What a day we had at the farmers market yesterday. We showed up with over 130 boxes of red raspberries, strawberries and black raspberries and sold all but 6 of them at $3.50 to $5 a box. We also had the first tomatoes of the season for the market (actually it was last week we had the first tomatoes of the season but this week we were still the only people with fresh home grow maters) And this was despite the weather that, regardless of the assurances of the weather profits that rain would be light and intermittent and certainly not a washout, was a gully washer complete with air to ground lightening and thunder that lasted for about 2 hours. I would call that a washout.
But washouts don't seem to keep dedicated locavores away from the market. Customer traffic was good for most of the market and we did great sales of berries and few other things (tomatoes, scallions, peas). Scott Downing, next to us, sold all of his sweet corn and peaches as well as most of his yellow plums. The farmers who had no fruit did not seem to fair as well. I saw a lot of onions and beets sitting on tables at the end of the market (we had poor onion and beet sales as well).
Money wise we had one of our top ten markets ever (and the 3rd time this year we have had a top 10 market for us) and we did on a week that traditionally quite slow for us. Not to mention, the weather sucked. We have a combination of a great fruit year (growing year in general), a lot of interest in locally raised foods and 14 years of preparing for this. Does this mean we are getting rich? No it does not, but it does mean we are almost making minimum wage for the first time ever as farmers, which means we are economically sustainable and will be sticking around and providing top flight locally raised food to the area locavores for years to come.
I mean it when I say to all of you who come to the store and the farmers markets, thanks for your support, without you we could not do this.
4 comments:
Congrats Lucy!
We work at one of the local tailgates—Asheville, NC; we're not farmers, rather we sell jam/jelly, keep bees and sell honey, and I bake and sew—at any rate, we are having our best year ever this year (and the farmers at market seem to be, too). I suspect more people are buying local now. We had a bumper crowd over the Fourth, when we traditionally don't do well; a lot of the summer people apparently stayed in town and shopped instead of driving out somewhere. And I've heard from a lot of people that they are buying holiday gifts already, and buying local specialties instead of 'regular' gifts.
All of which is to say, maybe our time has arrived . . . and congratulations on a good week!
Lucy, it's a thrill to hear you say you'll be there for years to come. Here's to the movement toward local eating!
Great Job!
What you and Gene do is hard work. It makes it better when people like your product and support you by buying your stuff.
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