Winter Market Woes

It's cold here and has been since early Saturday morning which meant we missed a farmers market. We have a policy on outdoor winter markets, if it is not going to get any warmer than 25F than we will not attend. This is because 2 years ago we stood outside selling produce at a winter market where the temps started around 11F and got up to around 20F by the end of the market. We were freezing and not happy but got even more unhappy the next day when we discovered everything we had taken to market had frozen at market and now was only good for compost. So we composted all our remaining potatoes, carrots, turnips and winter squash that year and did no more winter markets that year because we were not set up for winter growing and had no greens thus nothing to sell.

This year we do have hoop houses set up and things growing in the houses but still decided not to go and lose a bunch of produce in miserable cold windy weather. Fortunately we did not harvest much for this market as we did not think we would go to market until Friday afternoon when the weather prophets changed the forecast and implied that the cold front had slowed down and would not be hitting the Miami Valley until mid morning or later Saturday. They were quite wrong on that and by 8am Saturday it was around 15F and dropping. I believe it was a few degrees warmer in Oxford where the farmers market is held. But not warm enough to keep produce from freezing.

Such are the problems of trying to have a winter market out doors-too often the weather makes it hard participate. It sure would be sweet if the Oxford Farmers market Uptown board got the money and resources together to build an indoor year round market. We could easily do two markets a week in winter and it would be nice to be able to go year round without worrying about losing product to the cold