Tomato Day results

[Wi-sunflower]

Well it's been a long week for me. Lot's of highs and lows this week. It's over now and I'm tired.

I was a wreak most of the morning. It was good that I had some good friends that come over to help get it going.

We only had about 25 to 30 varieties picked and on the table by the start at noon. There were maybe about 25 people there by noon too. Little by little we got more varieties on the table til the 30+ feet of table was pretty much full.

The people were understanding about the lack of some of the advertised varieties as some just didn't have anything ripe yet.

People were able to go into the fields and find those they liked on the table or find some we didn't have time to get. A few of the popular varieties were totally picked of ripe ones by the end of the day. Black Cherry and Howard German (a roma) had had quite a few out there in the morning too.

We made a fair amount of mistakes today that we hopefully will remember to correct for next year. Mainly we will need to get the samples picked and sorted by type on Thurs and Sat. Fri is picking for market day. The weeding was still happening til at least noon on Sat tho this year so we just couldn't get much done ahead.

We also need to have a registration of the people so we can email them when their favs are ripe or when plants are ready or ???

I have to say that the weather mostly co-operated well today. Cooler than we would have liked, but it was sunny and less windy than yesterday. Considering the weather this year and this week hasn't been very good for tomatoes at all, things went pretty well. There were even a few semi-ripe tomatoes in the varieties that the crew had picked without labeling on Thurs. No way I thought that would happen with the rain and cool weather we had.

We didn't get a count of people at all, but there had to be at least 50 cars, most with more than 1 person. Several even brought the kids. A few kids found out that they DO like, some, tomatoes when there are so many different flavors to choose from.

I didn't get to take very many pics as I was just running in too many directions all day. I'll post some when I have a chance to look at them later.

Now that things are fairly well weeded, hopefully we will get a few more weeks of decent weather so I will have tomatoes for seeds and getting some variety pics. Lots of work yet to do this year.

Carol

[Wi-sunflower]

The Labor Day weekend is always my busiest weekend. We have our usual Saturday markets and then have a Sunday-Monday market that is huge. The St Martins Labor Day market is a Farmers Market that over the years has turned into a huge flea market with beer tents and music and anything you can imagine. It runs along a road for about a mile & 1/3. Usually draws about 100,000 people or more over the 2 days.

We always set up near 1 of the ends by a parking lot as people don't like to carry the heavy stuff too far. The only real problem we usually have is the fact that because this isn't strictly a farmers market, they can want to get the stuff too cheap and not look at the quality of the homegrown vs the commercial stuff that is also there.

Often our tomatoes are non-sellers due to not being perfect. We often have to pitch a lot or sell as bushels or 1/2 bu just to move any.

This year tho, thanks to our experience with the Tasting Day, we had about 30 varieties named and sorted out on the stand. On a seperate table next to the stand, we had plates with all the large varieties and cut samples for tasting. For the small cherry / grape types we just encouraged the people to try one. We went thru a lot of samples and it really was worth it.

Soooo many people commented that they didn't know there were so many kinds of tomatoes even tho that was just a small sample of our varieties. The really great part was the fact that we sold a whole lot of less than perfect but great tasting tomatoes at $2.00 / lb and almost no one even said a thing about the price at all. We even sold a few 2+ lb tomatoes for $4-5 each and no one blinked as they had just sampled that variety and loved it.

It was just unbelievable how much of a difference being able to give samples made. If you want to sell heirlooms at a farmers market hopefully your market will allow sampling. Unfortunately my best market doesn't and I'm sure that has hurt more than a bit.

Carol

[danwigz]

I'm excited for this coming August already (jeesh, I'm also waiting for May!) lol.

Anyway, I just can't help myself and love doing things like posters in my spare time... don't mind me... (is it possible to have too many hobbies?)

[Wi-sunflower]

Hey, I like it.

I had just a mostly print poster. I'm not always very good graphically. We'll have to talk when it's plant time.

Just don't come over on a Saturday, or too late in the day Friday or the plants will all be in the truck for the Sat market. Saturdays are about the only time no one is around. Oh and Wednesday's too. Forgot about the Wed markets.

Carol

[danwigz]

Sounds good, its definitely just a quickly done poster, but there's other things that can be done with it. I'll let you know when I'm coming over, it'll have to be in the late morning probably as I work afternoons & evenings (except Wednesdays and Saturdays, of course lol)

Dan