The weekend in market

Lots of fresh goodies



Mmm, kale and money, yum


Before this weekend I had never really helped run a booth in a farmers market; I had gone into town with wwoof-hosts last summer, but never did hours of hands-on selling. On Friday from 3-6 pm and Saturday from 7am-1pm, I worked with Ann selling Simpler Thyme’s produce in two different markets in Hamilton; next week I will be running the same two booths solo. It was a fun and informative experience for sure.

Over the course of this past workweek from Monday the 24th through to Friday, we interns/wwoofers were guided through not just planting and weeding, but we harvested quite a bit of food too: lettuce, spinach, kale, swiss chard, arugula, rhubarb, asparagus, radishes, mustard greens, nettles, garlic scapes, green garlic, green onions, chives, oregano, greek oregano, thyme, sorrel, parsley, French tarragon, shitake mushrooms, mezuna and kamasuna (sp?), with maybe half the produce going to the 40 CSA members and half we sold in town. Bill and Ann also sell seedlings to their CSA members and in market; in Hamilton on Friday and Saturday we were selling seedlings of four different tomato and two pepper varieties, creeping thyme, parsley, oregano, and cucumber.

I hadn’t realized until Friday as we were loading up the truck truly how much diversity of produce this farm pumps out: very few organic growers have 23 different items up for sale this time of year (and we’re not even selling our chicken and duck eggs, or chicken, duck, and cow meat from last year).

At the Friday market we made close to $200 over the three hours, selling bunches/heads of greens at $2 a piece, asparagus first at $3 then down to $2 per 1/2lb bunch, rhubarb at $3.50, herbs at $2, and so on. Saturday’s market proved busier considering we made close to $500 (double-and-a-half the amount) in six hours, double the time.

It was interesting from a social perspective to see a few things: (1) to see people’s sense of curiosity as they ask “what is this, how do you eat it?”, (2) how many heads of lettuce an old lady can handle before buying one [12] or none [8], (3) what kinds of people came to the different markets (families versus individuals, pedestrians versus drivers, (4) how many customers upon recognizing Ann from previous markets were very friendly and talkative, more frequently than people who were fresh faces. In general it seemed that people simply and thoroughly enjoyed buying food direct from the growers.

I’ll be very curious to see how I experience the market, what I see and figure out, once I’ve gone more times.