Anyone needs potatoes or onions? You don’t have to go to market here to buy these! The only thing you need to do is to be awake every time not to miss the potato seller passing by your home.
Who is called potato seller? A potato seller is a person (or a team of 2-3 people) who sells his products on a truck travelling among neighborhoods and small streets. You can’t see them on main streets or avenues as what they do is actually not legal. Although he sells onion and sometimes pumpkin in addition to potatoes, he is called potato seller. Potato sellers are generally villagers who sell their own crops at first hand. This is absolutely more profitable for them.
Potatoes and onions on truck are kept in sacks and they are sold in these sacks, which weigh 5-10-20 kilos. People prefer buying potatoes and onions from these sellers especially if they have large families as it’s not tiring for them unlike bazaar shopping. They don’t have to carry heavy bags from bazaar to home in this way. It’s cheaper, too because they buy wholesale and pay directly to the producer and what’s more, these products are much fresher than the ones on market shelves!
Every potato seller has his own style of yelling. Some use loud speaker while some prefer using their voice. They definitely have different intonation, not all potato sellers have the same melody although the sentences they use are almost the same. They yell, “Potato seller has come, potato seller! Fresh potatoes and onions are here!” What you should do when you hear this voice is to open the window and call him by saying “Potato seller, potato seller! Please wait!” Then you can go buy sack of potatoes or onions.
Do you have anything similar to this in your culture?
7 Comments on "Potato Seller"
In the US we have farmers sell produce (and flowers) on the street at busy intersections. Sometimes they come to the cars, but usually they hold signs near their open tailgates and wait for customers to stop. However, I have never seen them drive through neighborhoods.
What we see here are farmers from out of town selling from their vehicles parked near major intersections. Every summer I look forward to buying potatoes, onions and corn from a farmer who lives over an hour’s drive west of here. Back in the 60′s, 70′s there were some neighbourhoods that had vegetable peddlers selling in the manner you have described. My father was a market gardener and he sold our #2 vegetables to a peddler named Rubin. He went into the ethnic neighbourhoods where people didn’t mind buynig a slightly shrivelled pepper or less than perfect other vegetables because of course the quality was reflected in the price. He was quite the character. He once gave my father an old old television set from the 50′s that I used in my first apartment when I moved away from home. Those were the good old days!
In Bulgaria we have fish sellers circulating around the small streets with small wheelbarrows, usually these are gipsy guys, yelling “fish, fish, fish’ but in their own way, sometimes hard to be understood.
Oh, we have fish sellers in South of Turkey, where fish is abundant. I guess all street sellers have their own way of yelling. But I do love that they compose different melodies.
I wish we had potato sellers like these! It’s always nice when you can buy directly from the grower and not have to pay profits to middle men. Sometimes people who grow potatoes or strawberries will sell them at little stalls along the side of the road here, but we don’t really have the equivalent of these potato sellers in Ireland.
Hi Spud, growing your own products is always the best, so I admire you and your spuds. But as I don’t have that chance, buying them directly from growers is better for me than buying from markets. The reason why you don’t have similar potato sellers in Ireland might be the number of people growing their own potatoes. What do you think?
Oh I wish we had potato sellers in Fethiye. What a great idea. We love going to the pazar for our shopping but we don’t like the days when we need to buy the potatoes and onions because they’re so heavy.
Julia