Teresa,
In this area, graduations and gardening chores are consuming nice weather weekends - which have been too few!
We went to a normally very crowded restaurant for dinner last night - got there early to put our name on the list before the other couple arrived & got the table immediately. We tried to say no - we'll take the next available table, but the hostess said getting a table was not a problem last night. We thought it odd to see empty tables and no long line.
Your market day traffic will pick back up.

Teresa,your sales may have been down, but your attitude is definitely NOT! No one should have to compete with a church bake sale and you are probably right about the members doing most of the buying. After all they did the investing, not the church.

Next week wil be better. It will be interesting to see if Father's Day affects sales.

jude

Hmm, I wonder why one weekend is slower than another except for when the weather is bad. I went to dinner with friends last night at a popular restaurant in Haverford and it was two-thirds empty on a Saturday night. Go figure. Maybe lots of people are at weddings, graduations, etc.

Hope you sell out next time. You would if I could get there.

Sorry about the Church bake sale, Teresa. Hard to compete against something like that. The dulcimer sounds fun though!

There's been a lot of talk in the news recently, especially CNBC, about a double dip & that the economy seems to be showing signs of contraction again. That may be what you're seeing in local restaurants? Not sure, just saying.

/tricia

I'm sorry your day was slow but it happens. Did you trade any of your baked goods for other foods? How will you use the excess?

I'll be crossing my fingers and hoping for good sales and good weather for you next week, and seconding Pam's thoughts - I would definitely have helped you sell out if I was there.

Lee

Yes, I've always tried to keep my head about me when it comes to selling out at the market...or not. If I were to see a major trend week after week, then I would reconsider doing this. But so far that hasn't happened yet. Yesterday one of my first good customers came back, bought a loaf, and talked some "lookers" into buying a loaf with her comments.
That was nice.

Speaking of the dulcimer, I've been researching them online all morning and might be making a trip to the mountains to a shop that carries different makes. Even on the web, I can hear that some have different tones from others. I've always had music in my life until recent years....played the flute from age 9 to adulthood and sang in church, high school and college choirs, and took piano and guitar lessons - but my hands were too small for the guitar that I borrowed. Now with my asthma I don't have the breath for the flute or for singing, but I do miss having music in my life, so maybe there is a hammer dulcimer in my future? I really love the way they sound, some call it magical.

Teresa

My farmers market day and the other vendor's sales were the same. Lots of people, but no one buying anything much over $2. I sell cookies at 50c each and they usually buy 3 or 4, a half dozen, or more. Yesterday - ONE cookie per customer, and no more.

I discounted my jams and jellies at $1 off to celebrate my birthday for the month of June and people bought the little $2.25 jars of 4 ounces and didn't even look at the bargain 9 ounce jars at $5. I thought I'd phase out those little jars (to me - a sample taste size - it's only a half cup for Pete's sake - two pieces of bread size - and well, maybe!) but I'm rethinking that now. Perhaps people are thinking cheap, not value.

My dad sold stuff at a flea market in California years and years ago. He told me that if he had stuff for $1 he'd sell a hundred. If he had stuff for $5 he sold just a few. It wasn't value - it was price. Are we back to that?

Teresa - I started playing the mountain dulcimer when I married my DH 10 years ago. He handcrafted it; he's a guitar player and custom woodworker; so he built it "because", but never intended to use it. I never could sing; failed at playing folk music on guitar because my hands had surgery eons ago; and the only other thing I could play was the radio. LOL The hammered dulcimer takes more coordination than does the mountain, which I sorely lack, but may just be your vehicle. If you need to make music - I'm behind you 10000%. Anyone with a music need should try every instrument. You'll never know, as my totally music un-gifted son said, "that a harmonica can set you free".

Nancy

Teresa, it was slow here in the stores and restaurants too, everyone was at the beach, I think. I saw scores of people on bicycles, out in boats, on motorcycles, riding horses. The weather was cold here for longer than usual, and so now everyone is really loving the warm weather we should have gotten 3 weeks or a month ago. The floods have receded for the most part, so people are back on the rivers and lakes. No one is shopping...

I think business will pick back up. (I've got my fingers crossed)

As for the dulcimer, I say go for it. I'm completely tone deaf and now that everything has gone high tech, I'm not even competent to play the radio any more. Elery tried to teach me about "Pandora" and how to download music to the computer but it's just way too much trouble, I'd rather not listen to music at all than mess with that, so my house is silent since I cancelled my television service. Heck, I've even turned off the computer speakers, the noise is just bothersome to me, all those pings and squeaks and chimes...

Anyway, I really enjoy the sound of the dulcimer, it's peaceful, if that makes sense.

Annie

Darn! Hey, I know where all the people were this weekend...they were at Disney. We had two Mustangs teams playing at Disney Wide World of Sports and the whole area (hotels, restaurants, shops, roads) were packed! I was sick so at 1:30am, I got dressed and went in search of a 24-hour Walgreens only to encounter traffic. Yeah, I know Disney is always full but school isn't out yet and it was on overload.

Dulcimer...that would be one more talent added to your long list!