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  • From: Errol Castens <castens AT peoplepc.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] making football season an asset to farmers' market
  • Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:09:32 -0600 (GMT-06:00)

The board members and vendors at our grower-only farmers' market have spent six seasons building up a good mix of growers and customers in a college town of about 19,000, and it works well during the summer. As soon as school begins again, though -- early in August -- there's so much going on that customer numbers drop quickly.
 
Home football weekends are the worst. University of Mississippi home football games multiply Oxford's population several times over, with 50-65,000 fans at the games and thousands more who come just for the tailgating parties on campus. Most set up their party tents in "The Grove" in the wee hours of the morning, even for the rare Saturday night game, and they've either booked their cuisine with a local caterer or prepared it at home before coming to town. We're not on many people's way to the stadium, either.
 
I'm convinced moving the market to Friday afternoons on game weekends would be a good thing, but some think we'd lose too many regular customers who'd show up on Saturday morning and not find us. (Unfortunately, quite a few regulars don't want to get out in game-day traffic, so we lose them, too.) We probably wouldn't have the option of moving to Friday afternoon every week during football season, because thousands of locals plan their Fridays around high school football games.
 
Who on this list sells in a football-dominated college town? How do you make home games work for you instead of against you?
 
Errol Castens
Oxford, Mississippi

Errol Castens
Staff Writer
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
Oxford Bureau
office: 662-281-1069
mobile: 662-816-1282

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  • [Market-farming] making football season an asset to farmers' market, Errol Castens, 12/20/2006

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