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

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I'm still a little unhappy, too, about an additional lesson our first season as produce vendors taught us: Packaging—even when it helps produce a better product—isn't appreciated by the people who shop at farmers' markets.

For example: The last item we harvested each Saturday morning before leaving for town was our leaf lettuce. We grew a beautiful assortment of greens and reds . . . which I mixed and packaged in plastic bags. The stuffed and tied sacks were then transported immediately to our stand in insulated chests, on blocks of ice from the freezer.

Obviously, no lettuce could be fresher. I think I was justifiably startled, then, when one customer told me she wanted lettuce but that ours "didn't look too good".

Where could we possibly have gone wrong? I didn't know, so the following week I tried something entirely different: We pulled whole heads of leaf lettuce and put them directly on ice, without bags. And? All our lettuce sold out the first hour!

Evidently people find lettuce more appealing when it's not packaged. So, OK . . . that's the way we give it to them now. Which hurts, since the last few heads we sell every day are already starting to wilt. But that's the way folks seem to want it!

. . .BUT DO GET A
GOOD PAIR OF SCALES

Perhaps our experience with lettuce was related to another discovery we made: People buy more produce when they can actually pick through the vegetables and select their own. Which meant—right at the start of our first season—that we had to buy a scale . . . an expense we hadn't counted on.

Most of the other vendors, we noted, were making do with inexpensive and widely available "kitchen" scales. But—after watching one operator of a stand trying to balance a couple of tomatoes on his scales' undersized platform—we decided that our customers deserved something better . . . something that was "legal for trade", with an up-to-date inspection sticker.

We first thought we'd try to pick up a real produce scale from, say, a remodeled grocery . . . but quickly learned that such a "bargain" would set us back several hundred dollars! So we settled for a $40 hanging scale from an old hardware store. It immediately proved to be worth its weight in gold! Business boomed as our customers started picking out just what they wanted and weighing it themselves.

IS IT ALL WORTH IT?

We don't look on truck gardening as a way to get rich quick (or ever, for that matter!). But we do think it's a satisfying way for those of us who like to be outside and to be our own boss to earn a supplemental income.

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FARM FRESH: DIRECT MARKETING MEATS & MILK '

Allan Nation

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