We have a small family farm growing a variety of fresh organic vegetables, herbs and strawberries. Our farm is located in Watsonville, California, about an hour and a half south of San Francisco. We are in the heart of strawberry production land: home of Driscoll’s berries among others. Here in Watsonville it’s cool and temperate most of the year; it never gets too hot so the strawberry and bush berry season goes for at least seven months out of the year. We are farming a total of 32 acres on 3 separate pieces in two different counties. We have 10 or so employees in the high season.

I got started in this business by marrying my husband, Andy Griffin, eight years ago. He had already been farming one way or another for 12 years. When we got married, he and his business partner, Greg, were doing about eight farmers’ markets per week, as well as plenty of wholesale business. As a school teacher who loved to cook, it was a natural for me to help at weekend markets, which I did for three years before our two children were born.

There were many advantages to selling in the farmers’ markets at that time, the biggest one being that the farm was paid for its produce the same day the customer took the product home. That was different from the world of wholesale produce where Greg and Andy were lucky and happy if an account paid within 30 days of receiving their order. Other advantages to selling in the farmers’ markets were meeting the customers and hearing their positive comments, getting retail prices for our produce, being outside and talking to other busy farmers.

In 1996, Greg and Andy were fortunate and smart to sell the wholesale side of their business, which was at that point mostly dealing in baby salad mix. They decided the best new business plan was to do even more farmers’ markets, and they went full speed ahead, doing 20-plus markets a week in high season. There were two markets in San Francisco and the rest in surrounding communities from Oakland on the north to Monterey on the south. With one baby in diapers and another in the oven I stopped teaching and went to work “part time” for the new farming adventure. I remember lugging many pounds of quarters for market change from the bank each week. Just doing payroll, trying to keep track of which employee was doing which market, remembering who was off and trying to cover their shift was a full time job. Then there were all those delivery trucks with their own schedules of oil changes, tune-ups, registration and repairs. Help!

Cash on the barrelhead is a good thing. The accounting is easier than tracking down recalcitrant chefs and elusive wholesale produce bookkeepers. But more markets didn’t mean more money. The business did teach us a lot, though, and during the years that we did so many markets we learned some things that worked for us and some that didn’t.

The markets we did ourselves always did better than those we staffed with employees. Finding employees with good driving records, friendly smiles, knowledge about food and cooking, strong backs and an ability to show up on time was a challenge. And the customers do like talking to the actual farmer, there’s no getting around that.

In California, many farmers’ markets go year round. Having a cash flow in the winter from the sale of fresh vegetables can help keep a farm crew around so that there are not so many difficulties starting up again in the spring, but there are serious drawbacks to year-round production. When it rains on a farmers’ market you still have to make your payroll and pay for the stall fee. If the season’s rainstorms come on the week’s most lucrative market days you can lose a lot of money since the fresh vegetables we grow are not necessarily fresh and nice to take to another market after being rained on. Over the course of a winter it’s easy to lose all the money you made in the summer if the weather isn’t on your side.

If you are innovative and successfully develop a niche market or a new product you can be sure to soon have lots of competition, and not just in the farmers’ market. A much better job being done by the food retailers means a new form of competition we didn’t have 10 years ago. Major chain stores now ape the successful promotional devices like “in season” that served to give farmers’ markets an edge in years past. Whole Foods does a good job at educating their customers about where their food comes from; a better job to my mind than do many farmers’ markets where stalls staffed by weekend retail employees with no real connection to the farms they represent can only hazard a guess when their customers ask questions. There are more farmers’ markets than ever but it’s not clear that there are more shoppers.

Market politics
It seems hard for market managers to effectively improve the mix of vendors in their markets or the quality of products being sold and yet a farm that does a bad job may turn off customers so that they don’t come back to the farmers’ market at all, thus damaging the reputation and sales for all the farms that are trying hard to do a nice job.

Politics can spoil a market. Andy is convinced that the struggles many market managers face in keeping their year-round markets full of product in the winter season distorts the value of the markets. It seems obvious that to assure a steady supply of product during the difficult months some managers turn a blind eye to blatant peddling. Having tolerated, even encouraged rather dubious vendors in the wet season because they were needed to fill up empty stalls, some managers seem reluctant to deal with the issue of reselling during the high season and real farmers have to compete with cheaters. It takes much of the fun out of a market experience.

Civic issues beyond our control also hurt sales. An Art and Wine festival in town meant much lower sales that day as parking is taken up and regular customers are distracted, but our production and harvest costs stayed the same. We tried to make the best of these once-a-year events, but when you are selling vegetables this isn’t always easy. The out-of-town guest hoping to taste fine wines and get away from it all doesn’t want to think about their weekly vegetable needs. Sales of some items go way up during major events such as the gay pride parade in San Francisco, but the sheer numbers of people visiting the city keep the regular shoppers from coming down to market. Another instance of civic issues was what I call “The Los Altos Parking Snafu.” This upscale community was perhaps the ideal town to hold a farmers’ market, except that the neighbors who lived near the bank parking lot where it was held each Saturday morning complained and got the city to outlaw nearly all market parking, effectively shutting down the market.

Now, what works
I’ve listed many reasons why doing lots of farmers’ markets became difficult for us. Let me now talk about some things that worked for us and continue to work for us.

We pay attention to the annual events of each community: for the art and wine festival, we didn’t even waste our time bringing very many onions, beets and potatoes that day. Tourists don’t cook. Now we bring more cherry tomatoes and strawberries for on-the-spot snacking, and a good book to read in case the clumsy festival parking arrangement prevents us from going home at our usual time.

We try to become involved and informed about the management of the markets. There is a statewide advisory committee Andy managed to be on for a year. This involvement meant some extra meetings but it was more than worth it to get the information about the problems, ideas and changes that a market was experiencing or about to encounter.

In every market we try to be helpful to the market manager: if we don’t like our stall location, we help the manager solve the problem, ask nicely at the END of market, and respect the fact we get to be there at all. This ‘policy’ of our farm sounds like a chapter out of “Lessons I Learned in Kindergarten,” but it works. I am continually amazed at the growers who yell at managers at 5:30 in the morning for things that are beyond the manager’s control. If a random trucker leaves his truck in a dark San Francisco parking lot during the night, is now at his girlfriend’s house in Oakland, and the manager is calling a tow company on the cell the moment he arrives at the scene, he doesn’t also need to be yelled at by a farmer.

In our displays we pay attention to supermarket displays. When they have a two-story pyramid of boxes of Triscuit crackers, it helps sell more boxes. When we have 29 totes of onions to sell, we make as big a stack on the table as we can. This method REALLY WORKS. It also helps to display things on the table together with things that go in the pot together. Mint bunches can go next to the strawberries. Potatoes, onions and parsley sitting side by side will encourage multiple purchases from each customer.

We’ve learned that having a wider variety of produce doesn’t always mean more money. Andy tries a few new or oddball things each year because some people are attracted by novelty. When he was presenting an eclectic stall with lots of variety the chefs and serious shoppers appreciated it but he found himself explaining more and selling less. We try to strike a balance of unique items like green zebra tomatoes, red carrots, epazote and lemon balm with plenty of basic familiar things like potatoes, onions and orange carrots. We’ve found that bringing more of 15 items instead of less of 40 items makes more money, and it’s easier to manage.

I always take an apron with deep pockets. I can help take money and give change no matter where I’m standing, and the apron identifies me as someone who can answer questions. I’ve been using the same couple of aprons for nearly 10 years. Taking mountains of change helps too. Customers often feel guilty when they hand me a 20 dollar bill, but that actually helps at the end of market. I’ve run out of quarters plenty of times, even just a couple of weeks ago. But I find it distracting and I’m not able to give the same prompt and happy service as I can when I’ve got rolls of quarters waiting.

When I have a table of cherry tomatoes, strawberries, or potatoes, I stand near it and constantly ‘fuss’ with the baskets when I’m not actually taking money. I remove the green potatoes, cracked cherry toms and questionable strawberries. I then top off the baskets. This attracts people, encourages them to ask questions, and helps sales. Talking about produce draws a crowd. I’m told retailers call this “info-tainment.”

Market sellers have umbrellas or easy-ups to cover themselves and their products. We try to put up enough umbrellas where they will shade the produce and the customers. This really helps on rainy days and especially hot days.

One of the most successful and innovative things we’ve done is start an email market newsletter. I realize this isn’t for everyone, but it’s worked for us. A day and a half before the market, we send out a list of what we plan to bring to market, an article by Andy and a couple of recipes that promote whatever we will have a lot of that day. Some folks just read Andy’s article. Some just read the recipes. Some just want to know if we are bringing strawberries. We don’t take orders or anything like that at this time because it seems too complicated.

When we did a lot of farmers’ markets we tried to take Monday off. But it never seemed to happen. Eventually we got burned out. Greg and Andy severed their business partnership amicably as each decided to pursue a different business plan. Andy and I decided to try and continue the Community Supported Agriculture project that he and Greg had started, a project we have pursued now for four years. We do one market a week- Ferry Plaza in San Francisco – and enjoy it very much. Having a successful small family farm is still a work in progress, though, with most of the new challenges coming from the effort to coordinate a CSA. We are still seeing if it can sustain us along with our shareholders.
In my next article for GFM I will give you the lowdown on how Community Supported Agriculture has both helped our farm survive and stretched it to a snapping point.

Mariquita Farm
831-761-3226
http://www.mariquita.com