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  • From: "BarbaraJ" <jbmckillip AT mesanetworks.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] a "hooray!" for farmers' markets
  • Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 07:31:24 -0600

Kathryn,
  You go girl!  How awesome for you.  I had much of the same emotions last year on my first year at market.  Here I was, middle age, had this huge garden and this desire for more local food for everyone, ended up at market in the middle of May, freezing my behind off with 40 mph winds and STILL people came to the market and were amazed at the limited stuff we had available.  I thought everyone knew that spinach and lettuces are cool season and can be grown under low tunnels and row covers.  We had fun, learn A LOT! and we're doing another bigger market this year with more land in production.  I'm so excited.  I really am a farmer wanna be....can I quit my regular job now?  I never, ever, dreamed that my hobby could actually be so fiscally rewarding, I am rethinking that premise this year.  I'm as intimidated about the CSA I'm starting this year as you sound about your market.  I'm doing a very small CSA for a few close guinea pigs, um friends.  Many wishes for an abundant season.  :)
Barb
Front Range, Colorado
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 12:56 AM
Subject: [Market-farming] a "hooray!" for farmers' markets

I imagine this is going to sound bizarre to some of you, but I just wanted to shout a little "hooray!" that today marked my very first ever attendance as a vendor at a farmer's market. 
 
We have a lot of summertime markets here, which I've often thought of selling at but never quite worked up the nerve.  We had a CSA for a number of years which I was very comfortable with, and which we're re-starting this year.  But the idea of packing up some arbitrary amount of produce, pricing it according to some black-arts combination of fact, custom and intuition, then driving to some other place and standing there for several hours hoping to sell it was, well, intimidating.  But this year we knew we wanted to have that sales option.  I was stewing about starting up new in any one of our established markets.  Then we got word of a new market starting up super-early in the year, as an experiment in longer seasons for such markets.  It was on the campus of a nearby community college, and I figured hey, it's a new market in a new area, so if I really screw up no one is likely to notice (as much).  So I said yea, I'll go.
 
The only items I had to sell were my ever-present chicken eggs along with some early herbs; my mushrooms aren't even ready yet.  I knew the eggs would probably sell out but I had no idea how many herbs to take, or how to present them.  And I was worried what sort of "image" to portray there at the community college.  It's a blue-collar section of town so I didn't want to sink huge amounts of $$ into a fine display, but I also wanted to look a few steps above "redneck hillbilly's once-a-month trip into town".  Which, I hate to say it, is pretty close to how I look most days.  So I packaged up about 4oz of each herb variety into plain ziplocks, labeled them as "samples", put them out in baskets on a table with a relatively simple tablecloth and placemats as if inviting folks to join me for a meal, and then I sat back to see what would happen.  I even brought magazines just in case no one wanted to talk to me (which I was pretty convinced would be the case).
 
The eggs sold out within three hours, which was very gratifying since I raised the price above what I had charged the CSA as recently as 2008.  I fretted that price change until I had one guy come by and say that wow, I had really good prices for eggs.  OK, won't sweat that one anymore.  But the real surprise was that the herbs sold really well.  I sold about 75% of what I took.  Customers seemed a decent mix of college faculty/staff, students, and neighbors just walking through campus.  One gal stood there on her cellphone talking to her chef husband about how many bags of which types of herb to get before I sold out.  The only thing she didn't take was chives because they grew their own.  Another gal grilled me on how far away our farm was and where everything had been sourced.   When I said I was less than five miles away and all my plants had either been grown by me or sourced within the county,  she was thrilled.  She explained she was a practicing localvore who was deeply offended that some farms import their fresh produce from other countries out of season.  Ok, if she wants to spend her money on me instead of those imports, I'm fine with that.  Even my thyme sold out which blew my mind.  Thyme is just not the sexiest herb going, but away it went this morning.  But perhaps the most gratifying thing was that the CSA signup sheets flew off the table.  I think I brought 20 of the signup sheets and I only brought five of them home.  I know most of those are destined to end up wadded up somewhere, but several folks were really jazzed about the idea.  Many of them had never heard of a CSA before (which also blew my mind since SURELY everyone knows what a CSA is!) 
 
So tonight I go to bed knowing that I can go back to market, goof up on prices, display or whatever and still come out alive at the end.  And the better I get at gauging moods and juggling pricing and how much to bring each day, the better my sales will be.  Which is sort of the normal recipe for life anyway, isn't it?  So if anyone on the list has agonized over whether to attend a market, I'd say go for it.  Those fears hiding under your proverbial bed shouldn't keep you from exploring this option, if it makes sense on paper or if your heart really wants to try it.  If nothing else, you'll help teach one more person that food doesn't just magically sprout on the shelves at Costco.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA


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