ROUSES_Summer2023_Magazine Pages-Web

Heart & Soil: Family Truck Farms

from the French word for bartering, troque . “The ‘truck’ in this sense comes from Middle English, trucken , from Old French troque , both meaning to trade, to barter, and springs from the fact that such commodities were often used as items of exchange — paying the local pastor with an occasional bushel of corn, for instance,” explained Merrell Knighten, an English professor at Louisiana State University , in a 1984 syndicated column. It wasn’t long after the rise of truck farms in Louisiana that the term “truck” even became synonymous with fruits and vegetables, the bartered and-sold items themselves. The truck farms were also sometimes known as market gardens; the produce raised on truck farms (leafy greens, peas, artichokes, radishes, tomatoes, orchards of figs — the list is endless) was delicate, meaning that even if it could be shipped long distances to the likes of Memphis or Chicago, the risk of spoiling was too great a financial and product-wasting risk. This ensured that, for most of their popularity, truck farms sold almost exclusively at local public markets, becoming indispensable

community resources and a productive use of the rich farming land that hadn’t yet been targeted for any other type of development (like, ahem, suburban neighborhoods). “The vacant lands in and about New Orleans are the most prolific in the United States, and equal in productiveness the richest soil in the world. The soil is especially well-adapted to the culture of vegetables, and the products are not only large and plentiful, but the flavor of certain kinds is superior to those raised in other and less favorited sections of the country,” The Times-Picayune proclaimed in an 1887 story. “There are thousands of acres of land, relegated to the alligators, snakes and other reptiles, swampy and subject to overflow, which with but little expense, compared to their ultimate value, could be drained and converted into truck farms which would more than doubly repay the cost of reclamation every year.” The same 1887 Times-Picayune article also made note of how different truck farms around New Orleans had found a range of crops that grow splendidly in their specific locations — even if those garden

By Sarah Baird When someone mentions heading to the “truck farm” to buy produce, what picture springs to mind? Perhaps it’s the booming voice of the late, great Mr. Okra in New Orleans, driving his veggie painted technicolor truck through the 9th Ward announcing, “I’ve got mirliton! I’ve got tomatoes! I’ve got cucumbers! It ain’t no use in cooking, if you don’t use fresh veg-e-tables!” Perhaps it’s swinging by a roadside, makeshift farm stand housed on a truck’s tailgate outside of Breaux Bridge, grabbing bundles of collards or turnip greens and slipping cash to the guy sleepily manning his sales post under an umbrella. B etween the end of the Civil War and the suburban sprawl of the mid 20th century, though, a very different type of “truck” farm was crucial to the agricultural ecosystem of South Louisiana. Truck farms were an enterprising, fresh-food-forward way of life for growers and families, feeding residents in urban centers like New Orleans using the yet-to be-developed fertile lands in places like Gretna and Metairie (which even means “farm share” in French) to grow small and mid-sized farm plots of produce intended to be sold hyper-locally to the surrounding community. If heading to Rouses Markets is your idea of buying local in 2023, then checking in with your truck farmer was the 1923 equivalent. Etymologically, the use of the term “truck” farm doesn’t refer to any four-wheeled, rattling Ford or Chevy, but instead comes

If heading to Rouses Markets is your idea of buying local in 2023, then checking in with your truck farmer was the 1923 equivalent.

19 WWW.ROUSES.COM