TURN YOUR GARDEN SURPLUS INTO CASH . . . AT THE FARMERS' MARKET

Image Gallery Everyone, it seems, loves a tasty melon . . . Good scales do increase business . . . A truckload of vegetables ready for market . . .

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Farmers' markets—in which gardeners and other growers can set up stands and sell produce directly to the public—are popping up once again in cities and towns all over the country.

My family signed on as regular vendors at Omaha's downtown market last summer. The experience was a good one. It taught us firsthand that almost anyone should be able to use a farmers' market to turn surplus garden produce into extra cash. The experience also showed us several ways to make a produce stand more attractive, easier to run, and far more profitable than it might otherwise be.

UNUSUAL VEGETABLES SELL!

Perhaps the most important of all the lessons we learned last year was that "variety crops" sell, and sell well! It took only a few days at the stand to show us we'd been far too timid when selecting the vegetables that we'd planted for sale. We had figured that most customers would want only the "tried and true" . . . and that very few would be interested in trying anything new.

Surprise! About half the market crowd—we soon learned—were there to find adventure! Spaghetti squash and sugar peas were sellouts . . . even to people who'd never heard of them before. Broccoli was a strong mover (as opposed to the more-ordinary cabbage, which we practically had to give away). Even mung beans—which didn't sell the first week—were a big hit the second, after I'd put them into four-ounce packages with simple sprouting directions.

Perhaps more amazing yet was the way that flowers sold . . . even simple little bunches of zinnias, which we'd really planted only for ourselves. Apartment dwellers—it seems—generally have no place to grow fresh flowers of their own and, consequently, often jump at the chance to buy even small bouquets.

Herbs were another pleasant surprise. They turned out to be some of the most lucrative items we stocked! And probably the least work too! Actually, the herb garden was our 11-year-old daughter Barbara's project. And, being less than enthusiastic about outdoor work, she did little more than "drop in the seeds" in the spring . . . then pick, package, and label the herb leaves on Friday nights before Saturday market. Still, she sold everything she took to the stand and made good spending money with very little effort.

As the season wore on and—market day after market day—we saw how well "offbeat" produce sold, we tried harder and harder to satisfy this obvious demand.

In addition to the bin of "big ones" we took into town each week during potato season, we once tried a flat of smaller spuds. Interestingly enough, some of our customers—especially the women who were old enough to remember "real" food and how to fix it—began asking for "the smallest potatoes you have". So I gradually began bringing in smaller and smaller spuds . . . until I'd worked all the way down to the very tiny ones that I'd thought were far too small to sell and which I'd sorted out for our own personal use.

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FARM FRESH: DIRECT MARKETING MEATS & MILK '

Allan Nation

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