Market Day - a Journal

MARKET DAY – Saturday, January 18, 2003
By David Schafer

5:10 am. I grab the alarm clock five minutes before it’s set to go off. Can’t stand that sound and glad that market days are the only days I ever set an alarm. Alice is already up and getting ready.

6:20 am. Showered, dressed, fed pets, watered Jenny (the donkey), loaded the last minute stuff in the truck, and, by the light of a big full moon not yet set in the west, we’re off, five minutes late.

6:45 am. We pass Bing’s in Altamont where we usually stop for hot chocolates and home-made bisquits and gravy for the road. Because of the cold (it was 8 at midnight but warmed up to 14 by the time we left home) we were a little slower starting and a little slower getting to the bigger roads. To make up the time we skip Bing’s but promise ourselves hot drinks and muffins at the market after we’re already set up.

7:55 am. Roll into the market in good time. Less than 10 venders present.

8:05 am. First customer, John Elliot, arrives while we’re in the last stages of set up. We chat and give him his wife’s box of soup-bones. He doesn’t stay long. It’s chilling cold and blowing light snow. Our set up is minimal today: One six-foot table, two styrofoam display boxes, the photo book and brochures. No sign, no books, no magazines with our pictures on the cover.

8:20 am. Alice goes to the office to pay for today’s stall ($10 during the winter, $21 the rest of the year) as well as our yearly commitment to a permanent stall ($225). The latter gives us stall #139 for every Saturday we want it. This is a new stall for us and will be a switch for customers who’ve come to stall #117 for six years, but we decided to go to the north side of the isle, face south and be in the shade. Plus it’s a little closer to an electric outlet where we can plug in the two freezers on the back of our pickup.

Even though we’ve paid for the whole year, we’ll probably go to the market less than a dozen times in 2003. But when we go, we want our customers to know right where to find us. Plus we want to be sure to have a stall available as those vendors who don’t pay the big money are at the mercy of “first come, first stalled” on the really busy days (when as many as 10,000 people go through the market) and might not get a spot at all.

8:25 am. Alice returns and I head to the coffee shop for double hot chocolates, apple cinammon cake and a banana-nut muffin. I love this market!

9:00 am. Half way through and only six of the seventeen customers on today’s list have shown up. We’re not worried; this is typical.

9:10 am. A small rash of five customers come all at once, two of whom know each other. With only a two-hour window at the market and up to twenty or thirty customers coming, this makes our booth one of the most active sites of commerce in the market, but also a social event with friendly chatter and a lot of first-name recognition. Both are a magnet for other customers. On days when there are other customers, that is. It’s so cold today, most folks are staying home. As we take care of the earliest orders, pulling the boxes or bags with their names on them out of the freezers and totaling the bills, everyone has a chance to see the extra items we brought today in the display boxes.

One box has lamb chops, whole leg, boned and rolled leg and cubes in it, the other, ground beef, ground lamb, a rack and lamb shanks. That’s all we have left. The pork is sold out (except for pork sausage which I forgot to bring) and the last of the chickens plus the last turkey are being picked up today. In the happy atmosphere while they wait on us, most folks pick out something new to try along with the cuts they’ve pre-ordered.

In this way we’ve started dozens of folks on lamb who had never even tried it before. Many of them now say it’s their favorite meat. Since lamb is the highest dollar per pound of any meats we sell, and the easiest to raise, we’re happy about that.

9:30 am. Anne and Leah hang around and chat with us. They are both psychic healers. Anne has authored two books and her husband David is a noted chiropractor in town; he’s referred dozens of patients to us. We have developed a social relationship with them.

It’s warming up a little and the sun is trying to break through the clouds. Anne and Leah are ready to go and we help put their boxes in the car parked next to us (one advantage of the winter months – ordinarily they’d have to park a block or two away and come get an entry pass from us to drive through the market).

9:45 am. Divin and the others on our list show up. Divin is interesting to me because he represents a shift in our typical customer. Up until very recently we’ve attracted wealthy, healthy types. Our meat is not cheap. We’re quite used to the bargain hunters poking, prodding, asking, “How much?” and almost running away after we reply – as if just being close is going to turn their pockets inside out. A great many of our customers are referrals. When people refer us to another they do the screening for us. They don’t pass us on to someone who won’t appreciate us. It is the ideal form of marketing – free and others do the work!

Divin is all smiles and, if he weren’t younger than me, I’d call him a good ole boy. He talks about his brother’s farm and moose skin boots (warm clothing being a popular topic today). He’s got a healthy Midwestern twang. As I often do if I haven’t found out yet, I ask Divin, “Now, where did you find out about us again?” “Oh. On the internet.”

This never happened before 2002, but we probably picked up half a dozen good customers who simply searched the internet, found us and showed up on a market day! This can be traced to all the recent publicity about grass-fed benefits. As Jo Robinson said a couple years ago, “Don’t pay for advertising; it will come to you.” Since that time, we’ve been called by – and featured in – Health magazine and Mother Earth News! (Oprah, we’re waiting….)

10:00 am. All in and all done. Everybody showed and we’re packing up. But there’s more on our schedule today. Kevin, the organic produce grower who is rapidly branching out, has signed a five-year lease on permanent store space here in the market and today we fulfill something we’ve spoken to him about for a long time. Today he starts carrying our meats and making them available to market-goers daily. (The KC River Market has stalls for 300 venders under three long roofs. Ringed around this traditional market area that sees activity on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday are permanent shops and restaurants open every day of the week.)

We pull our truck up to Kevin’s store and ask him what he wants. “I’ll take everything you have left. You know how chefs are – if it’s in stock they’ll take it.” Kevin has been supplying chefs for many years and hustles all over the city. We’re very happy to empty out our freezers entirely (always the goal). Besides the leftover ground beef and lamb are two orders from folks who told us they couldn’t make it today. We tell Kevin to take full price for them and we sell them to him at his discount. A nice way to start our relationship and we’re all very upbeat.

This isn’t our first store. It’s our seventh. We don’t actively seek stores, but we’re excited about what Kevin is starting. Of the other six, only two still carry us. And they only carry ground beef. Our other cuts usually sell out to regular customers and, frankly, we prefer the interaction with our market customers (and even our mail-order customers). Stores and restaurants are impersonal and not committed to growers. I know of one grower who was quickly pulled under when a huge restaurant account went belly up and left him holding 3000 chickens! Talk about all your eggs in one basket! What a disaster!

The best thing about having a store that carries our meat is that it’s exactly like third party certification. When we tell a new customer that they can also find our products in Wild Oats on Main or Fresh Air Fare in St. Joe, it’s as if a big stamp comes out of the sky and block-prints “APPROVED” all over us. Of course, we’d rather they do the research on us – look at our pictures, ask us questions, hear testimonials from other folks – but, like the auctioneers say, “It don’t matter where we start, it’s where we wind up that counts.”

11:15 am. We say our goodbyes and good lucks to Kevin, park the truck back in our spot and join our friends Ken and Andy who have driven to the market to join us for a brunch date. The food and atmosphere at the deli only two blocks away are pure inner city-hip and we enjoy the punk styles and “modern” food – a big change from Jamesport.

Our friendship with Ken dates back into the mid-90s when I first referred to him as my “customer from heaven.” Ken, a master chef, had cooked in some of the finest restaurants in the city, gone into catering and then into private manufacturing of gourmet pizzas. When he ordered with us he didn’t fool around: 2 whole lambs, 50 chickens, ½ beef and a whole hog. If only all our customers had their own walk-in freezer!

Like many of our market customers, we became friends with Ken and invited him up to the farm. Andy came into his life (Andrea) and the two of them helped us more than anyone in building our straw bale home – a two-year project. The four of us became great friends.

11: 40 am. Soup and sandwiches down the hatch and sharing Toblerone chocolates for desert. Ken and Andy ask if we’ll be Best Man and Maid of Honor at their wedding this fall! Of course, we say, shocked and honored. They excitedly discuss the wedding plans.

12:15 pm. We say good-byes to Andy and Ken and head for our last stop – Wild Oats.

12:25 pm. Deliver 30 lbs. of ground beef to our favorite store and do some shopping for fruits and vegetables. We’ve been in this store since 1995, saw it purchased by Wild Oats, and then watched Wild Oats become more and more “corporate.” The latest burden for small producers is UPC codes on all labels. Since Wild Oats represents a tiny fraction of our business we won’t incur the time and expense to do that if and when they force it upon us. Ah well, to everything there is a season.

12:40 pm. On our way home after a great market day. Alice does the traditional “counting of the loot.” I’m very keen that it be respectable if not impressive since I had already decided to make this day public in a journal. “$2020,” she announces. That’s respectable. We’ve done much better before, but that’s probably not far off an average market day.

I have quipped before that I make $1000 an hour selling meat and this is how. Of course, that’s just the selling of it. The preparation takes much more time...but that’s a story for another day.