So the market masters have technically cancelled tomorrow’s Manassas Farmer’s Market due to forecasted heat… HOWEVER, we have since learned that a number of vendors are still planning on showing up. Pennington Market Farm will be there! We have a big batch of microgreens this week that risk becoming bird fodder if we don’t sell them (not the end of the world, but if given the choice…) Anyway, it’s going to be a hot one for sure, but it’s been hot every week and we’ll have our tent, etc. We’ll also have eggs and potentially basil (need to check our supply out in the garden). Hope to see you there!
Moving Right Along
These past 3-4 weeks have been substantially busier around the house with farmer’s market prep / recovery activities. Yesterday marked our third week as a vendor at the Manassas Farmer’s Market and all three market days have been encouraging. Many thanks to everyone who has come by our table. The weather has largely been cooperative each time and foot traffic at the market has been decent (per our limited experience).
Our lineup at each of these markets has largely been the same throughout:
- eggs (duck & chicken)
- microgreens (cut and live)
- herbs (mainly basil, mostly cut vs. live)
We honestly had no idea how microgreens would fare at the market, but so far, the reception has been great, with sunflower and pea being the varieties of choice. But we’ve also had decent sales with our other offerings of kale, buckwheat, and radish. So far, we’ve been “harvesting” (cutting) a majority of our micros a day or two before market and packaging in 1 ounce clamshells (keeping in our fridge until market morning). But we’ve also started experimenting with selling live 5″x5″ trays.
Eggs have also been selling well, and if we continue to sell at this rate, we may need to scale back what we bring to whatever our birds lay the week before market day. I want to take a look at the numbers, but if the math works out, we may add more birds to the flock to try to increase production. As with everything, we’ll see how it goes!
Basil has been doing well in our garden, and we’ve brought that to market each time and it’s sold well. We have a number of other things growing in the garden (tomatoes, melons, peanuts, etc), but most of that isn’t yet ready to harvest, and we’ll have to see with each veggie whether we have enough of a surplus to warrant bringing to market.
All in all, these summer days have been busy, but we’re really encouraged and thankful for the response we’ve gotten from everyone at the market. Looking forward to what’s ahead.