The weather report said yesterday was going to be a nice “partly cloudy” day in the mid-70s. There was a 10% chance of rain¹.

The skies out our window, admittedly at about 5:30am when neither of us is at our best, were lovely. So, we got ready, but on shorts & t-shirts, hauled out our water bottles & food to be composted & we walked to the bus stop.

As we walked, the dark, dark clouds rolled in. The skies stopped being lovely. Drizzle started happening. We were not terribly thrilled with this turn of events.

We were pretty thrilled, though, that we caught our bus. That early on a Sunday morning, the buses only run about every 20 – 30 minutes, which means that we’re more often better off walking than waiting for a bus.… Continue reading →

Well, this is going to be a short one. Why? Because I wasn’t at the market this past week. I passed off the duties to my fabulous assistant/intern Krysti. She did a great job, with few calls or texts to me for clarification.

She had a few more vendors than expected, which resulted in a more dense market than usual. I hope that next year this will be our norm, but it’s going to take a lot of work to attract the vendors. I think we can do it.

The morning was pretty rainy, which is a good way to get a dead market. However, the rain cleared up around 11am (I believe – I’ll have to double check later), and the vendors all agreed that we had a large influx of patrons after the rain.… Continue reading →

This was the first time I had enough volunteers who could stay all day long on hand to implement one of my single biggest goals for this season. Counting people.

This comes, in part, from my scientific training. Those of us who run the market can say “It seems busier than usual” or “It seems slower than usual”, but it’s based entirely on gut feeling. Which, to be frank, is going to be influenced by exactly what is going on at the moment you say that. I would not be surprised to find we had a day where at one point someone said, “It seems busy today” and a different point said, “It seems slow today”. Or two different people felt two different ways.

For example, I thought the market seemed about normal in attendance.… Continue reading →

Well, I missed Monday & Tuesday in a frenzy of baking, invitation discussion, and cleaning. However, I imagine Jen is still curious about the market. So, what happened last Sunday with PCM?

It rained. And rained. And rained some more. And then finally it stopped around 11:00 am, which was nice. Until 1:00 pm, when it went back to being oppressively hot. I hate the oppressively hot days, so I was thankful for the cool hours in between.

So, what does rain mean for our market? I don’t know what is “normal” for PCM, since this is my first year, and thus first rain day, but here’s what it meant on Sunday.

Mostly? It means business as usual. People still want food, even if it’s raining.… Continue reading →