Pennington Market Farm

Since the market “reopened” at the end of May, it’s just been a matter of turning the crank week after week. Sales have been going really well. We’ve been steadily increasing quantities of microgreens that we bring each week… when a given plant variety sells out, we up that quantity by one tray for the next grow cycle. Our newest variety this season is Swiss chard… a rainbow mix of stem colors. (We also grow the same chard in the garden for our bagged salad mix.)

Eggs are still selling out every week… we have had zero backlog since the pandemic really kicked in back in March. We’re just holding everything steady there… no plans to increase our flock size or otherwise scale up anytime soon. So far, per our experience, once you’ve covered the cost of feed and other recurring needs, the egg layer “enterprise” has had a fairly thin financial margin. Obviously, it’s certainly nice to get the great feedback we’ve gotten with the eggs, and how can you complain when you sell out every week! But anyway, the forward plan with eggs is just steady as she goes.

We’re still bringing salad mix every week, though the summer heat has set us back some. We had, I believe, six batches of salad mix starts in our grow room that failed to launch a month or two ago… and we’re feeling the pain of that now as the beds we planted earlier in the spring are more or less done. We have some additional beds coming online now. Hopefully the salad mix production will pickup as we approach fall.

Tomatoes have been ramping up the past few weeks. We started 50 tomato plants in the grow room in mid-April, and then planted them in the garden in May. About 30 of those plants are semi-protected in a makeshift greenhouse, and the remainder are out in the garden. All are indeterminate cherries, and we train them up a string and prune as they grow. Some tomato varieties will split open if they get too much water, and we’re noticing that the unprotected ones in the garden have a higher percentage of splits vs. the ones in the greenhouse. We’re hoping that we can do more greenhouse production next year to have better control over the irrigation, etc.

The first batch of peanuts looks just about ready to harvest. I want to pull a plant out of the ground in the next few days to see how we’re looking. I’m hoping we can start bringing peanuts to the market in the next week or two or three… we’ll keep you posted.

As always, we’re grateful for all the support from customers new and old, and we look forward to seeing everyone each week. Feel free to share any feedback with us (good or bad) at any point… we’re always looking for ways to improve. We may do another YouTube video here in a couple weeks (try to remain calm!) Thanks so much, and hope to see you Saturday!

Slight change in plans for tomorrow’s Manassas farmer’s market. Hours will be from 8am to noon (as opposed to 1pm), due to a planned protest at the Manassas Museum at 1pm.

Current inventory status: We just sold out of chicken eggs, but still have a couple dozen duck eggs available. We’ll be bringing a decent lineup of microgreens and bagged salad greens tomorrow. Feel free to contact us if you’d like to reserve anything for pickup, but you’re also welcome to just show up and see what we have. Hope to see you tomorrow!

Quick update: Just got word that the market will be returning to semi-normal on May 30. Market hours on 5/30 will be from 8am – 1pm. Vendors will have their tents and pre-orders are encouraged but not required. Everyone (customers, vendors) will be required to wear a mask.

We had heard last week that this easing of market restrictions would be first happening on June 6, but then, for reasons unknown, the market managers just sent out notices maybe an hour ago that this change will now happen on May 30.

Anyway, so we’ll be at the market on 5/30 ready for business at 8am! We don’t yet know where in the parking lot they’ll assign us. We will likely have plenty of bagged salad mix and microgreens (at least at market open). We actually still have a small amount of chicken eggs and duck eggs available as I write this. Feel free to pre-order whatever you’d like and we can reserve your items for you to pickup. Regardless, hope to see you Saturday!

Hot off the presses, we just got word that the Manassas farmer’s market will be “opening” the first week of June. For the Saturday market, this means June 6 (Thursday market would be June 4). The timeframe for the Saturday market will be 8am – 1pm (not sure about Thursday timeframe). Between now and then, the May 23 and 30 markets will continue as “drive-by” style, officially pre-order-only, and run from 10am – 1pm.

So what will the market look like on June 6? We’re told vendors can have their tents and tables setup like a normal farmer’s market. However, per Manassas City rules, everyone at the market (vendors, customers, etc) will be required to wear a mask, and vendors will also be required to wear gloves and be diligent with disinfecting commonly-touched areas. Apparently the vendors will be spaced out to provide for social distancing, and no more than 10 people will be permitted in a given tent area at a time. Pre-orders will still be encouraged, though not specifically required.

Anyway, so a step toward normalcy in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, as I write this we still have product to sell, so please contact us if you haven’t already and let us know what you’d like for pickup tomorrow or next week. We’re currently sitting on a good batch of harvested salad mix, and I had originally thought to limit to 2 bags max per order, but we might entertain no limit with that. We have a good amount there. Eggs for tomorrow are all sold out, but taking orders for next week. Still have a good variety of microgreens for tomorrow. We’ll be bringing any unsold items to the market, as well. Hope to hear from you / see you, and have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Just wanted to provide an update on our purchase limit situation:

chicken eggs:	1 dozen max
duck eggs:	1 dozen max
6oz bag salad mix:	2 bags max
microgreens:	no limit

Chicken eggs have been consistently selling out about a week in advance. For example, we sold out of chicken eggs for May 23 back on May 16. (We are currently taking orders for May 30.) We typically sell out of duck eggs a day or two before the market. For the bagged salad mix, we’ve been steadily increasing our supply from the garden, so we think we can handle some additional orders there. And for microgreens, feel free to order however much you want. If demand for microgreens really shoots up, we can react to that and have more ready for sale in another week or two.

Still no official news (at least that we’ve heard) on whether / when the market will be shifting from the current pre-order-only scheme. That said, vendors (ourselves included) may have “extra” unsold product on hand at the market for any last-minute order add-ons, etc. We certainly appreciate all of the support during this period, but are also looking forward to resuming the normal market (however that might look) as soon as it would be safe to do so.

The Manassas farmer’s market is still in pre-order-only mode and we continue to go every week. Many thanks to all of the people who have ordered through us. A lot of repeat customers, as well, which is great. Meanwhile, we have a lot going on in the garden these days…

We’re holding steady, if not slightly increasing, the amount of salad mix that we have available each week. We’ve altered our harvesting strategy in an effort to try to get more product. Initially, our approach was to just harvest each plant whole, leaving nothing behind to regrow, and then plant a new batch of transplants in that same spot shortly thereafter. That approach maximized what we could get from that bed on the given week, but then it’d be another 3-5 weeks before we’d be able to get another harvest from the bed.

Our new approach is to harvest Dowding style, taking only the more mature outer leaves of each plant, leaving the inner actively-growing leaves undisturbed. We’re hoping this means that we could return to that bed a week or two later to get more product. So far, we think this is proving to be the case, but it’s still a bit early to know for sure. This method is a bit more labor intensive in terms of harvesting time (albeit lower planting frequency so maybe it’s a wash?), but hopefully means we can get more product to the market faster.

First batch of peanuts went from our grow rack to the garden on May 10, and we’ll be sowing a new batch in the grow room on the 15th. The plan is to do three batches in total so that we’ll ideally have peanuts available at the market from mid-August through mid-November.

Tomatoes were sown in the grow room on April 11 and will be going into the ground this coming weekend. We’re planning to put up a makeshift greenhouse to shelter these guys. Over a year ago, I bought a beat up, discounted “garage in a box” from Tractor Supply. It sat in storage for a long while, but we eventually dusted it off and built-out the frame. Our plan is to secure polyethylene plastic to it via wiggle wire and channel lock, and then plant the tomatoes underneath. We’ll see how that goes.

Still chugging away as usual with microgreens and eggs. Eggs continue to sell out every week (both duck and chicken, though chicken seems to be in higher demand). We’re grateful for all the community support in the face of current circumstances.

So we debuted our salad mix last week and sold out in less than two days. It’s obviously nice for us that there seems to be demand for it, but we also don’t like turning folks away due to sell outs. It’s going to be a slow process, but we’re working on increasing our weekly salad mix output. Salad mix is something that we will ideally be able to do year-round, so we’re trying to play the long game here. Anyway, for those who bought salad mix last week, please let us know what you thought about it! Any feedback, good or bad, is welcome.

We WILL have salad mix for sale this week, but it will likely not be as much as we had last week. So, for that reason, we’re going to ask that any future salad mix orders be limited to one bag per order for the time being. Regarding our $5 for 1, $4 for 2+ pricing scheme where you mix and match with microgreens trays…. that will still be in effect. So a single bag of salad mix will be $5, but if you get a bag of salad mix and 1 or more microgreens trays, then the salad mix and microgreens will be $4 per item. Please let us know if you have any questions on that.

We’re sold out of chicken eggs for the May 2 market, but are taking advance orders for the May 9 market. We do have some duck eggs available for May 2, and plenty of microgreens.

Behind the scenes, we’re also investigating ways to better automate the order reservation process. It will almost certainly involve some sort of shopping cart scheme on our website, but a potential twist could be that you could either purchase your cart contents via PayPal / credit card (just like you would in any online store)… OR… you could “reserve” the contents of your order and pay later via Venmo or in-person at the market, etc. But, generally, having our products visible on our website with prices and availability for upcoming market dates… all of that, it seems, would make for a more streamlined, efficient experience for all involved. Anyway, these are all concepts / in the works at this point, but we’ll keep you posted with any news on that front.

Hang in there, everyone, and hope to see you Saturday!