Oil businessmen in Texas, Farmers' Markets, Cash or Plastic?, Pumpkin juice

As I mentioned in earlier entries, I'm in Austin, Texas for several days to attend the NAFDMA meeting. As I flew into Austin last evening, I ended up seated by two fellows who soon found out they were both in the oil business and who happily spent the time telling each other disaster stories and trying to top each other on the far-flung exotic places they had worked. I thought it a good introduction to Texas. I must say I did enjoy getting up above the cloud layer and seeing blue sky. Seattle's unbroken streak of rainy days has reached the national news, creating one more easy gambit for small talk. Once I got to the hotel, I did spot a few familiar faces from last year's NAFDMA meeting and chatted a bit, but I crashed pretty soon.

Today was supposed to be my day with a little free time to see a bit of Austin, but I ended up filling the day with NAFDMA stuff. Morning and early afternoon I attended a workshop on selling at farmers' markets. I'm working on deciding if this is the year we should start selling at farmers' markets, or whether we should wait. Selling at farmers' markets has much in common with running a farmstand. I know that many of the folks who come to our farm also visit farmers' markets. In both cases our efforts are to provide the tastiest, freshest, most beautiful, most nutritious, and all around best produce our customers can find anywhere, to send them away happy with their purchases, and to see them return for more. Much of the difference lies in the fact that at a market you must attract passers-by to stop at your stand rather than passing you over for another farmer's stand. In any case, we can use the ideas to make our farmstand even that much more pleasant for our farm visitors.

One of the people at our table at lunch today was Richard Sakuma of Sakuma Bros. in Burlington, WA. We bought all our raspberry plants from Sakuma Bros. They have a planting of 5 acres of tea just coming into full production after 5 years. Full production generally yields about 1500 lbs per acre in 4 or 5 cuttings. Now he's trying to figure out how to process that much tea. At The South 47 Farm we have talked about producing herbal teas from our herb garden and I'd mused from time to time on growing tea plants, but I've never spent any time researching the idea. I'm going to try to find some time to spend on the tea and herbal tea idea. There are lots of tie-ins with our other crops. Maybe we could produce the makings of raspberry iced tea.

After the workshop I attended the annual meeting of the Farmers' Market Coalition, an organization that NAFDMA is sheparding into existence. Most of the discussion was about issues and process and various government and grant funding programs in support of farmers' markets. I did find a very helpful contact, Diane Eggert, who has been working on setting up farmers' markets in New York with wireless EBT (electronic benefit transfer - the replacement for food stamps). The same system is also used for credit and debit cards. Our experience at the farmstand last year convinced me that this is the year to bow to the inevitable and get set up for taking payments by card. Every year more people are doing almost all their purchases with plastic. A wireless system would allow us to avoid bringing in wired phone service to the farm and would give us more flexability, including the ability to accept plastic at the farmers' markets. Diane has been working on the market program for 5 years and set up her own family farm years ago. I grilled her for quite a while on her experience and on what advice she could give. It does seem that the wireless technology is sufficient. However, from what Daine has to say, when it comes to farms the sales, marketing, and service of accounts is sorely lacking.

I headed over to the trade show and hit a few of the booths. I talked a bit with reps from Johnny's Seeds and Harris Seeds. Harris was showing a new white and orange striped mini-pumpkin that I think I'll try this year. I talked winter squash a bit at Johnny's. They developed Sunshine, probably the favorite squash of our farmstand staff. There are a couple of vendors selling granita/slushie mixers. One had loaded a mixer with a pumpkin and apple cider mixture. Good stuff. There are a number of specialty food vendors that I visited for ideas for items we could someday produce from our farm. I tried some quite good pickled garlic. One of these days we'll work on a pickle line; green beans, garlic, carrots, maybe even cucumbers. It just might be worth growing asparagus just to make picked asparagus. I tried a sample of sweet pickled beets for nostalgia's sake. Pickled beets are pretty common in the Midwest. I grew up eating them in Ohio, but I'm not sure how well they would be received in Washington. I did have one pleasant discovery: sweet pickled jalepenos!

The main meeting starts tomorrow. The opening session is a general overview of trends in farm sales and farm markets, and the resulting implications and challenges.I'm thinking I'll also attend sessions on tours and activities for schools and for seniors.

What's playing on the laptop this evening? Wicked Tinkers - Whiskey Supper