York Corner
YORK - We've been moseying around local farmstands of late, so we thought it about time to stop in again at York Corner Gardens, where our old friend David Coombs keeps the place popping.
On Sunday, Aug. 27, at about 1 p.m., we found him in fine form.
"Cash?" he was saying to a customer who'd stopped by to pay a debt. "Sure! Around here, cash is just as good as money."
Outside, the traffic on Route 1, slowed to a crawl by a horrific accident on I-95 and bumper-to-bumper in both directions, was leading customers to ask what was going on.
"I don't know," he'd say, lightening the mood. "Maybe it was something I said?"
Very heavy traffic is usually not good for business because people don't like to give up their places in line, David had told us before, but that day he was having a hard time finding time in between his own steady stream of customers to gobble down a luncheon salad he'd cobbled together from his own greens and some cheese.
"I eat stuff all day long here," he said to those of us who were watching. "A bite of celery here, a carrot there. And every time I pass these" - he was ringing up some California fresh figs - "I have to have one."
That led to some talk about the figs with Sigmund and Judith Getz, of Dover, N.H., who were buying, among other items, four quarts of blueberries, a quart of strawberries and some native nectarines.
The Getzs are such regular customers at David's place that we'd interviewed them there before - he's a retired history teacher, they both volunteer at Strawbery Banke, and they go out of their way to buy from David - so we didn't talk to them again at any length, but we did hear them praise, once again, David's produce, while David, in turn, praised them.
"You want to know why I work here 90 hours a week?" he said, and quickly answered his own question. "Because guys like this love this store."
And, he added, this time ringing up a pale green honeydew melon of almost perfect spherical shape, "Everybody deserves to have this stuff."
He then happily called our attention to the nectarines. He hadn't had native ones, he said, in something like 10 years, and when we asked why, he guessed it probably had to do with a cold, snowless winter that sapped orchards' strength.
The nectarines on his shelves were from Hampton Falls, N.H., and he asked us to give credit to their growers, Linda and Peter Wagner, of Applecrest Orchards there.
When we got a chance to talk to some customers, we met Louise Botazzi and Roger Vancourt, she from Medway, Mass., and he from Northboro, Mass. They've been coming to the York region each summer for the past six or seven years, they said, and had just spent four days at the Sand and Surf bed-and-breakfast at Short Sands.
When we asked what they do when they come here, they both answered in unison and immediately, "EAT!" and then added, laughing, "That, and go the beach."
They eat out, they said, but at no one place, preferring to sample a variety.
When we asked what they did for a living at home, Roger told us that he was an "interior landscaper," and when we asked what that meant, he explained that he provides plants, mostly to office buildings but also to a few restaurants, all across eastern Massachusetts.
The plants, we learned, are all tropical so as to stand the interior heat, with one of the most common being Massange's dracaena, more commonly known as "corn plant" because that's what it resembles. It grows four to six feet tall, Roger said.
When we asked how he got into that business, he reported that he'd been introduced to it by a friend at a time when he wanted to launch into business for himself. He'd previously worked in computers (we neglected to ask doing what) and in that line of work had changed jobs every two or three years. Among the alternatives he studied, including, as he put it, "going solo in computers," the interior landscaper option was most appealing.
And it seems to have worked, because Roger's now been at it for 17 years or so, and, though most are part-timers, he employs about 10. His business is called Corporate Foliage.
Louise reported that she works in Boston as a paralegal, and in "real-estate, mainly." We didn't get a chance to explore that subject at any length because she and Roger were headed out while the crowd inside David's was thickening. We did, however, hear her confirm what we've all been hearing of late: interest rates are going up and the market is going slack.
More on the lively goings-on at this spot next time...
