Ideas For Your Farmers Market Booth Or Vegetable Stand

Broccoli, onions, beans, oh my! And lettuce and tomatoes, squash and cucumbers, peppers, herbs, cabbage and potatoes. Out of the ground also came garlic and turnips, carrots and celery and ... well, let's just say I made good use of my Victory Garden Cookbook.

Matter of fact, I think I saw a neighbor duck inside and pull the curtains when she saw me coming with an another arm-full of zucchini.

So, after the neighbors starting politely declining our free produce, we took to the street. We figured, well, if people just take it, that's fine. But we posted some prices per piece or per pound, bought an inexpensive scale and set that out along with saved grocery bags and baggies, and placed a shoe box on the table with several dollars of "seed money" inside for making change. Then we went about our business of tending to the farm and running errands.

The evening of our first day as bonafide market gardeners, as we were heading back to the house, I noticed that the table was looking a bit ... sparce? I hurried over and, to my delight, found the shoebox full of green! There was even a note from a lovely gentleman, with his name and phone number, saying he'd be back tomorrow with the other $2 he owed!

The following spring, as our garden once more looked on the verge of exploding with organic produce, we paid ... well, I believe it was maybe $30 ... for a spot at the local farmer's market in Kent, Connecticut. (Small town, cheap booth space.) And when the lettuce, spinach and other early veggies began making their appearances, we grabbed our old card table, miscellaneous baskets and plastic bins, some plastic baggies and an old dry-erase board we had lying around, and off to market we went.

Our table was pathetic. As other growers set up their booths, we looked from their displays to ours and back again, and felt like kids with a lettuce stand. So, as buyers began to trickle in, we outdid ourselves with niceness and, despite, our sad little table, we sold every last head and leaf. We had enough money to go celebrate with pizza, then buy a few things to help spruce up our table for the following week.

First things first, though, before any decorating or other display ideas, I say that working the booth is number one. By that I mean both interacting with shoppers and continually keeping your display neat, clean and looking nice, even if it's very basic.

As people buy and produce goes home with them, fill in the gaps on your table, either with extra stock or simply by rearranging what's left, and, if need be, offer some late discounts to last-minute customers. Unless, of course, you want to go home with all the leftovers (which we'd usually preserve or share with the pigs).

Fun, friendly conversation with customers really made all the difference for us, even more so than anything we did to our display.

Just by laying around, being themselves, vegetables and fruits are pretty to look at, so making colorful displays certainly isn't hard. But be mindful of presentation when setting up your farmers market table.

That is, you might not want to group everything green together but, rather, separate greens with oranges (like tomatoes) and reds (such as strawberries and red peppers). Bunched radishes are great for adding a splash of color variety here and there, and mix up the various shapes, sizes and colors of squash and pumpkin.

I say, treat your table like an artist's canvas and paint the most eye-catching picture you can with your produce.

Baskets sure look better than cardboard boxes and plastic bins for displaying produce; although, we used the latter two on our table, along with stock pots and buckets, when we first started selling at the farmers market.

As weeks went by, however, I collected dozens of fun baskets, some for just a dollar or less at garage sales and flea markets and some for free, from neighbors and friends who had unused baskets lying around in garages, barns and closets, that they were happy to donate or at least loan to the cause.

I'd often line my smaller baskets with cloth napkins to absorb moisture and for an extra added touch of country. Rustic wooden boxes and crates also make attractive containers, particularly for large quantities of an item, such as green beans and baking potatoes.

We not only combined flowers, like marigolds and nasturtiums, with our vegetables for companion planting as a means of organic pest control, but we also grew flowers to decorate and sell at the farmers market. Sunflowers, which come in a variety of sizes and colors, were not only easy to grow once they got started, but were a big hit at the market.

We grouped flower arrangements in various places throughout our display and often that was the first thing shoppers commented on when they approached the table. Of course, those arrangements were also for sale, as were vases full of flowers that could be bought as singles, and we rarely had any left at the end of the day.

Just about any table or makeshift stands will do for the farmers market, but covering them with pretty, countrified cloths makes your display look more uniform and attractive.

In our early days at the farmers market, we used a combination of old card tables and plywood on top of stacked cinderblocks to create our stand. And, in our first week, we actually used some old but clean sheets-turned-table cloths to cover them up. In fact, they didn't look bad at all. Eventually, though, we spent some of our earnings on good ol' red-checkered cloths, not to mention better tables.

Table cloths, if long enough in the front at least, also help to hide extra stock and supplies stored under your table.

This was a big selling point for us, particularly when it came to garlic, onions and spicy peppers. In addition to selling singles, to be purchased by the piece or the pound (or part of a pound), we made braids of onions and garlic and "ristras" from the peppers.

We'd create varied lengths and quantities, to give the customers more choice (especially the early birds) and even sometimes mixed the varieties, combining yellow, white and purple onions, for example, in one braid.

We also made some wreaths out of these vegetables. Though that took more time and effort and the results were priced higher than the braid and ristras, we always sold out.

The nice thing about these "crafted" vegetables was, if we didn't sell them all one week (which we usually did), they'd be fine to sell the next. After all, dried ristras are often used simply as decoration. They also added some pop to our display, though we had to improvise ways to hang them.

Photo credit: EricM on Wikimedia Commons

Want to learn how to make a chile pepper ristra? Here are two good how-tos:

USING CHILE: Making Ristras, Making Chile Sauce

How To Make A Chili Pepper Ristra

Learn how to make a garlic braid at:

Bloomingfields Farm: How To Braid Garlic

This was a fun way to sell brussel sprouts, not to mention a perfect way to store them in a root cellar--right on the stalk. We even added these stalks of sprouts to flower arrangements on our farmers market table, and promoted them as interesting candidates for late summer, early fall centerpieces for customers' country-style dinner parties.

In fact, these on-the-stalk displays were so popular, some people who bought them said they didn't even like brussel sprouts; they just liked the look of the stalks and hadn't ever seen how they grew.

Kohlrabi was another vegetable we sold on the stalk, as well as some tomatoes on the vine.

In addition to selling produce "as is," you might want to try doing a little chopping and mixing, which will also add some dollars to your farmers market earnings.

For example, we had great luck with baggies full of chopped cabbage, carrots and onion a la coleslaw mix. Chopped stir fry veggies and soup mixes were also a hit. Mixed dry beans were another value-added homegrown product that sold extremely well.

With all of these pre-chopped and mixed items, we included a handwritten recipe card, stapled right onto each baggie.

As with the value-added produce, we also offered free recipe cards for all of our less common (or less popular) fruits and vegetables, including things like rhubarb, kohlrabi, kale and quince.

Oftentimes, shoppers would be perusing our display and ask, "What's this?" while holding up a vegetable or variety they'd never seen before, or one they'd seen in the grocery store but never had anyone around to ask what to do with it. So be prepared with cooking tips and recipe suggestions for all of your produce.

Those questions about uncommon fruits and vegetables nearly always turned into fun conversations, complete with those free recipe cards. More often than not, the customer went home with something new to try. And, many times, those same customers would return the following week to buy even more.

• Sauces
  
• Salsas
  
• Soups
  
• Stirfries
  
• Smoothies
  
• Salads

• Pies
  
• Stews (oops, there's another "S")
  
• Chilis

Need help with some farmer's market recipe ideas? Check out the Pacific Coast Farmers' Market Association's recipe page along with links of recipes by fresh ingredient.

Photo credit: Jane Fresco on Wikimedia Commons

We saw other sellers doing this and soon followed suit, and our sales increased even more.

One of our first freebies was a little refreshment--a cup (or two or three) of what we called "rhubarb ade" to anyone wanting a taste. It was my husband's concoction: pureed rhubarb pressed through a cheese cloth, with water and sugar added to taste. We'd set out our pink drink in a large punch bowl, with ice and a ladel and a stack of small paper cups for shoppers to help themselves.

Throughout the rest of the summer, we offered a different sample each week, including slices of zucchini and pumpkin bread, roasted garlic, sliced tomatoes with basil, homemade coleslaw, and grilled and seasoned mixed vegetables. The ideas are nearly endless.

We did find, though, that the most convenient samples were those that could be eaten with the fingers or on toothpicks, cutting down the cost for small, plastic utensils, not to mention the waste.

Offering free samples is a great way to draw shoppers to your table and show off how tasty your homegrown fruits and veggies really are.

Photo credit: Salim Fadhley on Wikimedia Commons

Consider offering online pre-sales for customers with just a little time on their lunch hours or who can only swing by at the end of the day.

Here's an interesting article from Small Farm Central.