By all rights last fall, Doug Woerner, my downtown farmers' market late-season quince source, should have been feeling the love. The October 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living had an article on quince, with several simple recipes. But not even the blessing of that well-known purveyor of "good things" helped move many pints or pecks of the fruit off Woerner Orchards' market table.
I was, and still am, one of Woerner's only quince customers. I can't wait for his quince, with its knobby shape, glo-green color when not ready and almost fluorescent-yellow tone when ripe. My house smells happy, like a holiday, when the fruit's cooking. Its appearance at the market is one of the only good things I can say about having to bid summer adieu.
A particular pleasure of this market is the display savvy of farmers who juxtapose their goods by color and shape - almost like painting with produce. But quince made its almost invisible 2008 debut on Woerner's table the first Sunday of October, unhighlighted next to similarly shaped yellow Bartlett pears. Maybe Woerner's thoughts paralleled mine as I mournfully regarded and bought the last of his Gettysburg-area white peaches, marking the true spiritual end of summer. But then, after I had eased several boxes of quince into my rolling basket, autumn was off and running.
