Farmer's Market

I believe it was last Friday (maybe?) that I had an epiphany:

But before I share the epiphany, some background leading up to it...

We have an abundance of eggs. Like, abundance with a capital A Abundance.  Even with an extra mini fridge and several families as regular customers (THANK YOU!!!), we have gobs and gobs of extra eggs.  It all started when I wasn't getting enough eggs to keep up with "my regulars".  So I hatched out extra chicks to make up the difference.  Then, upon realization that our egg production went down when we stopped feeding the chickens hog feed with the added protein in it, we added the protein back to our chicken-only feed by using ground alfalfa and VOILA! we have our egg supply back up.  But remember I hatched out extra chicks?  Um, yeah.... When those extra chicks became hens and those hens were eating rich (protein-wise as well as with the cost of corn - ouch!!) started laying, we were getting up to four dozen eggs a day!  Even with the eggs we eat and what I use for baking AND selling to my regulars, we had an Abundance with a capital A! What's a lady to do?

And now, the epiphany: sell them at the Farmer's Market!  So, I made a Facebook inquiry about finding out info for the Farmer's Market that led me to calling the Chamber of Commerce (thanks Holly!) that led me to calling another number to talk to some Lyle fella that led me to finding out that Lyle was out of the office for a while but this nice young lady could tell me everything I needed to know!  One thing led to another and before I knew it, Tuesday afternoon came and I was loading up our car during the middle of a freak pop-up downpour (the only teeny-tiniest little rain cell in the entire state!) with between twenty and twenty five dozen eggs (I lost count when I had to rearrange the cooler)! 

I think we had great success!  We sat two dozen out for display, so I didn't sell those.  There's nothing wrong with them and we'll use them at home, but I didn't want any questions about them being out in the sun and all.  And one dozen ended up with a cracked egg, so I didn't sell it.  Besides that, there was only one dozen that didn't sell.  I was very pleased!

Since Josh was doing jobs that Caleb couldn't be a part of, I had both kids with me.  I think they enjoyed it overall.  It was a little warm and I forget to pack water, so that didn't sit well with them.  And Caleb had a summer cold, so he was already grumpy from that.  But all and all, they did terrific.  They eventually were put in charge of the money (with LOTS of help, obviously) and thoroughly enjoyed that responsibility.  And towards the end, they had even "earned" enough money to walk down the row of vendors to get buy us some fresh strawberries for a snack. 

We also had the chance to barter for some produce.  As the end of the market was drawing near, one of the vendors came over with money to buy eggs.  I asked him if he'd be willing to trade zuchinni and squash for eggs and, after a little hesitance, he agreed!  YES!!!!  He was very generous and sent me home with enough produce to last us for several meals!  And then the lady on the other side of us wanted to barter Caleb eggs for a cherry pie. (He was in bibs and a John Deere hat... so it was very clear he was a cherry pie lover!)  Double YES!!!  So we came home with a grocery sack of different squashes and a cherry pie!  Success times two!

I also had the opportunity to bless a family and an individual that were in need with, ahem, "samples" shall we say?  That was really nice, too.  It's not all about money, you know!  And the look in their faces showed their deep appreciation.

Now that I have more notice, I hope to start selling some baked goods, too!  And I have a business venture for the kids brewing in my mind.  Hopefully I'll have a little extra from what's left of my poor half washed away garden after preserving that I can sell some of that, too.  Within a couple of weeks, I hope to transition from my little card table to a folding table.  I'm pretty excited about this new venture!

Given the short notice, we had a super simple setup: a couple of signs on printer paper and a card table.  But that's all it takes!

And look at all the deliciouness I brought home after bartering!  I figured up I had $15 worth of produce (at their prices) for $6.00 worth of eggs.  I was a happy camper!  All those episodes of American Pickers I watched with  Josh finally paid off :-)

(P.S.  Technical difficulties won't let me spell check this post and since I'm super picky about people and their spelling/grammatical errors in written peices, please just ignore all the mistakes and pretend with me that this peice is in its spell checked perfection!  Thanks.)