We had our best day ever at the farmer’s market today. Thanks to everyone who helped us get ready, visited the booth, asked us random questions, and bought stuff!
Here are my random observations about market shoppers, in no particular order:
- When we have bigger piles of stuff, people buy a LOT more. Doesn’t matter what it is.
- The serious vegetable shoppers come out early. People who are more leisurely come later & also buy more flowers.
- Once berry guy runs out of berries, I can apparently sell the amount of berries I bring for any price I set.
- The serious shoppers are repeat shoppers.
- If I have something that no one else has, it will almost always disappear rapidly.
- No one seems to care that I am not USDA certified organic, as long as I tell them I don’t spray any chemicals on anything.
We’re moving to a new spot at the market next week. We are looking forward to this because we’ll be able to park the truck behind us instead of having to move it after set up and bring it back for tear down. Hopefully the customers will still be able to find us!
Our area has been deluged with rain lately. The neighbors recorded 5 inches on Saturday alone. The field is attempting to recover from lake status. More rain is predicted tonight; I only hope it’s not another 5 inches. I didn’t enjoy seeing my drip tape floating on top of water. There is a flash flood watch for at least half the state tonight.
The farmer’s market on Saturday was a bit of a washout, since that was the day we were getting the five inches of rain. They tell me it doesn’t happen too often, and we will have plenty of garlic scapes for weeks to come. I pulled 539 of them on Friday.
The scale came… while I was outside picking green beans. So we had to go to the UPS depot at 7 PM to get it. But at least we got it.
Market day was very successful. I sold all the garlic by 10:30 AM. The red shallots sold out around the same time. There was not much interest at all in the grey shallots. I might not grow them again if I can’t manage to get them to size up better. However, right now I have plenty to replant in the fall and eat all winter, so maybe we’ll try them for one more year.
We sold a good number of onions as well. Next time I might cut the tops off, but I didn’t want to do that this time because they weren’t done curing. We have plenty left for canning.
No one seemed overly excited about the onion braids. They did, however, add a nice decorative touch to the booth.
Speaking of the booth… take a look at it.
We got word on Friday that we’ll be at the Carmel Farmer’s Market next Saturday. I could have gone this weekend, but we were busy & I didn’t have all the garlic cleaned up yet.
As soon as I heard the news, I went out and harvested all the onions. They look pretty good. They really weighed down the wagon.
I’ll be busy cleaning garlic, shallots, onions, and trying to figure out if we have enough display containers for our booth this week.
