Planning, Planning, Planning

You really CAN have too much summer squash. Because when you have it, EVERYONE has it. I go easy on this one, and try to harvest young and grow unusual varieties.

Now that I have one year of market gardening under my belt, I am determined to do a better job of record keeping this year. Last year, I used one of those free wall calendars that came in the mail and wrote down whatever I was doing in the garden (planting, first harvest, last harvest, gopher issues etc.) in the little squares (this is not a bad method, but makes future planning a pain because you need to flip through the months to figure out when you planted, sprayed or harvested a particular crop). In some cases (green beans, peas, potatoes, cucumbers, an estimate on carrots) I kept track of the number of pounds I was able to harvest.

But a lot went unrecorded. How much lettuce did I actually plant? How many pounds did I harvest as small greens and how much as full heads? You get the idea. What I did have a good grasp of was what I wish I had planted more of (carrots, green onions) and what I planted too much of (kale, lettuce). This year, I’ve discovered a lot more resources for use when planning. (See a list of resources at the end of this post).

Anticipation

It’s been a busy January/February so far here at Miles Away Farm. On overcast foggy cold days, I’m indoors planning the garden, ordering seeds, researching fruit varieties for the perennial garden, paying my business taxes (Washington bases their business tax on gross, not net. What’s up with that!), and researching new personal care products (vanilla sugar scrub anyone?).

I’m also trying to line up product liability insurance, which is proving to be difficult because I want to be so diversified. Some are scared off by eggs, some by fragrance in toiletry products, some by the foot traffic for classes I might teach in the commercial kitchen. I’m starting to feel like Joel Salatin in his book “Everything I Want To Do is Illegal”.

Learning Curve

I've got a few things to tell you, so you had better listen up. (We farmers market vendors tend to be an independent somewhat bossy lot.)

When I did my first farmers market on June 1st of this year, I as so excited and so so nervous. There was so much I couldn’t plan for. When I was researching becoming a vendor, I had a lot of questions that I don’t know how to answer.

As the season winds down, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve learned over the last 4 months.  So here are the top 10 things I learned as a newbie vendor at a farmers market. Hopefully it will help some other farmers market vendor hopeful.

10. The right market (or markets) can make a big difference. If you have more than one market going on in your area (Spokane and the surrounding areas literally have one every day of the week, but they are almost all fairly small) visit all that you can reasonably get to and check them out. Try to get there either in the first hour (usually busy) or about 5:30 pm (as people get off work) if it’s an afternoon market to see how much foot traffic there is. Is there food available to eat on site? Is there music? Do customers seem festive and happy? Talk to the person running the market and ask about fees, rules, space available, how long the market has been going etc.

Also talk to a couple of vendors (one larger, one smaller, who have similar products to what you want to sell) about the management of the market and how successful it is for them. Keep your questions light. You don’t want to be perceived as someone who thrives on drama before you even start.  “I’m thinking of having a booth here next year. How long have you been coming to this market? Do you like it?” Don’t expect them to tell you what they make per market – it’s considered rude to ask. Is the manager hands off? A micro manager? A sticker for the rules? I chose not to do a market that was closer to me because I got a bad vibe off of the manager, something that later proved to be borne out based on feedback I heard. Some managers spend a lot of time recruiting vendors rather than customers. Twenty booths and no foot traffic does no one any good. Make sure the market has a good balance and that the vibe fits your own style well. And notice too what everyone seems to have, and plan to try something slightly different. Finding a niche can really boost your sales.

If you can do two markets about equal days apart in the week (Wednesday/Saturday etc.) it is hugely helpful with produce. Most produce will hold over a few days if you don’t sell out at one market (if kept under optimal conditions), but it won’t hold for a week. And for things like summer squash, green beans, peas and cucumbers that ripen almost daily, having two markets instead of one allows you to pick produce at its prime and not have to sell baseball bat sized squash for $1.

9 . You don’t have to spend big bucks on a tent. Most outdoor markets require some sort of canopy cover, which can be a big expense when you are just starting out. After researching canopies on the internet, and checking out a lot of reviews on Amazon, I determined that it didn’t seem to matter much if you spent $100 or $250. They all had their problems. Because I was mostly working alone, which meant I needed to be able to put up and take down the canopy by myself, it couldn’t be too heavy. (Heavier canopies do better in the wind because the cross pieces tend to be stronger). I ended up buying a “first-up” tent from Wal Mart (gasp), and had quite a few fellow vendors ask me where I got it, as it seemed to shed rain better than the expensive ones (whose canvas would sag and puddle rain water). We did have one cross-piece bend during one hell of a wind gust, so paid the price in other ways for the lighter tent, but thankfully, the bend hasn’t been fatal. I also, following directions and not wanting to replace the canopy before necessary, take off the top when taking it down rather than folding it all up together as most people do.

Borrettana cipollini onions, which to-an-onion sent up a flower stocks, causing me to dub them onions on a stick. I planted them too early and the cold made them go to seed. They still taste fine, but won't store well. Not everything can be a success.

8. Bring enough change. How much to bring? I was so worried about running out that I brought way too much for the first couple of weeks. I think a good rule is to bring enough to equal the amount you hope to sell. Expect to make $100? Bring $100 in change and you can’t go wrong. Some days everyone gives you small bills and you won’t need much of it. Some days, everyone has a $20. I seem to get low on $10′s more than anything else.

If you are by yourself, carry your cash ON your body. At a busy market it would be easy for a cash box to walk off while you were distracted with a customer at the other end of your booth. I ran across this tip somewhere on the internet, and it IS a good one. I purchased a small fanny pack for this purpose.

7. Make up some business cards and carry them with you. I’m surprised how often I am asked if I have a card. If cash is limited, you can buy a generic version of an Avery template from an office supply store and use a template on Microsoft Word to make your own cards, which is what I did. This has also allowed me to tweak what they say, as I was having a hard time deciding exactly what I wanted. I could print one sheet (about 8 cards) at a time and keep evolving the message until I liked what it said. Print both sides, but keep your message down to short digestible points. Once you are settled on a message, you can get great deals on cards on the internet or from a lot of local printers.

An early June market. I was still getting my feet under me. It looked a little sparse.

6. You won’t get a second chance to make a first impression (at least on each individual day you are at the market) and so presentation matters. We have all been subject to marketing our whole lives. We respond to things that look clean, organized and interesting without even thinking about it. Don’t just throw up an old table and pile stuff on top of it. People will walk right by you and not take you seriously. An inexpensive vinyl table-cloth, some old wooden boxes or interesting pots, clean plastic bins, open coolers spilling out with produce…these are the things that make you look like a legitimate business.

Visit other markets (or even your local grocery produce department) and pay attention to your own reactions to different displays and booths. Ask yourself, “why do I want to shop with this person, and not with that person”. See your booth from a consumer’s perspective. Ask friends to critique your booth. Take a picture of your booth from across the aisle. You don’t have to spend a lot of money, but you do need to look like you care. And don’t forget your own appearance. One vendor and I wondered if it was a bad sign when the cleanest you were all week was when you were selling at market. Ha!

5. Invite people in. When you first start out at a market, no one knows you. If you are small, you will be easily overlooked. You need to invite people over to your booth. Here are some of the things I used over the season.

• “Would you like to try a lotion sample?” I was amazed at how many bottles of lotion I sold to people who were walking quickly by my booth without giving me a second glance by asking this question.
• “What’s a vegetable you love now that you would not eat as a kid?” I wrote this question on an erasable board, and took an informal survey to engage customers. Most common answers? Spinach and Spaghetti Squash.
• “Would your dog like a homemade dog biscuit?” I make them for my dogs, so bringing a few to market gave me a way to engage dog owners. And no issues with permits to sample edibles (which is required in Washington if you want to offer fruit slices or other food samples to consumers) since it was meant for animals.
• “Would you like to see the most beautiful lettuce ever?” I grew a lot (too much) lettuce this year, but it was stunning. I kept it in a cooler to keep it from wilting, so invited people over and opened up the cooler to show it off. It worked, because once people had seen it, the product sold itself.
• Offer free recipes. After quite a few people asked me what to do with kale, I typed up a double-sided sheet with information and recipes and offered them to anyone who bought a bunch.

I also smiled a lot, said hello to EVERYONE, and often complimented people on something visible like a great shirt, an interesting tattoo, or a piece of jewelry. If you want to do farmers markets as a way to make some cash, but really don’t like talking to people, you might need to rethink your strategy.

Stunning fall cauliflower, after the spring crop failed miserably. I sold this for $2 a head, a screaming deal, because I didn't want to take it home.

4. It’s a business. You should expect to compete! Figuring out what to charge for my product was the hardest part of doing the market. Always check a few local grocery stores to see what similar items are going for to get a bench mark. Also do a gut check on price. Yes, your cauliflower is stunning, but would you pay $7 for it if you were on the other side of the table?

Nothing makes me more crazy than price-fixing at farmers markets. All markets generally have something in their rules about “not pricing below cost to undercut another vendor”. But you should be able to have a blow out sale on beets if you have a lot that are going to rot if you don’t sell them. If you want to sell your flower bouquets for $4 and another vendor has them for $8, there should be some reasonable discussion about what is fair to both parties. You should NOT be told you need to sell your bouquets for $8. (These are both actual market examples, though neither happened to me.) That said, try not to whine when you have beautiful zucchini that isn’t moving because everyone else has the same beautiful zucchini, or your lettuce is beautiful, but a larger grower is selling lettuce 3 heads/$5 because that is what is a reasonable cost for his business structure.

It’s common for vendors to check out each others prices (especially when you show up with something you haven’t sold before) and price similarly. But as Joel Salatin emphasizes over and over in his books, it’s your product, and you should sell it for what it is worth to YOU. If you think your product is better, and you want to charge more for it, do so, but know that you will need to educate your customer as to why you charge more. And if your Chinese Cabbage has earwig chewed holes in it, but no actual earwigs (because you soaked it in a bucket of water to make them leave) you might want to cut your price a bit, even if it IS organic (personal experience on this one). When someone else had essentially organic potatoes for $1 a pound, I decided to just keep mine and eat them this winter rather than sell them for that price. Read more on my pricing experiences here.

Winter squash harvest. Not exactly "abundant". Six spaghetti squash, about the same number of Buttercup and Acorn. Three pie pumpkins.The Butternut were a failure, and the four Delicata are still on the vine. I was being conservative. Squash take up a LOT of room.

3. Abundance sells. Just starting out this year, I was conservative with my planting. It was my first year gardening in this climate, I was doing it on my own, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to be able to handle. So I often only had a few of each vegetable at each market; Four bags of green beans. Ten summer squash. Three heads of cabbage. Often it’s hard to know what isn’t selling because people just aren’t interested (kale) and what isn’t selling because you look small and kind of pathetic. Go to a big farmers market and look around. You’ll likely find yourself drawn to the busiest booth. If everyone else is shopping there, it MUST be good. We’re programmed, either by instinct or marketing, to believe that more is better. We like to have the option of choosing one from 30 rather than one from 3. It’s a balance, and not an easy one with number 2 below, but human nature is drawn to plenty. Keep it in mind.

2. Diversify. I sell soap (liquid and bar), lotion, bath salts, lip balms and hand salve, earrings, and a variety of produce. I’ve sold extra concrete reinforcing wire tomato cages, Jerusalem artichoke starts, applewood smoking chips and poppy seeds. I have plans to sell bluebird houses made from old barn wood, along with bat houses and mason bee blocks. Early on, I sold a lot of lotion. But after a month or so, I had pretty much saturated my market, and didn’t sell much more until people had used up what they already had. The more different types of things you can sell, the more interesting you will be to a variety of people, and the more consistent your sales will be, especially when you are just starting out. The old adage “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket” really applies here. I wish I had planted less lettuce, less kale, and many more carrots, but because I had a variety of product, it was OK in the end.

1. Show up. Show up. Show up. When you start out at a market no one knows you. Over time, people get to know you and you develop a following. Eventually, you’ll get people who arrive at the market and walk directly to your booth. But this takes time. I don’t know how many times this season I said, “Yes, I’m here EVERY Wednesday”. Woody Allen said 80% of success is showing up. It may not be 80% with a Farmers Market, but it is huge. Commit to being there, even if the weather isn’t supposed to be optimum, or you have a cold, or you are really busy with other stuff, or you’d really just rather go have a pedicure. It will pay off in the end. You’ll develop a relationship with your customers. And after all, isn’t that a big part of what the whole “local foods” movement is all about!

Other resources I wish I had known about (or could have afforded) at the beginning of the season:

Tips for Selling at Farmers Markets article by the Rodale Institute: Great piece, which I was able to find before I started, and it was a huge help. You may not be able to do everything on here (for instance, offering samples is difficult in Washington without a lot of permits and hoops) but it is ALL good advice.

Garden Web Market Gardener Forum: great for learning what other small market gardeners are doing and a place to ask for advice. Really fun to read about what is selling well, and not selling at all across the country.

National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) Sustainable Agriculture Project website: Amazing database of articles on market gardening including best practices, harvest protocols, greenhouse production and much more.

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE): possible grants for different sustainable ag projects by state.

Growing for Market: Newsletter and archive of articles on market growing. Several good books as well. A subscription service, but some free content on their website.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where were miles away from knowing it all, but at least we have one season under our belt.

Gratitude

I had a lot of other titles for this post.

• Making a Living $2 at a Time
• Reality Check
• The “Bad” Side of Town
• Walking the Walk

When I dreamed of having a booth at a farmers market, I imagined growing beautiful mixed lettuce, bagging it up, and having people swoon over it while paying me twice what it cost in the grocery store because it was grown organically, gourmet, and they had met the farmer personally. NOT.

When we moved from Southwest Colorado to the Spokane Washington area, part of the decision was based on growing season, and wanting to be near a larger population base. But part of it was wanting to be around people who were more working class. Southwest Colorado, bless its stunningly scenic-organic-mountain biking-river rafting-crunchy granola heart, has a lot of second homes and high incomes (it also has a lot of people working three low paying jobs to make their rent because nothing else is available). The cost of living in Durango is high. (If the national average is benchmarked at 100, Durango is 124 to Spokane’s 91. See www.bestplaces.net/col for a great tool to compare where you live to anywhere else).

When people would ask me why I was leaving such a beautiful place, I would sometimes say “because Durango doesn’t have a ‘wrong side of the tracks’”. I wanted to live someplace with industry, someplace where an average person could make a reasonable living and raise their kids without having three jobs or a PhD. Spokane most definitely IS that place.

HOW do they do this? They don’t spend $5 on an 8 oz bag of gourmet organic lettuce greens. Thirty percent of Spokanistans make less than $25,000 per year per household. (The 2011 national federal poverty level is $22,350 for a family of four.) Another 30% make less than $50,000 per year. Most wouldn’t know radicchio, endive or arugula if they saw it, and certainly wouldn’t buy it. If I were to pick one word to describe the people who live here, it would be resourceful. A lot of them know how to “make do or do without”.

I’ve spent the last ten + years involved in the local food and organics movement in one way or another. And there is a never-ending debate that goes on about how farmers markets and access to fresh organic produce is elitist and something that only the rich can afford. The other side of that coin? How farmers need to be paid a living wage for their products and revered because they allow us to fulfil a most fundamental need; to eat. Good healthy nutritional food feeds the soul, not just the body.

In Spokane, to some extent, the tables are turned. As a farmer, I garden organically, not because I think I can get more money for my product that way, but because on SO many levels, it is the right thing to do. Plus, I eat my own produce. Enough said! But if I charge organic prices for my produce, the guy two booths away, selling huge heads of non-organic lettuce for 3 for $5, sells out. The guy selling non-organic cherries who travels from the Yakima Valley 200+ miles away to get here sells out.  I go home with my labor intensive bags of organic greens, and they get composted.

One of the markets I attend has recently become a distributor of Women, Infants and Children and Senior Farmers Market Nutritional Program Checks (WIC & Seniors FMNP) . This allows low-income mothers to be, or moms with infants and children under five, or seniors, to spend some of their public assistance money on nutritional food at farmers markets. Vendors who are signed up can accept the checks for their produce. (I’m working on getting signed up because I just learned about all of this last week).

So for the past two weeks, I’ve watched a parade of women and children stand in line to get their checks. There are a lot of pros and cons to this whole system and I won’t debate them all here. Poverty is a complicated issue. Do I want low-income kids to be eating healthy organic carrots instead of, or in addition to, mac and cheese that came out of a blue box? Absolutely! Do I struggle not to sit in judgement when I see a woman with five children walk by? Yes. Am I endlessly grateful that despite my families dysfunctions, I had a relatively stable home life, was never hungry, and was taught that I had value? Most definitely. Does the whole vibe of the market change when the long WIC Check line forms? You bet ‘cha.

So, the beginning of this summer’s farmers market season has been a big eye opener for me. Being in business is all about knowing your customers and adapting. People decide to spend money for three reasons: Price, Quality and Status. The people at the markets I sell at, for the most part, are making the vast majority of their decisions based on price. So almost all of my produce goes for $2. Two dollars a bag, $2 a bunch. There is a farmers market every day of the week somewhere in our area. Most of them are small. All of the ones I have visited are similar. I saw a LOT of $2 price tags. (Guess what the value of one FMNP WIC check is? Yup, $2.) Do I occasionally bitch and whine about any of the above, and throw down the “fairness” trump card? I’d like to say no, but I’d be lying.

You know that line about how when God wants to punish you, He answers your prayers? I’m selling to the people I moved here to sell to. And most of them are on a budget. I’m slowly building up a clientele (you know that other line about how 90% of life is showing up? Same is true of selling at a farmers market!) My toiletry items do well. Thankfully, I knew going into this venture that my learning curve would be steep, so I purposely kept the garden small. Do I wish I had planted more carrots and less (a lot less) lettuce? Yes. Next year I will be wiser. But next year things may change…and I’ll adapt again.

I am so grateful to be learning this. To run smack up against talk about living wages and affordable food and to actually try to make it work on the ground. I am grateful to feed people quality food at affordable prices that I am excited to eat myself. I am grateful to have sunshine and baby eggplants, just starting to form. To have a cat who literally throws himself at my feet purring in the garden as I shell and eat overgrown snap peas and throw the peels on his head. To have a full belly myself. And most importantly, to not having to rely on this farm as our sole source of income (there is a reason why most farmers have outside jobs)! A big thanks to my husband for supporting my farming business!

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where when looking for quotes on Gratitude, I found the following: Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.  ~Horace. When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them.  ~Chinese Proverb. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.  ~John E. Southard.

 

Garden Dreaming in the Snow

All plants in the cole family (also known as brassicas) have this clover-like appearance when they first come up. This is some type of mustard.

I love to grow things. I really think it’s genetic. When you trace my mother’s ancestry back to my great great great grandfather, who lived in the Yorkshire area of England, and look at the census form under occupation, it says “gardener”. This same grandmother ran a floral shop in Twin Falls Idaho for years.

My father’s side of the family is similar. Two Kleffner brothers took a ship over from Germany looking for a better life and land on which to farm. One ended up farming in Montana, and I have a cousin who still ranches in that area five generations later.

Nancy Lucile Crandall (my Mom) at about age 18.

I used to hang out in my grandmother’s flower shop when I was five or six. My mother worked there for a while, and I can remember watching her carefully transplant small houseplants into a terrarium and tenderly pressing them into their new soil. We always had healthy happy houseplants growing up. (To this day, I can’t walk into a room with a plant that is hurting for water, and not take care of it. I’ve been known to do this in waiting rooms.)

I also grew up around vegetable gardens. I had to become an adult and a more adventuresome eater before I embraced the idea in full, but the first time I grew tomatoes (in beautiful silicon valley soil and the benign weather of California) I was so successful that I brought in a grocery bag of tomatoes to share with my coworkers. (An appreciation of the ease and abundance of this I only came to appreciate later, when I tried to duplicate the feat in Arizona’s desert heat and Colorado’s high elevations).

Now how much will I be able to harvest from this bed again?

So now I want to garden for a living (well, at least part of my living). Turns out, planning a garden for market vs planning a garden for your own use is a very different process. When was the last time you measured how many “servings” of spinach you harvested off of your spinach bed? How many seeds was that anyway? Just how much does a ”bunch” of spinach in the grocery store weigh (most of the yield info I can find is in pounds if I am lucky or bushels if I am not)? What vegetables sell the best? What vegetables can I charge the most for (yes, potatoes are the number one purchased vegetable in the country, but I can’t charge very much for them)? If there are 10 carrots in a pound and I plant 340 plants, that’s 34 pounds of carrots. If I sell them in one pound bunches, is that enough to last me through the farmers market season? Remember all of those word problems we all hated in math class. Finally, a practical application!

And then there is the issue of water. We don’t have the strongest well in the world. I plan on using drip tape to water my garden. So if I use low pressure drip tape with emitters every 12 inches, that’s 13 gallons per hour per 100 feet of tape. But how much ground does an emitter cover in sandy loam soil? And how long will I need to run it to reach the maximum spread? (Turns out the answer to that is easy to solve, with a gallon jug and a pin hole, but not when the ground is covered with snow!)

Baxter helps out by sitting on the newly printed out garden plan. Yes, his butt really does almost take up an entire 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper.

I’m using a couple of good resources for all of this planning. John Jeavons book “How to Grow More Vegetables – than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine” is more for the home gardener, but is a great source for estimating yields. Eliot Coleman’s “The New Organic Grower” is fantastic for the “I’ve tried it all, and here’s what worked best” advice for the market gardener. Last but not least, Mother Earth News has recently introduced an interactive Garden Planner that helps you lay out your beds, and takes into consideration spacing, plant family, and future rotation. Very very cool.

Thankfully, I don't think this cool guy was doing any damage to my green beans last summer, but he sure looked fierce.

Thankfully, the last ten years of gardening have given me the basics. Every year I try growing a few new vegetables, just to see how they do. I know that when your kale starts to get aphids, it’s time to harvest it all, as battling them is a loosing proposition. I know what organic pesticide to spray on the cole crops  (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and the like) when they get those little green inch worms (better known as cabbage worms, and laid by the ethereal white cabbage butterfly). I know how to prevent the dreaded curly top in tomatoes by covering them really well with netting in the early growing season. I know what types of carrots I like the best, and that bush type (rather than sprawling type) squash plants are fabulous and take up a whole lot less room. But boy do I wish I had been keeping track of yields all these years!

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where we’re miles away from any sign of spring, but it sure is fun to dream of green growing things.

Keeping up with The Man

Nothing says "farm" like big hay bales!

Just like that, in less than 15 minutes, I’ve created the Miles Away Farm Limited Liability Corporation. (Of course, my bank account is a little lighter because of it). 

Turns out Washington State Dept. of Ag has some really great on-line resources for the small farm businesses. And you can set up a business on-line with the state. Sweet! 

It’s exciting and scary all at once. There is something about not working for someone else that strips away a lot of the layers of safety and anonymity. It makes me feel exposed and naked and secretly hoping that people like what they see. Still lots of research needed to figure out what I can sell and where I can sell it. No dairy. That much is clear. It’s a big no no to sell dairy from a home farm in Washington, period. No cow shares, no cheese, no nothing. So I’ll pursue the dairy products only for my own use. 

I also hung two loads of laundry on the line, and made a tortilla casserole for dinner. I DO love to multi task.