Farmers' Market season and making a profit

Last Saturday was the season's first farmers' market!  We took radishes, onions, swiss chard and lettuce plus our usual barbecue sauce, soap, knitted goods, handmade noodles from the brown eggs from my flock, my whole wheat bread and my signature bread which is a french bread filled with swirls of bits of garlic & onion, my own basil and oregano, olive oil and parmesan cheese.  We always sell all of my french herb baguettes!  Our 12 year old granddaughter was with us and she was selling pussywillow starts from her mom's trees and she sold them all!  Lots of community participation, great weather (it's really too dry, but the weather was good for a farmers' market).  A good number of vendors for opening weekend, too.  We always do pretty well and Saturday was no exception--especially good for the first market of the season.
      Pricing our products at the farmers' market is always a challenge.  We try to keep our prices high enough to make a profit.  After all, we have premium, home-grown and handmade products that are better than what you can find at the stores.  We do have a problem when the tomatoes and peppers start to come in.  That is when you will get the home gardeners bringing their 'extras' to get rid of them and start undercutting the prices of those of us who grow the great stuff to sell and make some money (you know, so that you pay yourself for back-breaking sweating labor which most people won't do).  I have seen people practically give their produce away because 'I just wanted to get rid of it since I grew too much'.  We have a food pantry in the community and many people who need the produce (our leftovers go to family and the chickens).  If the 'undercutters' wish to give it away, they should give it away where it will do the most good---not bring it to the farmers' market to sell.  There are already people out there who believe that since it is a farmers' market, everything should cost next to nothing--we don't want to perpetuate the myth.   We have the same bills as everyone else.  I had a woman yell out from her car as she drove by (must have thought it was the McDonald's drive up) and ask me how much my eggs were.  When I told her, she waved her hand and said 'I thought this was a farmers' market.  That is more than I give at the Grocery Store'.  And of course, we all know how good the eggs at the grocery store are.  They may be cheap, but they are also stale, filled with heaven-knows-what hormones and medication, and come from chickens that are thrown away for dog food after 18 months of living in a tiny cage standing in their own excrement because they have no room to move.  Yum, yum.  I truly love the farmers' market and the surrounding philosophy, but if you are observing people to form characters to put into your next book, it is certainly the place to be! 
   

Yesterday was a good day for gardening.  Mike and I put in 150 plants that we had grown in our greenhouse, adding them to the potatoes, swiss chard, onions, turnips, radishes, lettuce and kale that were already out and growing.  Yesterday was 86 degrees, but it's a good thing that we did it because we had a lot of storms and rain last night.  So, we put in pak choi, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, more onions---a few weeks later than we generally do, but they are really nice plants.  Now the Garden B looks like a garden, although only half planted.  Garden C will be where we plant the melons, summer squash and zucchini which are now sprouting really fast in the greenhouse.  Front and back of the greenhouse will be taken down since its use is almost over.  Beautiful tomato plants and herb plants are just begging to come out and as soon as it is dry again, out they will go.  I will broadcast alfalfa to put in half of garden A to increase fertility for the next year.  Garden A already has permanent fixtures like thornless blackberry vines, grape vines and gooseberries.  Cross our fingers that we don't have another bad season like last year.  I don't feel comfortable with the way our seasons are changing.  I live with the seasons and come to depend on their light and shadows, smells and sounds and I am out of kilter when it just doesn't do what it used to.  Yes, climate change is real and yes, it is our fault, but I wish that humans could clean up what they have done as fast as they have ruined it.  Instead, we have some people in complete denial with some religious dogma thrown in for good measure.  We may have come to the point of no return for our planet.  Already, we are losing masses of arctic and antarctic glaciers as they melt into the sea.  What took eons to make takes us a few seconds to break.