First Ever Farmers Market!

Let me start out by saying that unless my new app download helps me be able to blog on Saturdays,  Sunday will be my new blog day! There is just too much going on! But I am hoping that during down times I might be able to on Saturdays again with this new app but we shall see! Now for the exciting part!!! Yesterday was our 1st ever farmers market and it was fun. It was a lot of work to get set up and it definitely required a lot of thinking ahead and planning but it was well worth it. And our partner Ibee Jammin was not only very grateful for all of our ideas and planning but also full of her own ideas to help us as the season goes on! I do have to say that even some things as simple as a table slips one's mind when we are stressed about other things like merchandise lol. That was not us btw! 

Back tracking a little bit here but its relevant so bare with me. We are now up to 6 bags of lettuce mix being sold every few days at Blue Hills Market in Abingdon VA! That is making us feel so good! We dropped 6 bags off on Wednesday and by Friday they were telling us we were out! Which was nice because we got a little ambitious when we started cutting Friday morning! We kept looking at what we had cut and thought, oh, we can cut more... ok maybe just a little more... next thing we know we've cut 15 pounds of lettuce, spinach and kale!!! That doesn't sound like much to the average Joe but when you are the one that has to wash, spin, dry, weight, bag, label and STORE 30 bags of salad and lettuce mixes and it takes you 6+ hours to get it done, you realize just how much it is! 

We had a deluxe lettuce mix of green and red romaine and butter crunch, a regular lettuce mix that consisted of a variety of 5 lettuces and a salad mix that has the same 5 lettuces plus spinach and 2 types of kale!! We sold 10 bags at the farmers market and then dropped one off for a customer that called right afterwards. And today we've had someone come by already for a bag! It has been pretty cool to watch it fly off the shelf the way it has! On Friday after the long process of getting the lettuce ready for the market we took 6 bags to Blue Hills and spent the rest of the night making sure we had everything we needed for the market to look perfect! Tables, chairs, risers, white boards, signs, cards, table cloths, burlap, a scale, change for all the 20s people pay with... and then what we didn't bring... enough change for the 20s, sample containers, wet wipes to clean up gross chairs, a notebook for notes, scissors to cut said burlap... and then things we realized would be helpful for future markets... an inventory sheet, different labels for the deluxe mix, a sign for our partner and of course a 4th clean chair on and maybe more change for all those 20s!!!!

All in all it was a great week! We got a lot accomplished! And while I am sitting here outside watching the guys work hard while I sit in the shade and blog I am feeling quite blessed! Oh, did I mention we got interviewed for the Bristol Herald Courier?? (Thank you sweet hubby for reminding me) The article will talk about Dylan going from a back yard gardener to a small scale farmer! It will talk about our transition between the two and what the future holds. It will also include pictures that I will get credit for which is even more awesome!! 

Thank you for stopping by as always but for now I have to go help farm! Lifes a garden, dig it!