First 'Official' market

Hello kind folks! To my great surprise, and dismay, I am the first student on blog duty - I drew the short straw to quote Mike. Don't fret about me though, as I am now at peace with this outcome, and I am pleased that I am able to tackle this task right away. I feel that it is my duty to welcome all you back, those that have arrived, and those still yet to arrive (like the souls lost in the alternate universe that is the CPMA). So, welcome back, and hope you made the most out your short semester break!

It is spring now, or at least it should be. I do not know about you, but to me, it doesn't really feel like spring much at all. I would like to declare this season.... a fake spring! I will defend my assertion by enumerating the following: I went to a the farmer's market this past weekend, and not a single strawberry could be found, and additionally, all the salmonberries out there (in the less 'wild' nature) are still in the green berry stage. Salmonberries (Rubus spectabilis) are one of first fruits to ripen on the pacific west coast often beating out even the cultivated everbearing strawberries, and without them it just ai'nt spring - in my humble opinion. Every farmer or gardener that I have talked to seems to agree that we are about a month behind due to the unusually long period of cold back in winter, and excess of rain which has continued into this month.

At the terrace, we are finally seeing the cover crops reach the flowering stage (which means they are ready be tilled), and we now have a beautiful and abundant array spring greens such as lettuces, arugula, kale, and radishes. In fact, upon arriving for class, we jumped right in to the harvest for the Richmond Campus market as you will see in the following pictures. For efficieny, we roughly divided our labour into a harvesting group (Will, Nick, Piper, Jessica and myself (Stark) and a wash/prep station group (Hazel, Eric and Torren). However, these roles were not fixed and we adapted our tasks as the need arose, for example, while I intially started harvesting, I ended up being the porter - bringing back bins full of produce, and carrying down new bins filled with water.

Will harvesting French Breakfast radishes

Piper harvesting loose-leaf Salad Bowl lettuce.

Nick harvesting Cardinal head lettuce.

Jessica harvesting Arugula leavea and floweres.

Hazel and Eric preparing the bins for harvest.

Our wash and prep station featuring: Will, Eric and Hazel (left to right).

Setting up our price board,

As the harvest came to an end, some of us focused our efforts on the market set-up and others went to the storage area to sow more lettuce seed. It was an interesting challenge trying to figure out the best way to set up the market tent. Really, it's a bit of a guessing game as this was the first time in this location in the front of the campus (if you recall, the market was in the outside parking lot last year) and it can be hard to predict how people are going to move around space. Other considerations, besides human movement, were making sure the produce was visible enough to attract attention but also to keep produce out of the sun to maintain the quality for a longer time. We also took some cues from supermarket setups, e.g. by putting radishes up front by the cash box to increase the chance of  a spontaneous purchase; think of the candy and magazine selections that one stares at while waiting in line at a grocery store.

Discussing market set-up (Piper and Torren).

Our tent set-up.

In the picture to the left, you can get a rough idea of how we were set up. We had two main tables of produce forming an L that opened up towards Lansdowne road and to the east (towards garden city lands), and we had a third smaller table making the L-shape a Z, where our cash box was placed. As we ran the market, we quickly learned the pros and cons of this layout. It was good because all the produce was in the shade, and the radish 'candy' sold out completely, but we had a lot people come from the wrong side of the tent (picture on the left). This issue trumped the fact that we had taken great pains to angle all the bins to the inside of the tent in order to make everything look more visible and abundant. The behavior of the customers was probably influenced in part by the fact that the KSA had tents on the upper level, and there was also voting taking place inside. Next market, we will probably be in a different spot, so we will have figure it out somewhat from scratch.

Hazel stringing up the peas

Finally, we had other tasks such as staking and stringing peas, and weeding. As you see from the picture below, the former task got done, however the latter not so. I think I may have seen Mike hoeing a bit but the weeds are growing everywhere, so it is unlikely that he did much damage. We will have to try and tackle them next Tuesday, and hopefully we can get on top of them. At some point in season on every farm, the weeds and the crops just take off beyond our capacity to manage, but were not there yet! Well, that is all I have to say about that day, so I will see you in class. Happy farming agsters!