Old-Fashioned Marketplace in Fullerton Is a Crowd Pleaser : Shopping: Consumers get the pick of the crop at park. But it’s more than an outdoor food stand; it’s also a social event.

It was a Wednesday morning at Woodcrest Park and already the customers were packed three deep, staring hungrily at rows of fresh fruit and vegetables that had been stacked up on tables behind two farm trucks.

When a tin cowbell began clanging at 10:30 a.m. sharp, signaling the start of another day’s business, the customers began jostling one another and shouting their orders in a confusing mix of languages.

Standing behind the tables, Anita Casper and three co-workers moved frantically to weigh the produce, sack it and exchange it for money before turning their attention to the next customer.

And through it all, Casper was smiling serenely.

“This is a s-l-o-w day,” said Casper, an employee of a Corona farm company. “You should see it when it’s busy. I mean, sometimes you can’t even see beyond the table.”

Casper’s produce stand is part of the Fullerton Certified Farmer’s Market, one of the more colorful and unusual public events in Orange County.

Every Wednesday between 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., Woodcrest Park at Orangethorpe and Richman avenues is transformed into an outdoor market, with more than two dozen growers from as far away as Fresno and the Mojave Desert setting up boxes and crates to sell their produce directly to the consumer.

The fruits and vegetables are freshly picked. The prices are sometimes less than in a supermarket. The atmosphere is a throwback to a simpler, more rural time when Orange County was an agricultural mecca.

“I think there’s a certain amount of nostalgia in it,” said Nancy Jimenez, manager of the Orange County Farm Bureau. “Here in Orange County, we used to have a lot of the roadside fruit and vegetable stands and that has become a thing of the past.”

Besides being a place to find fresh, affordable produce, the Fullerton market is also a social event, attracting the same customers week after week.

“You get hooked on the market,” said Irene Doland, a psychology technician from Anaheim who has missed only a handful of Wednesdays at the market since it opened about 10 years ago.

Dale Harris, a honey vendor from Pomona, said he is amazed at the mix of ethnic groups represented by his customers. Harris said that each market has a distinct ethnic identity and that Fullerton’s seems to be heavily Eastern European.

“It’s basically English as a foreign language at this kind of a market,” Harris said. “I deal in 25 different languages, so it makes it tough to communicate.”

The Fullerton Certified Farmer’s Market is one of two outdoor food markets in the county operated as state-regulated bazaars. The other one is every Thursday at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, sponsored by the Orange County Farm Bureau. The Fullerton market is operated by a nonprofit association made up of growers and local residents.

There are about 125 such markets statewide certified by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The markets, intended primarily for small growers, are operated by cities and business groups.

“This is a way for the agricultural industry and the home gardener to distribute to those who want fresh, ripe foods,” said John Ellis, deputy agricultural commissioner for Orange County.

Ellis’ agency enforces state law requiring growers in these markets to have certificates showing what crops they produce and are allowed to sell. County agricultural inspectors also monitor quality by conducting random inspections and examining produce for such problems as dirt, insect infestation or frost damage.

And with the recent finding of Mediterranean fruit flies throughout the Southland, the inspectors also make sure that citrus, avocados, persimmons and other fruits vulnerable to infestation by the flies are kept covered in quarantined areas. The Fullerton market was added to the quarantine list Jan. 10 after two Medflies were found in Westminster and Garden Grove.

Aside from fruits and vegetables, fresh fish, eggs and honey are hawked at the Fullerton market.

Carefully removing jars of honey and arranging them neatly on a cloth-covered table, Harris, the beekeeper from Pomona, said he makes the rounds of a number of Southland markets.

“They’re great for the small beekeeper like me,” he said as customers began to cluster around his honey stand a few moments before it opened. “The large honey-packers have all the store business sewn up.”

Forest E. Dull--an 83-year-old back-yard farmer from Whittier who was the first person penalized under a new state law banning removal of produce from a Medfly quarantine area--earlier in the day had set up a stand of macadamia nuts and nursery plants behind the open trunk of his 1955 Packard.

Dull, a 10-year regular at the Fullerton market, said he normally sells citrus products too, but was unable to that day because his one-acre growing area has been put under quarantine.

“I always move some,” Dull said of his macadamia nuts. “But I never move great quantities because they’re not for everybody.”

The amount of money made by the growers ranges greatly, with successful operations earning as much as $500 a day while the less fortunate make only $50, said Mona Amoon, manager of the Fullerton market. Each vendor, Amoon said, has to turn over 5% of his daily take to the Fullerton Certified Farmer’s Market.

Customers can expect to save between 20% and 30% by shopping for produce at a certified farmers market, said Terri Cronin, a direct-marketing specialist for the Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento.

But Cronin said that in Southern California the price savings are less--and practically non-existent on some products--because of the region’s status as a year-round produce capital where fruits and vegetables are abundant.

The real appeal for a certified market, Cronin added, is in being able to get products so fresh. Customers at the Fullerton market agreed.

“It’s fresher than a supermarket,” said Patricia DiPinto, a retired teacher from Fullerton who was at the market with her husband, Lawrence. “And you can tell it doesn’t have all kinds of preservatives because it spoils faster.”

There is a darker side of a farmer’s market. Last year, during the spring corn season, Casper said so many customers were jostling forward that their weight collapsed a table, scattering ears of corn in all directions.

Vendors also complained that customers often try to barter prices, even though they are non-negotiable. Amoon said shoplifters also fill up sacks of produce and saunter off while the vendor is busy.

But vendors say the market is a congenial place--one, they say, that constantly draws praise from new customers.