Thursday, October 28, 2010

The end of markets 2010 - now what?

We're finished!
Today was our last farmers' market for 2010.
And what a way to end - cold temperatures, extreme winds, lots of clouds, and very few customers. Not the worst market day of the season, but definitely close to the bottom.
We are so ready to be finished!

Here is a short summary of this market season.

- 85 market days in total - including 53 days of good weather, 14 hot, hazy, & humid days, 15 very windy days, and 16 days with showers or rain. (Many other days the precipitation held off until the drive home).
- 88% of our total farm income came from these 85 market days (thus our obsession with the weather).

Some good news?
- We are almost sold out of everything. Just a few pears left (enough for us to eat in the coming months), some squash, along with a bit of kale, chard, hot peppers ...
- Tomorrow the cold storage gets turned off, which should improve our hydro bill considerably.
- No more getting up at 3:15 am to finish loading the truck, to be on the road by 4:15 am.
- No more leaving home in the dark, driving to Toronto in the dark, unloading the truck in the dark & setting up in the dark.
- No more slow & tiring rides home from Toronto in stop & go traffic.

Some bad news...
- Our social life is over! Many of our market friends (both vendors & customers) that we have worked with & visited with these past 5 and a half months, we will not see until next season. We`ll miss them!
- no more trading fruit & vegetables for food that we don`t grow - cider, baking, cheese, baking, honey, baking, soap, baking, meat, baking ...
- no more income until next May!!

We started cleaning out the van today, but you don`t clean up 5 months of market right away. Lots of stuff has accumulated in the truck. Who knows what we`ll find ...



After all the good byes and well wishes from customers and fellow vendors, the question comes - what do you do all winter?
Here`s my standard answer ...
- prune the fruit trees
- maintain & fix equipment
- book work
- prepare & plan for next season
- sleep in & relax!!! Certainly this is the one we are most looking forward to right now!!


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