Now I’m curious: do other farmers’ market folks sell by weight? If so, which products?

PAK-SEL   1-800-635-2247 
7205 SE  Johnson Creek Blvd
Portland  OR 97206

But you have given me a good idea. I think soon I’ll start profiling “tiny gardeners” too. That is, I’ve become very interested in the “sub-acre agriculture” that some people have been doing. Hope you don’t mind if I steal your idea. ;)

Chris: I’ve been using 8lb and 10lb bags from a bulk grocery store here. They come in boxes of 100, in sizes from…tiny, to 10 or 12 lbs. They’re about $3-4 a box, so not super-cheap. I haven’t really looked into buying bulk. Someone gave me a roll of microperf bags, I think it was a thousand, they look like regular plastic but they’re porous so they’re great for greens. But I couldn’t find where to buy ‘em…

Amy: Sorry, you were perfectly clear, I just didn’t read carefully. Guess I’m garden-obsessed! Here, it’s a 100+ year old farmhouse, not that big, but quite a bit over 1200 sq ft. If I move, I think I’d like a tiny home to go with the microfarm… I’ve looked online at designer prefabs and there’s at least one cool mobile home that you can have trucked to different spots. And the whole straw bale/adobe/cob/rammed earth natural materials side is really interesting… Yurts look great, too! But that’s all just daydreaming right now…

I just started falling into the plastic bag phenomena myself.  As you said, it doesn’t quite feel right going through so much plastic at one time.  You notice it way more on the supply end than you do as a consumer.

That said, I don’t see an obvious way around it for greens.  Where, by the way do you get your bags for greens?  I’ve started by using cheap freezer bags from the store, but I’m interested in finding something in larger quantities (and cheaper).

Chris

Monica: Yeah, no simple solution comes to mind, it seems like something that would come from people themselves, but I’m sure it’ll get figured out here, in time. I hear you about the kinda smaller percentage of landfill waste that bags constitute. In my case, though (and I was gonna explain this in the post, but it was already long!), I’d say my motivation for cutting out bags isn’t directly “pollution,” it comes more from thinking that People out there are profiting from all this excess bagging. It’s another stupid consumer culture thing, where we’re all trained to take bags everywhere we go, as if they’re FREE. So the…plastic bag industry is profiting in a sneaky way from yet another excess. I really don’t like the idea of people being fooled and ripped off…with planet-wide environmental damage as an uncaring byproduct. Something like that!

CSA-farmer girl: Yes, I’ve been offered and priced cotton bags (too expensive), and thought of making ‘em as well, also considered the deposit thing, and I’m in the same position as you: not enough time, or decisive focus, or…well, maybe next season (or later this one…).

Deborah: We have a huge garbage bag jam-packed with saved grocery bags from the last few years, must be thousands. I could re-use. People also occasionally give me saved bag collections, which slowly get reused. I don’t know, I have this resistance to making bag recycling a major focus at the market. I have to think through to why exactly… I’ll let you know when I do!

OrganicCats: Depends on the veggie, but mostly quantity gets fed to animals or put on the compost heap, in that order. I’d like to be able to sell or give away nearly everything I grow, but you have to overplant by quite a bit, I’ve found 25% or more, to ensure adequate yields, especially with our increasingly crazy weather… I don’t think of it as waste, it all gets cycled back into the soil. But I can imagine, at least on this small scale, having people take practically everything at one stage or another, picking up market leftovers, and coming in to the field to pick through beds that’re past regular harvest. It’s slow and steady local community building around the field…