A busy day at the market
What to grow? How much to grow? When to grow it? These are critical questions for most small, diversified farmers, especially those who are just starting out. You’ve probably already guessed that there are no pat answers. Each of us has to take into account the usual factors — among them, acreage, soils, irrigation, equipment, labor, and markets — and then come up with a crop plan that makes sense. We’ve already considered most of these variables in other chapters of this book. Here, I want to take another look at the last of them — markets — and, specifically, consider the ebb and flow and shifting demand of the market season. Once again, I’ll use our farm as an example.
When preparing a crop plan, I find it useful to think of the year as having five overlapping marketing periods. These periods coincide with what we have available — both from the field and from storage — to bring to our farmers’ market. They are:
(Note: We don’t, at this point, go to market through most of winter and early spring. If we did, there would be a sixth marketing period — one heavily dependent on storage crops.)
Certainly, there will be peak-season times (for many of us, mid- to late summer and fall) when we have a large supply of harvestable produce, we are functioning at full throttle, and we are bringing home lots of bacon, so to speak. There will also be times (often at the beginning and end of the marketing season) when we have a diminished supply and perhaps we’re just bringing home a few sticks of lard (if you’ll excuse the metaphor). This is to be expected, but the value of those sticks of lard should still be enough to cover our costs and provide at least a small profit.
If you plan poorly, you will see sudden spikes and dips in what you have to offer. Spikes and dips will cost you money and cause you grief. It doesn’t do much good to have more perishable produce than is necessary for your CSA members, or more than you can sell at your farmers’ market in a given week or month (unless you’ve had the foresight to line up other outlets — but that’s a different subject). Large surpluses represent unnecessary expenditures of energy — energy that could have been better spent elsewhere.
And of course, a shortfall is even more distressing. Not having enough to satisfy your CSA shares or enough to sell to cover the cost of going to market, can put you in the red and give you a serious case of self-doubt. It will also disappoint your customers or shareholders and perhaps cause them to doubt your ability to come up with the goods.
So the challenge facing you is to maintain a steady flow of salable produce to the extent that nature and your efforts will allow. A good overall plan, a planting schedule, and careful record keeping will help enormously in this regard, as will understanding the market and its shifting demands.
In chapter 3, I went over the details of the Weekly Planting Schedule and other planning and record-keeping tools used on our farm. Here, we’ll focus on the market itself. We’ll consider the five marketing periods listed above — how they differ from one another and the range of produce we have available for each of them. I’ll follow each period with a few comments and observations.
Our first markets in late May and June are usually our weakest. We have to reestablish ourselves after our winter absence, and we don’t have an abundance of fresh produce to sell in the first few weeks. Potatoes from the previous year are usually beginning to sprout and are less firm than they were, but they can still taste remarkably good — they have less moisture and more essence of potato flavor. We rub off any sprouts and tell our customers to eat them within a week or two. Shallots from the previous season, if well cured and stored, can sell well, but we seldom have many of them.
In the first couple of weeks, our lettuces may be on the small side and our bunches of chard, dandelion, and kale are not especially generous because these crops are still small in the field; nonetheless, they are appealing to city dwellers who may be starved for fresh greens. Mesclun salad mix, though labor intensive, is a good early-season seller.
Bunches of green garlic, onions, and shallots have been a staple early offering at our stand for many years. These are grown from sets (rather than seeds) and reach a marketable size fairly quickly. The idea is that people can chop up and eat the green tops, as well as the very small bulbs. They sell well enough at a time when there isn’t much fresh, local food to be had, but they are not snatched up as fast as the mature garlic, onion, and shallot bulbs that come to our stand several weeks later.
As we move toward the end of June, basil from one of our high tunnels is a popular item, but we don’t have a lot of it because we have only two tunnels and there are several contenders for the limited space. Rhubarb is also a good seller, but again, the quantity is limited — we don’t have a big rhubarb patch. The peas, when they arrive in mid-June, are a welcome sight, both for our customers and for us. Edible weeds, especially stinging nettle and lamb’s quarters, have gained favor in recent years. Our many perennial herbs, which grow vigorously in late spring, help fill out the display. They sell relatively well, but not as well as they will later in the season, when we have more substantial vegetables to go with them.
Bottom line: At this time of year, we have to scratch around to put together a modest offering of eclectic items. More would be better. We’re always on the lookout for new early-season crops to supplement our somewhat meager offerings and generate more income.
Though we may not have a lot to offer at our early markets, it’s important for us to be there. Our regular customers understand that the growing season is a trajectory — that we are at the beginning of it and so are they.
During the first half of this period, from late June to mid-July, we continue to sell bunches of green garlic, but by the middle of July, we switch to individual bulbs, which are always a big seller for us. Also, by mid-July, we begin to phase out the bunches of green onions and shallots. For a few weeks, garlic scapes fill a nice niche — they are a highly seasonal item that attracts plenty of attention, and we have lots of them.
Toward the middle of July, tomatoes and peppers from our high tunnels and some new potatoes from the field make their first appearance. These always excite our customers and invariably sell out. Squash, zucchini, and cucumbers liven up the stand with their interesting shapes and colors, but almost every vegetable grower in the market has an abundance of them. Lettuces and bunched greens are now of respectable size and continue to sell well. So do the herbs, especially basil, which is now coming from the field. Business is picking up.
The big money makers during this period from late July to late September are tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes — all shapes, sizes, and colors. Everyone wants them — local, vine-ripened tomatoes are so much better than their industrial counterparts. But there are many other items in demand as well. These include both perennial and annual herbs (especially basil, parsley, and mint), salad onions, green beans, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, peppers, and eggplant — all popular summer foods.
Lettuces, mesclun salad, and any other greens we can muster continue to sell well, but growing them can be a challenge — summer heat causes many of the greens to bolt. The turnaround time (from seeding to harvest and sale) needs to be short. Hot market days and direct sun also take their toll on fresh greens, causing them to heat up and wilt while on display. A covered truck (rather than an open-back pickup), shade tarps, and misters can help alleviate this condition.
Garlic and salad onions remain strong sellers. Potatoes, cooking onions, and shallots sell reasonably well, but they are not yet at peak demand. Their day will come.
The important thing to note about our summer marketing period is that the volume of sales for certain items goes up substantially, even exponentially, and we have to be ready for this. In the early summer period we might sell 100 to 200 pounds of tomatoes at a market because the fruits are just beginning to ripen and this is all we have to offer. In August and September, we routinely harvest 800 or more pounds for a single market and sell most of them. Basil follows suit, with as many as 200 bunches harvested for our Saturday market. And when tomatoes and basil are selling in large quantities, there are more people in the market and more customers at our stand, which means that we sell more of everything else. Business picks up substantially. The challenge now is to have enough good food to meet the increased demand, and there’s no better way to make this happen than to have a well-thought-out and well-informed plan.
For us, early fall is the best-selling period of all. People are back from their vacations; schools and colleges are in session; the hot, muggy days of summer are now only a memory. Most folks are in a good mood. At the market, there’s a tantalizing scent of fresh vegetables, herbs, and fruit in the air. Our regular customers are out in full force. Many other city residents, who seldom visit a farmers’ market, are now ready and eager to partake of the local harvest. It’s almost as though their inner clocks are ticking, telling them to go out and stock up with good fare before the long, dark winter is upon them.
Almost everything we had to offer in the summer marketing period, with the possible exception of summer cucurbits (which often succumb to disease), is still available and in substantial quantities. Tomatoes continue to hold the day, but the basil goes into decline as we approach the end of September and cooler nights.
A busy day at the market
The demand for potatoes, cooking onions, and shallots takes a jump, as does interest in perennial herbs — especially rosemary, sage, and thyme — because people are preparing more hot dishes. Then, there are the fall crops that many customers have been waiting for — several different kinds of kale, broccoli, mustard greens, collards, Asian greens, carrots, celeriac, winter squash, turnips, radishes. Now we have the makings of a real party.
There are certain challenges that come with the surging demand and sales of fall. One is having enough labor to harvest and prepare everything that is available as the days shorten. Imagine the time you need to pick a couple of hundred pints of cherry tomatoes, or harvest and wash a dozen coolers of arugula, or cut 75 bunches each of sage, thyme, and rosemary — all of uniform size. Add to this every other fresh item that needs to be harvested in a single day, and you can have a very full plate. At this time of year, if we have extra hands on the farm, they will almost always pay for themselves and more. At the market, too, we can benefit from extra help, but it pays to line this up in advance.
The capacity of our truck, with its 16-foot box, is another consideration — we might have to pack certain items more tightly to ensure there is room on board for everything we have. And with so much to sell, display space at the stand is at a premium. If space on either side of us were available, we would gladly pay for it, but that is unlikely, since most other producers at the market are also experiencing the fall bonanza. One solution is to set up shelving to take advantage of unused vertical space. Another is to narrow access isles, but this can lead to congestion and toppling signs, crates, and coolers.
Again, the point I’m trying to make is that a good plan, which takes the many changing variables into account, will win the day. Forewarned is forearmed. True, if you are a beginning farmer it might be asking a lot to be in full alignment with the changing seasons, shifting demand, and other vagaries of the market. And indeed it is. But don’t feel bad. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your farm business be. Look at each year as a learning experience, an opportunity to observe, record, and incorporate new information into your plan. In time, you will be able to anticipate and prepare for what is coming your way, and that is both empowering and lucrative.
The days, and especially the nights, are getting chilly in mid-October. By now we’ve almost certainly had a frost. The basil and beans are finished, and so are the tomatoes and peppers, except for any late bloomers that were picked while still green and brought inside to ripen. The hardy fall greens continue to both look and taste good. They sell extremely well, but their growth has slowed down dramatically. Lettuces, some of them now under row cover, are holding up and also selling well. The days of Italian dandelion and Swiss chard are numbered — by November, they are usually gone.
Garlic, potatoes, carrots, and celeriac continue to sell well. Pumpkins are a good item in the weeks leading up to Halloween and Thanksgiving (for pumpkin pies). Winter squash, sage, thyme, and rosemary are good sellers throughout the fall and terrific before Thanksgiving; the trick is to have enough of them on hand and know when to bring them to market. (Looking back at Harvest and Sales Records from previous years keeps us on top of these sudden surges in demand.)
The goal: a steady flow. Our goal is to have an adequate supply of produce to sell during each of the above periods. We want to cover our operating costs, the foremost of which is labor, and justify our marketing efforts, which in our case, involve driving a truck to New York City, setting up a stand, and staying there all day — an undertaking that has a significant price tag associated with it. We also want to make a profit.
I suspect that most small, diversified growers — regardless of whether they choose to operate their own farm stand or CSA, deliver to a restaurant or food co-op, or sell at a farmers’ market — have similar objectives. As business people, we need to figure out how to have a steady flow of produce for as long as possible each year so that we can keep our customers well fed and the dollars coming in. You don’t need me to tell you that the bills come in regardless of cash flow.