Trailside Organic Farm Market Survey, February 2024

Submitted by Katie Landis, Assistant Farm Manager

Thank you to everyone who helped make last year’s Farmer’s Market successful. We wouldn’t be here without your support! We had 21 people (or couples) fill out our year-end survey. The results from this survey help us plan what we are growing and offering at the market in 2024. Some highlights from the results follow.

The most loved items at the market were lettuce, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, flower bouquets, peppers, squash and cantaloupe. We will continue to improve our lettuce production to get as long of a growing season as possible, but lettuce does not like to grow in the heat of summer, so there will still be a gap during the hottest months. Some new varieties of lettuce are in the plans for this year including romaine. Sweet potatoes were a success in 2023 and we’re planning to grow the same amount in 2024.

Slicing tomatoes will be back as well as Campari and Paste varieties. We are expanding our flower field to bring even more beautiful blooms to the market. We plan on planting sunflowers every week in the warm months to give us continuous harvests. Our pepper and squash options will remain the same and we’re growing more cantaloupes because you asked for them!

Fresh herbs were the most requested new item. We’d love to get herbs into the hands of people who want them, but our experience shows they don’t regularly sell when we bring them to market. We might offer these by special request. We haven’t worked out the logistics of that yet. Other requested items were asparagus, beans, spaghetti squash and radishes. 2024 is the first year that our asparagus is mature enough to harvest! We won’t have a lot of it, but if you’re lucky you might be one of the first to get some. We’re planting three more beds of it this year so our harvests will increase each year. Beans and radishes are on the planting schedule, but spaghetti squash is not. Squash plants take up a lot of field space, so we need to be strategic in choosing which crops to grow. Most people visited the market “frequently” and spent $5-$15 each time. Thank you for the support!

There is a lot of interest in a monthly email containing upcoming crop availability. We’ll work on getting that implemented. A few people asked about planting fruit trees. We aren’t in a position right now to add them to the farm, so please support other local growers for your fruit needs. Thank you again for a great 2023. We are looking forward to seeing everyone at the Farmer’s Market again this season!