I Don’t Go to the Farmer’s Market for the Strawberries – Why ordinary places may be an amazing third space for making friends in retirement
Retirement Field Notes
An observation about ordinary places, repeated encounters, and the unexpected possibilities that emerge when we show up.
Making friends in retirement is one of the challenges I hear about most often. Oddly enough, that made me think of strawberries.
I don’t go to the farmer’s market because I desperately need strawberries.
They’re wonderful, of course.
Fresh vegetables are nice. Local honey is nice. Fresh bread is nice.
But if I’m honest, I could buy most of those things somewhere else.
So why do I keep going?
I’ve been asking myself that question for a while. The answer, I eventually realised, had very little to do with produce.
Supporting local farmers or enjoying a slower Saturday morning certainly make attendance attractive. Those things are certainly part of it.
But I think something else keeps drawing me back: the people.
Not in the sense that I have dozens of friends there.
Quite the opposite.
Many of the people I see each week don’t even know my name.
Yet over time, they become familiar.
The woman who sells flowers.
The potter whose mugs always catch my eye.
The musician who seems to know exactly which songs belong to a Saturday morning.
The couple who always arrive with the same cheerful golden retriever.
The coffee vendor who eventually remembers how you take your coffee.
The conversations are usually brief.
Sometimes they’re nothing more than a smile, a nod, or a comment about the weather.
Individually they seem insignificant.
Collectively they begin to feel like something much larger. It wasn’t until I retired that I began to understand why those encounters mattered.
For most of our working lives, we rarely think about places like this.
Work quietly provides much of the social contact we need.
The same colleagues, hallways, coffee room, meetings, and even the same familiar faces.
Retirement changes that almost overnight.
Many people assume what they miss are the people.
I suspect they also miss the environment that kept putting those people in front of them. As I started reading more about friendship, I discovered a concept called propinquity.
One of the most interesting ideas in friendship research is something called propinquity.
It’s the simple observation that people become friends largely because they repeatedly encounter one another.
Familiarity grows.
Comfort grows.
Conversation grows.
Friendship often follows.
The farmer’s market doesn’t guarantee friendship.
It does something more subtle.
It creates the conditions where friendship could happen. Once you start looking for these places, you begin to notice them everywhere.
Walking groups.
Community choirs.
Volunteer organizations.
Libraries.
Coffee shops.
Photography clubs.
Community gardens.
These places aren’t valuable because they promise instant companionship.
They’re valuable because they invite us back.
Again.
And again.
And again.
That repetition matters. Many retirement articles tell people to “join something.”
That’s why I’ve never been completely satisfied with the usual retirement advice.
It’s generally good advice.
But I’ve always thought the explanation was incomplete.
Joining isn’t the point.
Showing up repeatedly is.
The real value isn’t the first Saturday.
It’s the tenth.
The twentieth.
The moment when someone smiles because they recognise you.
Or asks where you were last week.
Or introduces you to someone standing beside them.
And while I’ve been thinking about friendship, another idea has been quietly taking shape as well.
When I first retired, I believed I needed to figure out exactly what came next.
I thought I should find new purpose.
A new identity.
At the very least, a new hobby.
Lately I’ve become less certain that life works that way.
More and more, I think meaningful lives are built through what scientists sometimes call adjacent possibilities.
One small step reveals another.
Not because we planned it.
Because we couldn’t see it until we arrived.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to see ordinary places differently.
You visit the farmer’s market for strawberries.
You notice a photography exhibition.
The photographer mentions a local nature walk.
Someone there tells you about a conservation project.
A volunteer opportunity appears.
You meet people you never would have encountered otherwise.
None of those outcomes could have been predicted on your first visit.
That’s precisely the point.
Life after retirement doesn’t always unfold through carefully designed five-year plans.
Sometimes it unfolds because we placed ourselves in an environment where something unexpected had a chance to happen.
The destination wasn’t the farmer’s market.
The farmer’s market was simply the doorway.
That’s why I think ordinary places matter more than we often realise.
They’re not merely places where we buy vegetables or drink coffee.
Turns out that they’re part of the social infrastructure that helps people remain connected to the world around them.
They’re places where belonging quietly begins.
Where curiosity is rewarded.
The familiar faces become familiar names.
Where conversations slowly become friendships.
“And everybody knows your name.” Oh, apologies…that’s Cheers.
And where one ordinary Saturday morning can lead to possibilities we never knew existed.
Perhaps that’s why I keep going.
Not for the strawberries.
For everything else that might quietly grow around them.
Read More
- How to Make Friends: The Forgotten Science of Adult Friendship
- Making Friends in Retirement: Why Work Was a Friendship Factory
- Retirement and Social Connection: The Danger of “Bowling Alone”
- How Do You Build a Meaningful Life After Retirement?
Research Note
The observations in this article are informed by ongoing reading and research in psychology, sociology, adult development, aging, friendship, purpose, identity, and life transitions. While these essays are observational rather than academic, many of the underlying ideas are grounded in established research.
- Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1950). Social pressures in informal groups: A study of human factors in housing. Stanford University Press.
- Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278–1296.
- Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78.
- Ray Oldenburg. (1999). The Great Good Place. Marlowe & Company.
Cynthia Ross Tustin is the founder of I'm Thinking of Retiring, an online publication exploring the psychology, purpose, and everyday realities of life after work. A retired Fire Chief, former ICU and Emergency Room nurse, instructor, and policy writer, she combines lived experience, research, and a lifelong curiosity about human behaviour to write thoughtful essays on retirement, identity, purpose, friendship, and the ordinary moments that quietly reveal something larger. Through her Retirement Field Notes and Ordinary Tuesday series, she encourages readers to approach this next chapter with curiosity rather than certainty.
