Today’s wares set up behind the stand at the farmers’ market. First thing in the morning (that’s around 7 am), we open and arrange all of the crates and use them to stock the stand and assemble CSA shares. Here, we’re partway into the morning—as the day progresses, crates get stacked. Visible in the pic, an assortment of mainly heirloom tomatoes, carrots, assorted sweet peppers (we picked a lot of ’em green before turning to red rather than let them shrivel in the near-drought conditions), various beets, garlic, and green and yellow beans pre-packed for the CSA. As for the traffic, the day was on the quiet side, despite great weather—it seems the fresh, local, organic trend so pumped in the media this year, and apparently somewhat sweeping the cities, is taking its time hitting the countryside. All in all, though, a decent Saturday!
Market & Stand
Late morning at the farmers’ market
Beautiful weather and average traffic today at the market. Here, it’s late morning, with peak sales over. It’s been one of those days when what I’ve noticed most is the pressure to price low. In general, my veggies are priced a little higher than most of the other market vendors. Regular customers have no problem with this, apparently they find that succession planting, different varieties, and fresh, day-before picking are worth a premium. These are advantages of really tiny farming, but they have to be appreciated for it all to work. The biggest veggie vendor at this farmers’ market buys from other growers, comes with a big box truck and forklift, has at least half a dozen sales people, and competes on price with the supermarkets. At times, it’s hard to ignore the stacked playing field, the unnaturally low fresh produce prices we’re accustomed to, at least, here in North America. Oh well, it’s no-rain, dog days of summer thinking…quite a normal part of tiny farming. :) There’s no shortage of challenges around here. Put in perspective, they’re what keep things exciting!
Mesclun on my mind
Mesclun remains the mainstay crop on this tiny farm. What I grow is perhaps not strictly “mesclun”, it’s nine varieties of lettuce with no other, more exotic greens—arugula, mizuna, and so forth—mixed in. Also, at times if it gets away a bit, the leaves can be kinda large, making it more of a basic salad mix. Still, it’s all mesclun around here, and this year particularly, we’ve grown LOTS. Salads are popular, and for no reason easily explained, the acceptable price at our farmers’ market is way higher than for any other crop (except, perhaps, blueberries?!). It’s a top seller on market day, it’s dead easy to grow, most of the time, and none of the other, larger local growers bother with it (only one other farm regularly has lettuce). So it’s an all-around winner. Then there’s the big BUT: hot, dry mid-summer weather, when the germination rate is usually terrible, the beds grow rapidly and are hard to time, and the heat can easily turn a fine, fresh-tasting crop into a messier, partially bolted bit of a nightmare. Simply seeding in many extra beds isn’t a solution, because the watering and weeding this would require would be insane. You simply have to keep planting moderately and frequently, and hope for nice weather breaks. Shortages are inevitable, and cut directly into customer satisfaction (expectations, expectations!!). For these reasons, at this time of year, mesclun is always on my mind. For the last couple of plantings, we’ve used…BURLAP for the first few days after seeding, which actually works, reducing watering in time and increasing the germination rate quite a bit. Next year, I intend to finally figure out an even better way…
Outpost
Today, I assembled this rather simple mini-stand to sell veggies at a local coffee shop. The trays were put together on the farm, then we drove over with the cut pieces and screw-nailed it together on site. It’s part of the bit of expansion this year, a completely new side to this tiny farm—we’ll see how it plays out! The shop is about 12 miles (19km) away, in a small village that swells in summer with cottage and boat traffic (it’s on a busy recreational waterway; we’re in lake as well as farm country around here). It serves salads, baked-on-premises pastries, fair trade coffee… I’ve known the owner, from the farm, for four years. She wanted to add veggies this year, and the overall…karmic vibe (!) seemed right, so here we are! The shop is actually buying all the veggies upfront at our regular price, and maintaining the stand themselves, so it’s not a BIG change, all in all. Still, a very cooperative, new thing to do. The stand itself is a work-in-progress, for one, it has to be bolted to the concrete pad, and it needs some sort of backboard built in. More as it happens! :)
Farmers’ market stand described…
Setting up a stand at the local farmers’ market reminds me of a traveling circus, at least, the way I imagine one to be. Everything has to be compact, easily packed away in a limited space (in our case, a pick-up truck), quick to set up and tear down, and quite rugged to handle the wear and tear. There are also lots of critical bits and pieces that it simply doesn’t do to forget. Overall, the stand is a bunch of simple pieces, assembled into a functional little veggie selling spot. In this picture, taken from behind the stand, it’s near the end of a fairly busy day, with crates and big leaf bags of greens all empty, and Kikuyo the WWOOFer-for-a-week from Japan helping out.
Beet greens at market
Yesterday’s beet greens harvest is today’s fresh produce at market—well under 24 hours from field to stand! The fine dining action is really up top with the leaves—great raw or lightly sauteed at this size—but the tiny, unusually bright red Cioggia beets at the bottom got all the attention, with every third passerby asking about these strange looking “radishes”. Beet greens aren’t a staple veggie around here, still, enough people know ’em and love ’em to make these 500g bunches move briskly. A little slow, people-wise (it picks up in July), it was nonetheless an all around enjoyable, successful day at the farmers’ market, with beautiful weather to boot.
Not so sorted at the Market
A bit disorganized at the farmers’ market today, with beet greens and radishes in piles instead of bunches. (The cosmetically challenged flea beetle-bitten bok choi, although tasty and well-received, didn’t help.) The harvest is bigger this year than in the past, and yesterday, even with Conall, and Erin for a few hours, it got a little ahead of us. An afternoon thunderstorm break didn’t help, and the mud splashed up from the rain made for extra rinsing. Because there is no cooler here, everything is straight to market and the Fridays can get crazy, till well after dark (I have to think this no-cooler thing through again—the advantage is, the veggies are absolutely fresh). In any case, we were up at 5:30, rinsing spinach and radishes, and bagging mesclun and spinach at the market at 7:00. I did most of the morning alone, bunching on demand, which is about the slowest way to go. It also probably hurts sales a bit, when everything isn’t neatly prepacked, and there’s little time to keep the veggie presentation neat. In any case, this is still runthrough time. There’s one more weekend to go before the CSA shares start and 25 or so shareholders will be picking up at the market—by then, Friday harvest will really have to be sorted out!