Almost Without Exception

I now have many years worth of digital photos of the farm and farm related things.  This wealth of one particular resource has its blessings and it has its... non-blessings.  For example, if I am looking for some picture in particular for whatever reason, I am beginning to find that I am spending far more time than I should looking for it.

Yes, yes.  I know I should spend some time organizing the photos so I can find things quicker.  But, let me ask you this - have YOU organized all of those photos on your phone?  Or have you gone through all of the old photo albums you keep saying you want to look at and organize?  No?  Me too.

Yet there is value in searching.  Some of that value comes in the form of new learning.  Some in the form of relearning something that has been learned before.  And, sometimes, you come to a realization that things have changed or stayed the same - and those changes and non-changes are worth pondering.

The photo on the left is from the Fall of 2012 and it shows us setting up our table at the Saturday Waverly Farmers' Market - likely a September morning.  And, our tomatoes were coming in full force!

At that time we would tout that we grew anywhere from 20 to 40 different heirloom tomatoes each and every season.  And, because of our farm's soil and location, we typically had a stronger late harvest than early harvest (this changed as we added high tunnels).

We would feature our heirloom tomatoes prominently, offering chances for people to taste each type if they wanted.

On days like this, it would not be unusual to have fifteen to twenty different varieties on our table for people to choose from.  Each tray would hold an average of 20 (usually more) pounds of tomatoes and we would bring somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty trays.  That's 600 pounds of tomatoes for those of you keeping track at home.  

On top of that, we would often have a few boxes with "seconds" - tomatoes that were not top market quality, but still perfectly useful - that we would sell at bulk prices to people who wanted to can, make sauces, or whatever...

And, of course, we would have some other veggies as well to complement the tomatoes, like fall lettuce.  Sadly, our bacon and mayonnaise trees were usually not ripe at the same time - but that's how it is sometimes.

I will report that we often did pretty well on these days - at least in comparison to other market days.  But, we would usually still be going home with about half of the tomatoes, unless the food bank dropped by and would take a batch of the remaining tomatoes.  The problem there was that they were "allergic" to any tomato that was not red - so those stayed with us.  Their loss, I guess, but we also had more at home, so it wasn't exactly a big positive from our perspective.

 After markets like this, we would combine partially loaded trays with other partial trays and compress how things went back into the truck.  If you failed to do that, the tomatoes would roll around inside the trays and you might be a bit unhappy with their condition (and the condition of the inside of the truck) when you got back home.  This would take some time, so we were often the last to get packed up at the end of the market day.

And, without fail, there would always be someone who would pull up as we put the last thing into the truck and say something along the lines of...

"Oh shoot!  We missed the market and we were soooooo  looking forward to it.  I don't suppose you have any tomatoes (or some other veggie) that we could still buy?"

You would think that after this had happened many times before, we would politely decline.  But, we always said yes (as long as we had what they requested).

Then, one of us would climb into the truck (usually me) and pull things out - even if it was a huge pain to do - and we would show them what we had.

Almost without exception one of the following would happen:

1. The person would inspect, prod and mumble and finally select ONE tomato - and after a little more prodding, maybe select a second one, and pay.... with a big bill so we would then have to go find our change box again.
   
2. The person would ask us, after we had gone to the extra work to pull things out, if we would give them a discount.  After all, market was done and we should be grateful to make one more sale - even if it was at a quarter the asking price.
3. The person would sigh and say, "Are any of these 'Better Boys?'  They're not?  Well, I don't want any then."

Please don't take this wrong.  We are both people who like to be helpful.  We prefer to be kind.  If you are interested enough in stopping and asking for something specifically from us and we have it, we'd love to accommodate.  So, we found ourselves going through these motions even with the knowledge of how it was likely to turn out.

And sadly, we often found ourselves regretting that we had tried to accommodate.  And that's kind of sad.

But, I DID say "almost without exception."

There were a couple of cases where the person(s) who stopped us and benefited from our extra effort recognized what we were doing.

Once, the person did not buy much - because they did not need much.  But, they made it clear that they were so grateful to get some fresh produce and that they understood it had taken us extra effort to do so.  This individual was not physically able to help us re-load, but they wanted to do something to help if they could.  

The honest and heartfelt recognition of our extra efforts was enough.  And they were able to tell us at a different market that they had enjoyed tasty BLT sandwiches thanks to our product (even if we didn't have bacon and mayonnaise in our truck). 

The other time that I specifically recall honest recognition is when an individual said, with sincerity - but not much fanfare - "I know this is not correct change.  Please keep the extra to pay for your additional effort on my behalf.  Thank you."

And, on top of that, we saw BOTH individuals at the next farmers' market.  Rewarding our extra effort with continued patronage.

Today's challenge?  Be the exception.  Recognize the effort someone makes on your behalf.  Let them know you appreciate it and recognize the value.

Have a great day everyone!