Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

As things slow down in the garden and crops finish for the year, there is more time for really tiny harvests of this and that. Fifteen bundles of chives, a couple dozen small but tasty red peppers—little hauls like these add variety and incremental sales at the farmers’ market stand. I imagine you can afford to spend time on this kind of thing only on a really small, hand-cultivated farm. The veggie line-up for today’s market: carrot, mesclun, potato, onion, garlic, beet, summer squash, tomato, green onion, parsley, a few eggplant, peppers, cabbage and cauliflower, a little spinach and chives…

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!

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!

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. More »

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!

There still wasn’t much to take to the farmers’ market today, mesclun and radishes both weren’t ready, so it was baby spinach, the last harvest of early lettuce, and this surprise crop, volunteer green onions sprouted from a few dozen of last year’s cooking onions that had been overlooked in the field. I made a last minute decision to harvest them at 6:30 am, just as we were about to leave. I pulled them up—no time to dig—and filled a bushel bin in just a few minutes. At the market, I explained how they were grown and that they’re stronger tasting than regular bunching onions grown from seed. They were snapped up in no time. One of the great things about taking fresh veggies that you’ve grown yourself to market is that you’re not forced to conform to standardized tastes and sizes and appearances. So long as quality and freshness are consistent, unusual offerings provide a cool extra bit of variety and freedom all around!

Up at 5 am, in the greenhouse at 5:30 to harvest more early lettuce and arugula. On the road by 6:30. Set up right at the 7 am opening. The photo is OK, though I find farmers’ market snapshots tend to look so stark and literal, they usually don’t capture the FEELING. Markets are fun because of the goods, you don’t expect a slick and snappy shopping mall presentation, your focus is on the food and crafts, and chatting with people. In pics, you see the mish-mash of basic tabletop presentation, but you don’t get the…experience. This one is a small market, 7 am-1 pm Saturdays, around 25 vendors, a dozen with fresh veggies, and usually about three hours of fairly packed traffic during the summer. Not like a big city market. I’m the only “certified organic” guy, and only one other stand has salad greens and a good selection of veggies beyond the standards. My stand is first on the right of the pic, with the newly repainted chalkboard and sharp new collapsing metal sawhorses debuting this season. I like the really basic display and circus-on-the-road feeling of setting up at 7, gone by 1:30. It was a good day, I was there mainly to show up, with only about 30lbs of the five-lettuce-and-arugula mix to sell (the first field crops won’t be ready for another couple of weeks). It was quiet, the cloudy, chilly weather didn’t help. Chatted with lots of regular customers, handed out some CSA flyers, and sold out by around 11… Fun!

First day of the year at the local farmers’ market. It’s held Saturdays, 7am to 1pm, from May through October. Today, there are four varieties of the early lettuce, only around 30 units. At this point in the season, it’s mainly being there that counts.