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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] How was your summer

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  • From: "cjmaness AT juno.com" <cjmaness AT juno.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] How was your summer
  • Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 15:44:23 GMT

I think overall, our sales were up this year. But, we are still fairly new to this and we are constantly working on different areas. Our market runs from April 1 to Oct. 31. In the past years we couldn't get to market until late May or early June. We really worked on getting there earlier this year, so that naturally increased our overall sales. We had also noticed we had a real slump in sales in Sept. and Oct. in past years so we worked on that area too.

Our market is going through some sort of transition that we don't completely understand. Some weeks were incredible. The next week would be slow. We don't know if it is lack of advertising, or if our customers took more vacations than usual, or if it is the economy. I know when gas prices hit nearly $3.00 a gallon that had to have an impact.

The severe drought had quite an impact on a number of our "usual" crops. Even with drip irrigation we simply couldn't get carrots or beets up this fall. The spring crop suffered as well. The beets never sized up like they usually would, and trying to pull anything up was a waste of time. It took the potato fork to loosen the ground enough to get the carrots, beets and turnips.

Because of the drought we had a terrible time with our drip irrigation. For the drip to have an occasional leak is normal. What we were seeing was something literally eating the drip lines. These weren't just holes. It would be a six inch piece of the line eaten away. Nothing left except a little on the edge. I would spend hours every day walking the lines and fixing these problems. Because of that our water bill was unreal. We pumped the ponds dry, our well nearly went dry so we resorted to the rural water. Very expensive way to water! But, what else do you do?

Carla




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