…of the Manzanita Farmers’ Market for this year. Going into it, we were preparing for the worst: rainy weather, tourists are gone for the year, and shortened hours due to the ever-earlier fall sunset make for a perfect storm of poor sales. But as luck would have it, the opposite was true: after a slow start, the people started showing up in droves, and the purse strings were loose indeed. This might have been in part because the market celebrates the finale with free beer and ice cream, donated by some great local businesses. But I think more of it is that the locals all wanted to celebrate the end of a great summer, and also to stock up on all the market goodies for the coming winter. When all was said and done, we ended up having our best-income evening ever!
Check out the sales graph… that big leap in the last few months (both years) is when the honey came on. It’s very popular. 🙂 And Emily is still coming up with clever marketing innovations. If you look to the left of the table, you can see us selling pumpkin by the slice, just like you’d sell a cheese wedge from the wheel. A lot of people went home with a two-pound slice and a recipe for pumpkin soup. Yummm!!
Another nice thing at the last market was all the help. Some of our good friends from Seattle make an annual pilgrimage to Manzanita, and they were on hand to help us set up and tear down. Christina even took the reins of saleswoman, and did a fantastic job. That’s one of the parts of our farm business that I like the best, the community aspect of it.
