On shopping and the growth of market fairs

So for the last eight months or so, we've been making a conscious effort to buy locally-grown groceries. One easy way to do this is at farmer's markets; anything sold at the New York City Greenmarkets has to be grown by the seller, not bought for resale or on commission or anything like that, so the stuff is pretty much guaranteed to be grown within a two-hour driving radius. There's a huge farmer's market at Union Square several times a week, year-round, with an incredible variety of fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, flowers, etc. and lots of customers... but it takes us 5-10 minutes in the car, twenty minutes on the train, ten minutes on a subway, and five minutes on another subway, plus unpredictable time transferring between those modes of transport, to get there. There's also a farmer's market at Atlas Park, two miles and ten minutes' drive from our home, but it's only open on Saturdays, only May-October, and much smaller, with seldom more than three stalls. Which one do we shop at, how often?

( moderately mathematical discussion )

Anyway, this particular morning we went to Atlas Park, where there were three stalls and a few customers braving the rain. We got some beets (roots to become brownies or cupcakes, greens to go into Le Menagier's spinach tarts), spinach (for both salad and the aforementioned tarts), fennel (again with the tarts), Honeycrisp apples (before they go out of season), a rutabaga (for Scotch broth, using up the frozen remains of a leg of lamb we had several weeks ago), and I don't remember what else. On the way home, we saw a sign for the new Trader Joe's; we had read a year or more ago that one was coming to Queens, but there had been no news of it actually opening, nor indication of exactly where in Queens it would be. So now there will be a Trader Joe's two miles from our home. Yay!