Mean’s Organic Produce Market

Good day everyone. This is Alex at Project Worth in Menifee County, Kentucky. We have wished for good weather and recently it has been beautiful here. The weather has all of our gardeners excited and busy working in their gardens. We have been very busy handing out all the vegetable plants in our greenhouse.

With all the beautiful weather and excitement it has gotten me to look forward to the month of June. When we were planning our gardening year in late winter we had decided to open our brand new Mean’s Organic Produce Market in early June. We have been forced to rethink this and have decided that the weather has forced us to push opening day until mid to late June.

In thinking about the opening I never realized how much work there is to opening this market. I have come up with 6 things that have to be taken care of before you can open the market. I’m sure there are some things that I have not thought of but I hope they will not create any hardships when I come across them. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If, after viewing this, you notice anything I have left out or have any suggestions please comment on this post. I sure would appreciate it. As I said before, we will not open the market until mid to late June, but we are hoping to make a trial run by selling any leftover plants in our greenhouse as soon as our gardeners have taken all the plants they want. Below are the 6 things I have thought about:

1. We need to have a couple of meetings with our Grow Appalachia Gardeners
to discuss the Mean’s Organic Produce Market. Discussions will include the days
and hours the market will be open, prices for produce which will be decided by
the gardeners and who will sell at the market—all gardeners will sell some
produce at the market, either bring and sell themselves, which is strongly
encouraged or bring and let volunteers sell produce for you. Either way the
gardeners get all the money and Project Worth gets the information for their
Grow Appalachia reports.

2. We will have to advertise our market. We will use social media, the
downtown Frenchburg marquee, the local bank marquee, the local newspaper, the Frenchburg/ Menifee County Chamber of Commerce website, Menifee County
Extension Office Newsletter, flyers and word of mouth advertising to
accomplish this goal.

3. We will have to obtain signage for the pavilion itself as well as a
sandwich roadside sign for traffic both ways on the major highway near Project
Worth.

4. We will have to set up extra canopies for the overflow of gardeners.

5. We will provide tables, chairs, trays and bags for the gardeners. We
will provide a check out table with scales and log of who sold what and for how
much. We will provide cash box to keep the money in. At the end of the day we
will distribute the money according to how much produce was sold by each gardener.

6. We will have to recruit a number of volunteers to help us with the market.
We will need volunteers to help set up and take down the market, assist gardeners
with their sales, to work at the checkout table, to bag produce, etc.

If you can grow it in your garden we will sell it in the Mean’s Organic Produce Market. I know there are other things that will come to light but you have to start somewhere. Please wish us luck and provide any tips you think will help us with this endeavor. We are already working on becoming Kentucky Proud. Please take a quick look, below, at a few photos of our Mean’s Organic Produce Market. Remember, it’s early and it will be looking a whole lot better in the very near future. Until next week, everyone have a great time working in your garden.