Market Farming

[Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>]

On Jan 17, 2011, at 3:54 PM, stonecirclefarm tds.net wrote:

> Thanks Rivka.  I have sold them for as much as $5/lb (although sales  
> were mostly by the count, and, like yours, in a vented plastic  
> bag).  I find them pretty easy to harvest and pack and feel they may  
> actually be an important, contributing factor in making garlic a  
> profitable crop on my farm.  The reason I am asking about pricing is  
> that I have a potential large volume buyer (they plan to pickle  
> them) and I am guessing they may ask me to drop my price.

The $3 was a wholesale price. At market I sold them bunched, about 9  
to a twistie, for 1.50 / bunch; not in a bag. The bunches weighed  
about 1/4 lb (though they weren't sold by weight, and weight varied a  
little); so that comes out to about $6 / lb retail. The wholesale  
price was based partly on the fact that they were taking a lot of them  
(and I had more than I could sell by the bunch at the higher price)  
and partly on the fact that I didn't have to bother bunching them.

I've sold more at retail every year, though the price has gone up  
every year; the first year nobody had heard of such a thing, and they  
had to be cheap to move at all.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale