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  • From: Garth & Kim Travis <gartht AT txcyber.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] pre-weighing/boxing and bagging (was Market scale)
  • Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:44:40 -0500

Greetings,

We pre-bag our cherry tomatoes, but I do the full size tomatoes at the market. I drive a Ford Ranger, so I do have definite limitations on space. Fortunately, my customers know better than to squeeze an Heirloom tomato, they can see how ripe they are, and rarely touch. But right now, tomatoes are such a rarity at the market, there is no time for that, anyway. They are just grabbing what is there and I sell out of tomatoes fast. I am a zone lower than the rest of the vendors, so I have the almost the only tomatoes at the market. [zones 8/9] With the outrageous heat we had this summer, I am had a very hard time keeping mine going, pickings have been thin.

My scale is a legal for tender scale, but not certified. We either sell by the piece or by the basket/bag. I find I can sell tomatoes that are less than perfect, by just increasing the weight on the baskets. My customers are happy with this, as some want really ripe tomatoes for that day and don't mind cutting out a few bad spots. I try to make every basket have the same amount of usable tomato, a challenge with stuff like Cherokee Purple that splits so bad. If I was using a scale, I would have far more headaches.

Bright Blessings,
Kim

Owsley lucy wrote:
We do that too, weight and bag/box everything before we get to market. I find boxing tomatoes saves a lot of tomatoes from the fate of customers squeezing them to see if they are ripe/ready which can lose you up to 5-5 of you maters at a busy market.

We do bring an old fashioned hanging scale that is not electronic (but sealed by the two counties where we sell so is very legal for commercial use) to weigh a few items like eggplant, onions and zucchinis as well as weighing boxes as we need to refill.

We only use our scale for set up, we don't sell across it, that is too slow. We weigh out our tomatoes into plastic baskets, before market starts and when we get breaks. Then we sell by the basket. We have an 8' prep table that we cover with filled baskeThis is much faster when you have customers lined up.
Bright Blessings,
Kim




Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH
http://boulderbelt.blogspot.com




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