I just used again, a very long shanked screwdriver I got at a Farmers Market.
I seldom go to them, except when a buddy wants to go, I will push his wheelchair around the grass and paths for him.
The last few years, it seems like everything shows up at them. I got the screwdriver from a table selling, more or less, yard sale stuff. It's like the gunshows that sell anything and everything.
I'm happy to have the screwdriver, but is that the way farmers markets are everywhere?

theback40--Due to recent lack of rain, most screwdriver crops have been dismal the past few years. You are lucky to have found one.

Are you talking about a farmers market or a flea market? Flea markets sell just about everything imaginable. They are alive and well in my area.

Nope Farmers Market, that used to sell produce, meat and so on. Now it seems like it's anything goes.

quote:

Originally posted by theback40:
Nope Farmers Market, that used to sell produce, meat and so on. Now it seems like it's anything goes.

Farmers have been the exception at markets I've gone to, more craftsy crap than anything else.

Grizz

quote:

Originally posted by theback40:
Nope Farmers Market, that used to sell produce, meat and so on. Now it seems like it's anything goes.

Same as gun shows. I complained once, was told that the t-shirts and tough-guy knives were financing the shows, or they'd fold...

Yes. Most 'farmers markets' are a jumble of crafters and a few actual farmers.

The one I did for many years was exactly like that. Most of the vegetable farmers sold the same crops too. Not a tremendous amount of variety nor bushel sizes for canners. I always thought that was odd.

Indeed! In the "olde days" when we had farmers markets, it was strictly produce, via the nom. That distinction has been bastardized into "anything goes". As Tom stated that the gun shows are overwhelmed with T-shirts + candles, etc; + that is excepable, but , Katy hold the door, if you see a gun booth at a SAMMI shoe.

Ann pegged it, that is just like the ones I've seen.
It reminded me, one time pre covid, the same buddy and I went to a gunshop. On the way back he wanted to stop at a farmers Market in a town he'd heard was a good one.
One stand had several baskets of new potatoes. As my friend got some, the stand owner complained, those were the first he'd sold all day.
My friend handed me one and told me to "do my trick". I held it out at arms length and squeezed it so it exploded. I told him, they were nice and fresh to blow like that. People were gathering, the stand owner tossed me a potato and ask me to do it again while he did a video. I did another for him. People started gathering to buy potatoes. When we left, there were folks all over, turning red trying to crush a potato while being filmed.
It was rather funny!

I guess I am more fortunate than others.

There are 2-3 small farmers markets in different small towns around where I live.

All of them are 70-80% meat and produce.

I am looking forward to them resuming in the spring. I just hope I can make my supply of apple butter last that long

I think a lot of the vegetable sellers at markets are really back yard farmers. They grow in small plots and in things like hoop houses or high tunnels on a few acres.

There is no real large scale row crop farmers at these markets like there used to be. Hence the lack of offerings in bushel size for canners. Most people have gotten away from putting up food by canning and other means yet even the city people used to do this. I think large properties primarily focus on corn and soy anymore. That's where the money is for them.

The meat sellers were real ranchers, obviously.

In the summer, in my area, there are people who will bring out crates of peaches, sweet corn and melons to sell grown from a different part of my state. I load up on the peaches and corn since I don't have peach trees that produce and can't till here so I buy the corn. I grow most of the rest of what I need in large containers (IBC totes).

Bulk vegetables and fruits are not easy to find anymore.

I have found a few real sellers at the markets.

I mean people to raise and sell their own produce and things they have made.

There are far more resellers people who buy others products and have them packaged with their own labels on, or produce, that they buy from others.

I know of a fellow his whole business is to buy bulk then repackage and relabel goods for others.

A SYSCO semi makes weekly deliveries to is business.

quote:

There are far more resellers people who buy others products and have them packaged with their own labels on, or produce, that they buy from others.

I know of a fellow his whole business is to buy bulk then repackage and relabel goods for others.

A SYSCO semi makes weekly deliveries to is business.

This was not allowed at the market I used to sell at.

In my neck of the woods, what you describe is what we call a flea market... 95% "stuff" and maybe 5% food.
The Farmers markets around here are the opposite.. 90% food and maybe 10% junk