Dear Farmers Market Customers ...

[clkeiper]

Originally Posted by Master_Gardener

Isn't there a board that oversees the operation of the market? It would seem that having a few vendors arriving early in order to take business away from others is not how the market is supposed to work. OTOH, if you show up two hours early, you get the 'best' stuff from that vendor and miss all the other vendors so the problem may 'fix' itself in time.

We are at the mercy of a very small village for our market...and I say mercy very loosely, as they are great to us. We close the side street to set up for the market, but no one goes any earlier than the set up time because our opening time is 9:00 AM. We are out EARLY picking and packing the berries and tomatoes for the day.
We had a problem of "Purveyors" telling everyone they grew all their produce (which is the rule for our market), BUT when they come with out of season produce or already bagged in commercial net bags such as potatoes or onions, tomatoes by the case/flat...really? you grew that?, washed it, dried it, packed it and had a source for those bags with machine fastened tops? fancy fan top onions...cleaned without a spot of dirt anywhere... Just how big is your farm? (because I know how much room it takes to get a flat of #1 tomatoes or 50 pounds of grade a potatoes.... or 50 melons)....I decided to go visit his garden one day just to see where he gardened.He had a tepee trellis for it looked like a cucumber in the back yard. Un Huh! you grew all that stuff, huh?... The produce auctioneer probably had his number memorized after the first night out at the Amish produce auction barn.


SO, we all decided ( we are a vendor governed market) to do garden inspections to make sure people were actually growing some or most of their produce or even had a garden. before we allowed them a space for their booth...none of those vendors signed up for the year.