This past Saturday morning, we got up a bit earlier than usual, loaded up our van with 2 tables, 8 rustic wooden crates, 15 bins full of produce, and one tent canopy. Then, we drove to our first Farmer’s Market.
The Ligonier Country Market was familiar to us – we went a few times last summer and were impressed with how large and well-attended it is. Given that, we made this particular market our top priority for 2024 and were lucky enough to wind up on the vendor list.
Heading into our first Farmer’s Market, we weren’t sure what to expect. How much produce should we take? Will we sell out? Do we have everything we need to set up a professional and welcoming booth? To be honest, we weren’t fully sure.
The Produce
All we had ready to harvest from the garden in week 1 was lettuce mix, romaine, spinach, cilantro, and a few radishes. This was admittedly less than we had hoped for the first market, but all we could do was harvest as much as possible, fill the van, and see how much we could sell.
Fill the van, we did. We ended up harvesting about 50 bags of lettuce mix, 30 or so bags of spinach, and 60-ish heads of romaine. We doubt that we will harvest that many greens again this season, since we’ll have to make room for many other things in our van.
Long story short, we didn’t sell out, but we got pretty close! We estimate that we sold about 80% of what we brought to market, which exceeded expectations.
The People
One of the reasons that we farm is to connect with our local community through food. Our first market did not disappoint in that respect! We estimated about 80 individual customers in 4 hours at the market, and every interaction was excellent.
We even got the chance to get into some of the nerdy details with a few customers who were curious about how we grow. Not only that, but our fellow vendors and market managers were also great to talk to, and very helpful and encouraging!
Looking Ahead to the Rest of the Season
In some ways, week 1 at the market feels like a warmup. We only had 4 varieties of produce to bring, which will certainly be our lowest variety for the year.
We also learned a few things that we can quickly improve, like stapling those bags of tender herbs shut rather than taping them. We also have a much better sense of what we should bring with us each week and are looking forward to the rest of the market season!
We’ll be at the Ligonier Country Market every Saturday through the end of September, so if you’re local, please stop by and say hello!