You don’t need to go to a special farmers market to buy fresh produce from local farmers here in Ialoveni, Moldova. You just stroll down the street.

I bought some delicious peaches on Saturday from the woman you see on the left, who harvested them in the nearby village of Mileștii Mici. She was displaying them on the sidewalk near the center of town along with two older women also selling produce. Her husband is behind her next to the car.

I bought three kilos of peaches from her, which she weighed with a hand-held scale. They cost 8 Moldovan lei per kilo, or 24 lei total. That’s roughly $1.30, or about 20 cents per pound. As I picked out my peaches, I chatted with all of them about how I planned to bake an American-style pie, showing them a picture of a peach pie on my phone. The husband, who spoke some English, encouraged his wife to try saying “peach pie.” They also asked me several questions about what Champa and I are doing with the Peace Corps.

After I placed the peaches in my daypack, I walked to the nearby market to buy some vanilla ice cream and other items, then headed home to start baking. I listened to podcasts while I prepared the dough, peeled the peaches and finally put the finished pie in the oven.

You can see below how it turned out. It was still hot by the time we finished our dinner but we didn’t care; the ice cream cooled it off and we cleaned our plates. We also shared much of it with our host family. By tomorrow, we’ll probably polish off the rest. Then it will be time to see what other fruits our local farmers are selling.