I love this thread! Mostly because when we started selling at Farmers' Markets we couldn't find anything and felt like we searched everywhere for supplies, techniques, etc. We ended up starting our own little e-commerce site that caters to small-scale vendor selling at Farmers' Markets (link in my signature). A few techniques that worked best for us was: Cleanliness! We always have a clean table and tablecloth. Clear and professional signing! (I've seen people that just write onto a square of brown cardboard) Don't forget to label your products too! Not everyone can tell the difference between straight neck squash and crook neck squash... Keep your pricing simple! I have an article here about pricing. BE FRIENDLY!! (someone already mentioned it but it is worth mentioning again!!). Be proud of your farm, and your produce, and your wares ( or whatever it is your selling) and don't be shy about talking about it, how its grown/made, where you farm/shop is, etc. People are generally curious. And....if they are shipping at a Farmers Market they probably deep down want to break away from their own lives to start their own little farm... Hope this help and happy farming, Jeremy www.elwellsupplies.com A Farmers' Market Supply Store

I love growing different and unusual things. A lot of people know me for that. It seems that sometimes when you have different stuff it just takes a while for people to notice it sometimes. Like for example I had the most beautiful bunches of collards and Red Russian Kale all season long this year, but for the first half of the year no one seemed want to buy it. When I was looking back at my sales for the year I realized that for the first half of the year no one bought any and then all of a sudden it started selling for the second half. Once it started to sell they was not a week that I didn't sell any. It was kind of interesting, and should be even more interesting to see if people come back for it next year, and see how much I can sell then. You never know what will make people buy things. My peppers I can not sell by the quart for anything, but my eggplant sell best if I sell a few different kinds together in a quart. I don't understand it myself. I think samples can definitely help sometimes. We had a lot of people that were amazed by our mixed heirloom cherry tomatoes but just were not sure if they wanted to try them, and when we gave them a sample they bought right away, and usually ended up coming back for more. Maybe since it would be hard to sample zucchini you could give some of your good regular customers a free trial zucchini, if you think you will not be able to sell it anyhow it is better than having to throw it away. It is always nice to get something for free and if they like it chances are they would buy it again. Come to think of it, that would probably be a great thing to do for those customers that stick to the regular common things, and think that anything unusual is not worth trying. I could make up little sample bags of each kind of cherry tomato in my mix and give it to some of the people that just stick to the regular red ones. Maybe it would get them to branch out and try different things.

As far as collections, anything *over 24* is getting TOO much~just my 2 cents. I took a space in an antique mall almost a year ago, and from what we're(Austin)seeing, business is starting to re-bound. Everything i'm selling ARE my collections~IMO, if you can't put things out and enjoy them, there's no sense in keeping them in hope of 'appreciation'~what sells depends on the market for it, or a particular collector. I mainly collect things made in Europe, be it china, copper, lamps, clocks, art, etc. There are too many reproductions, here. I'm holding my own, making rent, but not making what i'm spending on new merchandise. Still, i'm not giving up cause I love what I do. As for silver~most of mine has been plate, but it's selling. I was ready to bring it home, but put several pieces in a basket, and they all sold. What I noticed was several small trays sold when I did a vignette using a tray on a dresser to hold a perfume bottle, compact, and a small vase. I *only* do vignettes in my space, not just things stacked in a pile that you have to sift thru. Everything is out in plain sight to make it easy for the shopper as well as the lookers, and it also looks prettier.I use some of my silver in my own kitchen:a few pieces of my cooking utensils I keep in a silver pitcher, I have a silver tray leaning againg the backsplash, i've used a small oval silver tray to hold a crystal sugar bowl/creamer, silver salt/pepper shakers, and a crystal tooth-pic holder~this if for everyday use, and I keep it in a corner near my cooktop. On the other side of the cooktop is the tray, pitcher, and also a small silver-handled dish that holds paper napkins. I *love* using these lovelies everyday, and have given 'sets' of different things to my 3 daughters who seem to enjoy these old things for everyday use also. I'm holding my own, making rent, but not making what i'm spending on new merchandise. Still, i'm not giving up cause I love what I do.

Rococogurl, You know, you're right about the lights. That is one thing that we really do need to sort out in more than one room in the house. In this room, we have two uplight floor lamps: one has a GE Reveal and puts out a nice light but is quite low wattage, and the other is a halogen which puts out a good amount of light (enough to read with) but I don't really care for the spectrum. The incandescent can't take a higher wattage bulb and it has a really spot-light sort of uplight - old cheap lamps that really do need to be improved. HOWEVER, that was one of the reasons I really wanted to see the room in the natural light - to see if it is the bad light from our poor grade lamps or if the color itself is unlivable with. Sadly, I took off for England on Thursday so I was away over the weekend which is when I usually get to check out the natural light in my house. Got back Monday night and the room was still mauve-pink ;-) That said, today really was a red letter day. This morning was C-O-L-D in Boston - 10degrees at 7:something in the AM so I figured I'd hang back a bit longer before heading in to work thinking that the sun may warm things up a bit more. Well, the happy side effect of that was that I got to see the room in much brighter natural light than I ever have before. Ready for this? It is not a pink room in good natural light! In fact, it is a beautiful color! Oh, it is a white, don't get me wrong. BUT, I see pale blue predominate, and through that I see green splotches, I see a pale brown or yellow or something splotch, and yes I see my mauve. BUT, I can handle bits of all these other colors because that is not the predominant color in the room. The splotches of color - well, okay, not really: I really should say: "splotches of hints of color" are really something else. Half the time it seemed like I've wandered into the hallway or a spare bedroom where there really are splotches of paint all over the place. It was most descidedly a euphoric morning, I have to say. No pink room, a beautiful white-blue room with loads of random effects around the place. It sounds psychadelic or an LSD-induced, but it is not because the room is really a white room. BUT there is this very pale rainbow that you can see throughout the walls of this basically white-blue walled room. I loved what I saw this AM. So, if I can recreate this sort of lighting with a good set of lamps, I'll be happy. That said, that was probably part of my issue with the C2-Icefog. It was an okay color during the day - nothing I particularly loved because I basically was looking for a pale nearly-white room - but it was quite awful at night, probably thanks to my lights. So, I don't feel badly about changing it out, but I can say that probably shouldn't malign C2 for creating Icefog nearly as much as I have in the past ;-). That said, this color search was quite a ride! However, what I have learned after sampling paints from virtually every "good"/FS/6-8-10-16colorant brand known to man is that DK has wonderful whites. I'll probably still go to these guys and of course the trusted Benjamin Moore for any future paint adventures and hope for much less drama. And of course FPE for "other" stuff (I am still enamoured of my British Racing Green front door.) So to summarize this long post: (1) Rococogurl, you're right. I need better lamps in there that I can put the Full Spectrum and Reveal bulbs into. (2) I saw the room in good light (well, till 8:10 this am) and it was finally a beaut! I can cancel that subscription to Betty Ford's or whoever cures you of mental illnesses.