farmer’s market

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/2SoGvTu

I don’t see many farmer’s market A/Us anymore, IDK if I’m in the wrong fandoms but I haven’t seen one in a good while.

I still think about them whenever I work a farmer’s market. I was really just there for some setup today– we’d done a different kind of flower arrangement and BIL wanted me or Sister to set them up so we’d get our, y’know, vision executed or whatever, so I came down at the beginning and got them all nice and then minded the booth while he went around politicking.

And farmer’s markets are just so not-like they are in farmer’s market a/us, I always get a good giggle. I mean, sure, the vendors tend to be friendly, if we sell out of something we’re happy to send people along to whoever else sells the same thing, and so on. The market’s a competitive one, a long waitlist to get allowed in– it’s also producer-only, so if your hens only lay 100 dozen a week and you could sell 200, you absolutely can’t buy another 100 dozen from somebody else to sell. Nope. Not even if you’re honest and leave their label on it– nope! Gotta be yours. You can only sell your own stuff. So there’s some minor drama occasionally– the one lady who sells the [redacted] and flowers, she got in for the [redacted], and the flowers she kinda snuck in on a technicality, and maybe she grows some of them but we’re pretty sure she’s buying in a lot of her stuff but nobody will listen if we complain because they’d assume we’re just jealous because we sell flowers too, etc.

But it’s a small community, and the other flower seller who we like worked out with us that she sells different stuff so we made sure we weren’t undercutting her and we discussed like slightly different angles to work so our products weren’t directly in competition, and freely refer customers who want not quite what we have to her and vice versa. (And then a [redacted] vendor petitioned to be allowed to sell flowers too, and then super-clearly copied our bouquets, growing exactly the same varieties and packaging them the same way at first, and even copying the brief time when we were doing little posies in glass jars and selling them as “fairy bouquets” for the back-to-school college kids, that was super not classy. [also not classy was telling another vendor that the other flower lady was “super old” and would die soon so they weren’t worried about competing with her. like. WHAT. she’s like 60.] We also weren’t amused because that same guy later was at an event speaking about land conservation and went on and on about his hard work and how great he is and then as the talk progressed it came out that his extremely-rich father had just– given him a chunk of land in the middle of a nature preserve and that was how he’d gotten into farming and why he didn’t have a mortgage to worry about. So: not our favorite fellow vendors. Also he went off on my mom about vaccines once and Mom was like a) I don’t know you and b) my grandma almost died of polio so c) buddy you best keep your white-guy dreads to yourself.)

But today BIL was quietly circulating around letting select other vendors know that the board, upon which he serves, has made a selection for a winter location, since the long-time landlord pitched a shitfit and wouldn’t let them into their usual space at the end of October, so that’s been up in the air and has been resolved.

Oh, and the woman who lost her arm in a hay-baler in July has managed to keep her farm so far, but urgently needs to sell some of her livestock, so BIL was running around putting bugs in various other farmers’ ears about that.

Excitingly, one of the fruit vendors had blueberries, which is a marvel this late in the season, so we stocked up. I bought spaetzle as well, and some goat cheese.

But I made my escape around 10, as I was really just there for setup and to give BIL more time for schmoozing. Someday I’ll be in a fandom I can write a farmer’s market AU for properly.

Comments

[unicornduke]

Dreadlock buddy has also screwed over the farmers out Johnstown way by dumping excess tomatoes on the (small) market and co op out there without warning. Coworker (who lives and farms there and is on the board of the co op) is coordinating with other farmers not to dump too much produce into the co op and market wass NOT PLEASED

[dragonlady7]

oh fuck that guy