World's Longest Yard Sale: Days 3 & 4

The yard sale is over. All that is left is a stinky port a john and a small pile of junk between the barns that still has to be put away.

It went very well. Saturday was the busiest day by farm. We had 10 to 14 vehicles in the lot constantly from around 10 am 'til around 6pm. And even after six we still had steady, though, lighter traffic. We were hopping all day long.

We picked up another vendor on Saturday who had boxes of things you would find in a drug store like balloons, antacids, notebooks, hand lotion, hair dye, etc,. etc.. All items for a buck, he did well. Just about everyone who stopped bought something from him. I got Claritin, antacid and a few other things for a buck. Way cool.

We would have made more money and sold a lot more produce going to the Saturday farmers' market in Oxford. But by staying home we introduced ourselves to the community by having this event. I'd say over 100 people walked in the store that had passed by the place but never stopped. Now they have and now they know who we are and what we sell. Many will be back and will become regular customers.

Sunday was not nearly as busy as Saturday but the people who came were coming for produce not the yard sale/flea market. So we sold a lot of produce. Sunday started late. I don't think we had a customer until after 9am-the other 3 days had people arriving at 8am-and until after 1pm traffic was very intermittent. Than it got very steady for a few hours but by 5pm we were getting no one and all the vendors either were gone or tearing down their tents and putting away what they did not sell.

Mark, the dulcimer maker, left us a table, bunk beds that would make nice bookshelves, a working window air conditioner and some thick beveled glass. All so he could reclaim his wood working shop in his bus (A win, win situation) before he took off. We also agreed we would be carrying his instruments in our store for Christmas time/winter.

We did not come anywhere near selling out of corn and ended up taking a loss of the corn, beets, melons and cabbage we bought. We did sell all of the cabbage and all but one melon (and it's gonna have to be frozen not sold) which off set the loss taken on the corn and beets some what. because we bought muskmelons we did not sell many of the Charentais and Galia melons we grow but we did sell some. We probably would have sold a lot more of them if we did not have the muskmelons. C'est la vie.

All in all it was a really fun and intense weekend and we will be doing this next year. It is my plan to have more vendors, a few improvements in the parking situation (we could handle the traffic this year easily but if it increases more than 25% we may have some problems), trash cans, more banners/balloons/flags/signs and perhaps not as many yard sale items and stick with renting spaces and selling produce (yeah...right, we will have yard sale items to offer too)