Selling at the Local Farmers’ Market

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As we near the last couple weeks of the internship there are still many new lessons to learn as well as the everyday tasks that we have already established. We started off with moving a hand line irrigation pipe. We got to it later in the day so the pipes were hot, requiring more attention from us in order to not burn ourselves. We are currently working our way through a lease pasture with the hand line. Once that was done we moved onto finishing picking up the fence from the previous section in order to re-use it.

Moving through the rest of the week, we are finishing up big summer projects. The water line was installed so now there is water at the shelters instead of constantly hauling water. The sheep are on a new lease plot; we check on them everyday and move the electric fence in order to allow proper grazing. A new pig pen was established along the outside of the perimeter fence in order to mow it down and allow new ground for them. As well as all the baby chicks are grown up and were moved outside into a coop and are allowed to free range. We also got some cool down time in and played with the pups.

This was the first week of BJ’s business being at the farmers’ market. If you have never been, a farmers’ market is normally hosted downtown in whatever town you may be in. Local business and produce are what fill most of the tents, while there are also food vendors and sometimes local breweries. They take place about once a week depending on the area and sometimes new vendors pop in and out. It is a good place to support local and small businesses near you.

In order to prepare for the booth we made sure to have pamphlets ready, as well as sorting through the products offered and deciding on what needed to be taken. A big part of drawing people in is how you display items. Do not overwhelm them but make sure you have eye catching things or some incentive to enter the booth. Then you work on building a relationship with that customer and offering them what you have for sale. It is a big deal to be personable with people otherwise your business or name will get a bad reputation.

At the market we tried to advertise for all of the things that are available online. We also brought some of the products offered online in order to make some sales at the market. There was fresh cows milk, meat products, eggs, and frozen meat products as well. All of these products are locally sourced and ethically raised. There were also some skulls and lamb hides that were available for purchase. The skulls seemed to be a popular item as by the end of the night all but one had been sold. It was also a good chance to explain the brand and refer people to the website in order to make future sales.

BJ was able to make good connections with local customers in order to attract future sales along with people who may have just been passing through town but were very interested in learning all about this operation and business. Some customers also had experience in certain things that gave us a way to learn more and learn about different methods to doing things. There was only one other local producer of milk there and they had goats milk. This gives us more opportunity in sales and customer drop in.

Submitted by: Savannah May
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team