The cold doesn’t stop outdoor produce seller
Produce seller Hernani Correia runs a customer’s debit card at the outdoor produce stand he runs in Moses Lake, where Correia was Monday despite temperatures below 15 degrees.
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald
MOSES LAKE — It didn’t get any warmer than 14 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, but that didn’t keep Hernani Correia inside.
“It’s a little cold,” the 53-year-old Correia said as he stood outside behind a display of oranges, apples, nuts and sweets he had for sale. “I have a heater inside. I stay warm.”
Correia pointed behind him to the inside of a travel trailer. In the cold air, waves of heat visibly rose from his propane heater, and it’s where Correia huddles when there aren’t any customers to his produce stand in the Cenex service station parking lot at 1719 W. Broadway Ave.
The produce merchant wasn’t going to let a day of bitter cold keep him from making a living.
A native of Portugal who currently lives in Fresno, California, Correia said he started coming up to Moses Lake to sell produce. Currently, he stays in an RV in Ephrata, and packs his trailer full of produce every day to sell.
“I’m here all year round,” he said. “I’m beginning to come here in the second or third week of March.”
Correia said he has boxes full of Cosmic Crisp apples, blood oranges, persimmons, pistachios and other kinds of nuts, bags of dried mango slices with chili, and a few sweets, including marshmallow snowmen covered in white chocolate and bear head-shaped cookies.
“Something for fun,” he explained.
But he laughs when asked if he gets out and about a lot in the temperatures that hit the Columbia Basin on Monday.
“It’s cold,” Correia said.