Nothing NEW, but from the last couple of years experience at a small-town market, 30+ vendors, that gets a customer mix of local farmers/ex-farmers, "townies" and cottagers from the city, here are some of basic twists that have worked well for me: * fresh carrots w/ tops right through the season: not baby but picked quite young 5"-6". These go at way higher prices for a 1lb bunch, competing with quarter-bushel baskets of regular big mature topped carrots all around me, and they sell out. * fresh basil: sells well at a good price, and is great for the smell, which everyone notices walking by * heirloom tomatoes: Ours is not a trendy high-end market, there's a good mix of people as noted above, and heirlooms (as in big, "oddly" colored and shaped, sometimes "ugly", always tasty) still attract attention, and definitely get repeat customers from taste (and I guess the novelty helps). A basic like Brandywine is fine, and I had a several varieties last year with different looks and tastes (Green Zebra was a distinctive favorite), which helped even more. Curious people try one or two and keep coming back for more(!), and they were going for $1.50-2.00 a pop (12-16oz) - I just made up the price, since no one else had 'em at the market. *snap peas (edible pod): I was amazed by how many people didn't know these even existed! I'd go, "You can eat the pod" and hand 'em one and they'd automatically start shelling it. "No, you can eat the whole thing!" Wow! Child-like amazement :) They're also great to maximize the pea growing and picking effort because you can use 'em young as a snow pea, or mature, which gives more overall useful harvest time. You can maybe premium price 'em, but they're also good just for the word-of-mouth. *mesclun: I'm not sure what my various customers each think they're buying, the idea of mesclun has kinda trickled down to a real mainstream thing from a trendy idea. I sell a couple of mixes, one that's only lettuce (around nine lettuces), which I'll explain to anyone who wants to know, and of the various regular customers who buy a bag (1lb) a week, I don't think any of them really cared about the exact ingredients, they just like colorful, baby leaf salad mix, for their own individual reasons. At $5 a bag, a heavy seller. *spinach: This is probably more specific to our market, where there are several quite big local family farm growers that all concentrate on the basic carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, etc, (easier handling/storage), but not on the fresh greens. So this depends a lot on the other vendors, but here, mounds of spinach is a good thing to have (and other greens, like lettuces, chard, etc, are quick and easy and add to the selection). *radish that's out of the typical early season is quick and easy to grow, and attracts a surprising number of people when no-one else has 'em. *miscellaneous specialty stuff: I plant small quantities of tons of things and bring some in. They're all good for novelty and attracting attention, but (for me in this specific situation...), none most alone don't do much for the bottom line. Stuff like: Eight Ball zucchini (lots of comments), Lemon cukes (comments and some regulars), white icicle type radish, rainbow chard (like, Bright Lights), purple snap beans (comments, but people mainly like the green and the yellow...), and so on, I even sold a few daikon radishes... All fun to grow and present but no magic. Half the fun seems to be trying new things without getting buried in a lot of odd and unusual ;) stuff... The general strategy of growing out of season really does work. This is practical if you're small. Having the earliest stuff is great, and just having it when no-one else does to me is just as much of an advantage. Superfreshness is also great, and probably most easily done when you're small. I mean, extreme freshness: stuff cut/picked the afternoon/evening before, salad greens the morning of... People really notice that: "hey, I forgot your mesclun in the fridge for TEN DAYS and it was still fine..." Also, if you grow natural, even if not certified organic, all kinds of people you mightn't expect to respond to that... Hope that's useful stuff in their! (I've got lots to learn, but passing on the little I have noticed already is always FUN!!)

I would consider myself a bit of a book whore. I have quite a collection of books dealing with various aspects of farming/gardening. 'Organic Farming' by Peter V. Fossel is pretty informative and contains information about market gardening, flower farming, csa and more. Very light read 158p. 'Successful Small Scale farming' by Karl Schwenke is pretty good. Also a light read at 134 p. 'Making Your Small Farm Profitable' by Ron Macher is an excellent book imo. I would recommend it to anyone wishing to start a farm/market garden. Very informative 273p. Though not about market gardening, 'The Rodale Book of Composting' is a must have for any serious gardener/farmer and discusses various composting methods and ingredients. 278p.. I just started reading 'You Can Farm' by Joel Salatin. So far it has been an enjoyable read. It deals more with livestock and farm management than vegetable gardening but is good nonetheless. 480p.

Ohiorganic You are exactly right. Sept, Oct, and Nov are great months for selling at market. It is, after all, all about planning. We do two markets. One in an urban area that in the past peaked Labor Day weekend. It went fairly strong until it closed the weekend before Thanksgiving this season. The demand for cutflowers was there until the end. The other market we do is along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. This market has a shorter season for us with vacationers, or people who have cottages in the area. This market finishes up the last Saturday in October. We usually end there a couple weeks after Labor Day. The locals don't support the market as well. The market is highly advertised; and, we have no complaints. It's in a beautiful setting as well. We enjoy meeting people vacationing from all the other states. And, we really LOVE people from Illinois. Anyway, I wish you much luck Heidi. Just remember: if you think you have made a mistake by growing perhaps the wrong flower, etc., it isn't really a mistake at all. It's call a learning experience. We always hope not to have all the learning experiences in one growing season though!! We love what we are doing. It's a passion with us.

I did have a chance to look over those links and discovered there are a couple of Farmer's Markets in neighboring communities that I didn't know were there. Neat. Plus the Farmfresh.org that fbot posted, allows you to do searches for organic farms. DtD...your link actually linked me to FarmFresh.org, when I typed in any communities close to me. I also was able to make a good list of farmer's markets that would be located in areas we might visit over the summer on the weekends. As far as CSAs go....we did try that two years ago and it just didn't work for us. We didn't enjoy having to go out of our way and pick up every week in addition to food shopping and do it on their schedule too. Plus there would be too many weeks of lots of veggies that we don't eat much of and only a few weeks of produce that we really like. We ended up throwing out a lot of food. The freshness was not always great on the greens, which surprised us. I guess it's not for everyone. I do like the concept. Claire thanks for that article link on the Plymouth Farmer's Market. Nice to see who would be offering produce there and it is also a summer time destination. Happy with the list of potential places to visit I have now! I will come back and report on what the different markets are like when we get to some of them. :-) pm2