Jay, we seen this beginning last year. More people are trying to grow their own. Plus some of the farmers market's prices are getting too high for people's pocketbooks. My prices were much lower than some of the other vendors.

If you can hold out for a couple more years, things will cycle around again. Some people will continue to grow, but several that are trying will decide that it's too much work.

My new markets are not anything like last year's market, but I expected that (much, much smaller), but I also lower my prices on some items versus my former market.

My best year was 2005, plenty of customers and not so many quality vendors. Since then, we still had customers but more and more vendors. Starting 2009, I starting seeing people wanting to grow their own gardens and I started to sell plants more. I expect this growing stage to last 2-3 more years. Some vendors will not hold out that long. Try to keep as many customers as possible while you can.

Good luck to all.

Marla

i think in your case jay, the weather is just keeping customers away. especially the rainy days.
around here there are many new farmers markets starting so that customers who may have traveled to the market i sell at now find a closer market. and i also think that since food from farmers markets generally cost more, with the economy the way it is, and the high cost of gas,people are opting out of making the extra stop at the farmers market.
but my big selling season hasn't yet started so i don't really know how my market will be this year.

Marla,

I am glad that here that someone is thinking the same way as me. At my markets it isn't about more vendors. To be honest there are alot less. We had 7 vendors last night at my big market, one beef, one cookies, on burritos, one bread, 2 big vegetables, (mainly they buy and resell produce) another vegetable grower and myself.

We have had bad weather every Wednesday too and also the main entrance to the parking lot we are selling from has been tore up. You had to use a side entrance. All these factors are contributing too.

I am not priced too high. Maybe a few 25 or 50 cents higher, but that also has to take into account sales tax.

Last year was my best year ever. I am hoping that this year it will come back around. I hope, as I have made some bigger investments in production and I hope I don't regret it. If they don't pay off, then I guess we will be eating lots of winter squash and sweet potatoes.

Jay

I kept my prices the same as last year, but again, I'm at smaller more rural markets this year. Last year, we had one vendor that kept their tomato prices at $2.50/lb or more even during the glut part of the season. That's what I meant by being too high of prices. Also, our community is not doing well with the economy and people are watching every penny that they HAVE TO spend.

Weather is a main problem with customers not coming. If they are coming to the market, but not buying, that would tell me that either prices too high (for them) or not the right things being at the market.

We just picked the first snow peas, so everything is running late.

Marla

As I lamented last year, our market is near death. It began last weekend, but the weather has pretty much wiped out spring crops--first all the floods and more recently the nearly 100 degree weather. I got one picking of snow peas and tilled them under yesterday. Sold the last 25 lbs of lettuces this week and will be tilling them under soon. Most of our vendors sell baked or canned goods anymore. My email customers have increased dramatically, and my restaurant just put in a huge order for summer and fall. Therefore, I may really cut down on the market myself. There was one bright spot though. I got a call the other morning from a regional activity developer (?? didn't even know we had one of those??), who was looking at increasing the number of farmers markets in our area. We certainly need something like that here!!

Brook

We found that increasing the number of farmers markets actually decreased our sales. We were at both markets, but the total sales dropped. I think it was because there were vendors at the new market that didn't come to the older market and vice versa. About the same number of customers showed, some decided to only visit the new market while others stayed with the older market.

Brook, at least you have someone looked at the picture.

Marla

I was chatting with my local greenhouse owner today and she says shes 500 pots behind the worst year shes ever had, last year. This economy is still sluggish no matter what they want us to belive.

Good news, it isn't dead yet. Today was a much better day. The weather was perfect. I hope this trend continues.

Jay

Marla, The region she was referring to was a 100 mile radius. She actually was trying to get vendors to attend a market that was 50 miles away from me. No way at these gas prices. I agree with local competition tho. We have at least 4 independent vendors who sell daily or at least several times a week. Our traditional market really can't compete with them. Furthermore, we lost our location last year and now set up right against a dying shopping mall that has at best 1/4 of the stores it once did. Ruined crops haven't helped either.

New locations are hard to get going, and being near a dying business is not good either.

My son went to his first market yesterday and had a good day, almost $100, the other 3 markets were $25, $75 and $90. So all total about $300 for 4 markets, all within 35 miles of the farm, but a total of over 200 miles driven. Not good.

I also spoke to a nursery on Friday and he is going to farmers market to unload some of the hanging baskets that he has extra. Good prices for buyers, and not too unreasonable for the grower. He has lots of plants that have not sold this year, worse than last year.

I agree, government and other people are saying that the economy is getting better, but I am not seeing it.

Marla

Brookw, I do not know where you are located,but it sounds a lot like my weather. And we usaully do not have neart 100 temps till late July. I'm uasually selling lots of cool season crops,this time of the year as my squash and cucumbers come in,until my tomatoes come on.Not this year,I just tilled my cool season crops this past week. Tomatoes are usaully ready,but not this year.I hope it does not get too hot to set fruit!