive. Not so at Haymarket, making it an attractive option for college students on a budget. Where else can you get 5 mangoes for $2 or a bag of 10 red bell peppers for $1? Baskets of strawberries that would cost $4-5 at the supermarket go for $2 at Haymarket.
Friedman School of Nutrition professor and Dean of Students Dr. Lynne Ausman remembers when she and a colleague made weekly trips to the Haymarket to capitalize on the best last minute deals on Saturday evenings.
"At that point, the vendors would be anxious to get rid of their excess tomatoes, corn, cherries and so forth. once a season we would purchase 60-80 lbs of tomatoes, bring them to one house or the other, then chop, cook, season and can them," she said. "On other occasions, we would do the same with tens of pounds of cherries."
Catering to Boston's ever-diversifying population, the Haymarket features hundreds of different fruits and vegetables. Joey Onessimo has been selling at the Haymarket since 1949, when he was a teenager helping his older brother run the stall. He's watched first hand how the mix of produce has changed throughout his lifetime.
"In 1949 it was all carrots and cabbage and apples and oranges," he said. "Now we got mangoes and cassavas and sugarcane and boniato."
Boniato? It's a Caribbean root vegetable somewhat like a sweet potato, high in vitamins A and C. Part of the job at the Haymarket is keeping abreast of new trends in the produce world. Customers demand a wide variety of fruits and vegetables these days, expecting mangoes in January and fresh salad greens all year round. Due to increased international trade and advances in agriculture, vendors like Onessimo are able to capitalize on this demand.
Otto Gallotto, the current president of the Haymarket Association, points to another trend. Although Americans do most of their shopping at supermarkets, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in open-air markets. Gallotto hopes to harness this interest and translate it into a new customer base. He has begun work on a Web site, which he hopes will attract new people - Boston's burgeoning college student population in particular.
Recent graduates, apartment dwelling co-eds and even cafeteria-bored dormitory residents may find Haymarket appealing because it is readily accessible by public transportation (Government Center stop on the Orange line), and cheaper than both grocery stores and farmer's markets. Although the quality might not compare to what you find at Boston's farmer's market in its August prime - Haymarket produce has generally traveled from very far away - it does have one advantage, according to Gallotto.
"We're the only open-air produce market in the entire Northeast that stays open year round," he said before he rushed off to put the finishing touches on a mountain of sweet corn. "And the prices beat the supermarket any day."
Molly Pindell is a graduate student in agriculture, food and the environment at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. She has a BA in international studies from Colby College.
