Total Pageviews

Friday, August 11, 2006

The Bridge is Now Open!

The big news of the week is the bridge construction that has been going on for the past 4.5 months or so is now complete and the stop lights outside our driveway are now gone. It is weird to have normal traffic patterns after so many months of stop and go traffic outside the house. I am not sure if this will be good or bad for business. Right now it seems to be bad for business because over the months many people stopped using 127 and have found other ways to get where they are going. I am sure that most will come back once they know the bridge is open, since there are no good detours for 127 north of Eaton (though several are very pretty and peaceful).

We had the farm store open yesterday and got only 3 people stopping and two buying. I don't know if this is because of the change in traffic patterns of the fact it was cloudy and rainy which always seems to have a negative impact on our sales (despite the fact we are all indoors and weather proof unlike many farm stands around here which are pretty exposed to the weather).

Because it was cloudy and rainy Eugene decided to put another coat of paint on the porch. He got about half the job done working about 5 or 6 hours. I opted not to help him and did house cleaning, cooking and some harvesting. Oh and opening and closing the store. This involves a lot of moving of produce from big fridge in the barn to the store where the produce is taken from big crates and put into smaller baskets. I also have to make sure we have change in the cash drawer, a sheet to record sales and proper labels that tell the customer what things are and how much they cost.

This morning it is rainy again but much cooler than yesterday. We have to harvest some items for tomorrow's farmers' market and open the store. Other than that we don't have much to do. Of course now that the main tomato and peppers are coming on along with melons, eggplant, green beans, zucchinis, cucumbers, the older maters, kale, chard, basil, etc,. Etc., harvest time takes a lot longer than it did say 2 weeks ago. But more to harvest means more to sell, freeze, can and dehydrate

No comments: