Another successful morning of selling honey. Honestly it's barely worth my time to load everything up, drive, set up, sell and take down because the truth is I could sell every drop without leaving the Small-Hold. I actually only sell at the local farmer's market for a couple of reasons.
1. To support the market. It's a small affair right now and hasn't really grown much over the last couple of years. IN fact it really has shrunk as most of the vendors never really made enough money to make it worth the trip. I am not sure what they were expecting unless you have a true niche thing going on it takes time to build up a real clientele. The buyers need to KNOW you are going to be there every week or they go somewhere else.
2. To make local contacts of like minded people. This is the main reason I bother. I have made more local contacts with other small growers and operators that it makes up for the time lost. As an example today I ran out of honey dippers. They are sometimes hard to order but the local wood worker and I got to talking and I may just start buying them from him if he can make em reasonable enough.
3. The Future. As things continue to decline and super market prices keep rising I really think the local market will take off once again. This is a bad year as most everyone who used to sell their produce the last few years were wiped out this season. By now most of the customers have figured out the pickings are going to be slim and stopped coming. Eventually though the market may be the main stopping spot and it's best to already have a base and be established for when that happens.
As an interesting side effect due to the reduced yield by other vendors has changed my sales as well. The people coming to the market are now die hard supporters more than casual buyers. Mostly middle age to older Women. They been screaming at me to bring them honey. When the other vendors are doing well we get a large number of Men running through looking for tomatoes and green beans mostly. Not this year as much because they have given up but when the Men come through they usually buy honey if I am there.
I have learned over the years that......
Men buy honey in plastic bottles and Women buy honey in glass jars.
There are of course exceptions but the above rule follows true in about 95% of the cases.
Anyway sorry about not posting last night. I was too tired after the 12 hour shift and still had to get ready for today's market run. Now off to put the top on the chicken stall.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!!
glass jars all the way! we are paying about $7 bucks a pint for local honey here...is that similar to your price? and yes, we use our farmer's market as a place to meet up with like-minded others. we love the farmer's market!
ReplyDeletesending much love! your friend,
ymber
kymber - my price these days is a little under 7 bucks a pint for glass. Glass is more expensive than plastic though by almost 3 times as much.
DeletePP - you need to up your prices. especially in the glass jars! and i meant to say that the colour of your honey is beautiful!
DeleteI have been buying honey from local producers for $4.50 to $5.00 per pound in plastic jars. Went to a farmers market to get another bottle or two and they were charging $9 per pound in a glass jar. You could bring the jar back and refill it for $6. I couldn't do it, I left. Was I being too cheap? I thought about bringing my own glass jar and seeing if they would fill it for $6 per pound..
DeleteClara A
We get honey from the guy down the road and he puts it in mason jars so we get a new jar in the deal. Big difference in the taste from the stuff at the store so it is worth it to us.
ReplyDeleteSf - Most of the store bought stuff is really just sugar water fed to the bees and it's been pasteurized too so the good stuff has been killed by the heat. This last batch I spun out had a little zing after taste to it that I have never experienced before. Not sure what it was maybe some plant they don't normally work but did this year because of the rains.
DeleteThe local grower I buy my honey from only charges $10 a quart in a glass jar. I then transfer it into a plastic jar, one of those little squeeze bottles that looks like a cute little bear! It is much easier and neater to eat it that way. Most people charge $12 for a quart jar around here so I could still buy a whole lot of honey for the amount of money I have spent on my bee keeping project so far, but I am working on a sustainable future.
ReplyDeleteSD - That is the number one thing most of the Men mention. The squeeze plastic jars make less mess.
DeleteI don't normally bottle up many quart jars until September when I do my large pull. The smaller pulls during the Summer are just too small to bottle up that large without stiffing a couple of customers.
i like the glass. our beekeeper uses canning jars so i know i'm getting the jars and the price includes them. also the jar rings.
ReplyDeleteDeborah - I will admit the glass canning jars are in fact much easier to bottle up than the thinner mouthed plastic ones. The price is so much more for the canning jars though that I have to pass some of that along to the customer though.
Deletepp,
Deletei expect to pay for the valuable canning jar and it is a painless way to accumulate jars.
not only am i assured i'm not getting fake and possibly contaminated 'honey', but the local honey helps our girl with her headaches. it is said to be good for my husband's allergies. this has been a terrible year for allergies.
Deborah - Allergies is the main reason I do the several smaller pulls during the Summer. I have people who use it for that and need specific time periods of honey to target specific pollen times. The Spring sufferers are the hardest to take care of as the bees usually don't have much honey capped at that early time yet.
DeleteI pay $26 for a half gallon of local honey here in Florida. It comes in a plastic jug with a convenient squeeze top lid. The honey guy doesn't offer it in glass jars, so maybe I can blame that on the fact that HE is a guy?????!
ReplyDeleteAnon - As someone who buys alot of different jars in plastic and glass I will say the plastic is so much more economical to the bee keeper's bottom line that is more than likely why he does it.
DeleteI am so ready to have our first honey harvest. Very interesting observation about honey container buyers. Excellent reasons for supporting you farmers market too, good for you. By "most everyone who used to sell their produce the last few years were wiped out this season" I'm taking that to mean it was a poor growing season? I thought it was just me. My personal gardening inconsistencies have kept me from looking into our farmers market as a place to sell and network. I hope that will change in the future.
ReplyDeleteleigh
Deletefriends of ours plowed most plants under because of too much rain and cold in spring, everything rotted.
in order to support his farmers' market, one is buying in penn. and selling at a slightly higher price [makes no money after gasoline costs] because he wants to help the lady who organized the market.
hoping for a better next year.
his fall garden is planted so maybe there will be produce in a couple of months if the heat moderates,
Leigh and Debrorah - We have a couple of vendors that used to resell Amish or Mennonite grown produce but even they have said it isn't worth their time this year. What really kept people coming were when the locals would have a huge surplus of something and just come by and sell for one market day. Kept people interested. This year only one guy has managed to keep his garden producing enough to set up and sell each weekend and even he said yesterday his was done. The constant rains we got in May June and July just killed all the good plants and let the weeds go crazy.
DeleteThe couple I get honey from here prices by the pound, and its $5/pound. We buy the 5lb jar, and I just doubled checked, but there's nothing on the (glass) jar that tells me what size it is, but its bigger than my quart canning jars by quite a bit, so it might be a gallon jar. Here in upstate NY thats a decent, reasonably average, price for local honey. I had a chance to chat with the wife this last time I picked up honey, and apparently they don't have any issues selling all their honey either.
ReplyDeleteThe growing season here has been screwy, but there's been a decent selection at the farmers markets, with some interesting consistencies. Everyone had germination problems back in the spring, when it was massively (and unusually) dry right when everyone was planting the early spring crops. The ones who recognized it and replanted as soon as the rains started had decent crops. And then you can tell who has raised beds, or proper drainage, from the ones who don't......
Ruth - 5 bucks a pound is about right where I am setting price-wise actually. That works out to about five dollars per 11 or 12 ounces but that's in plastic I would need to add about 50 cents to that price in glass. I actually raised my prices this year by about 60 cents overall due to the increase in container prices.
DeleteThis year started out looking like it was going to be a surplus year. Then the rains just kept coming and coming and coming until it ruined almost everything. Almost everyone has said the same thing all their good plants just got swamped. I will admit though we lost what was in our raised beds due to neglect while the wife was in the hospital. The weeds just went crazy.
Oh, I really wish you were closer to us in NTexas. I would be one of your faithful customers. I, too, would prefer to buy honey in a glass jar and would be willing to pay extra for the jar. I don't use a lot of honey. Maybe because all I can find tastes like sugar water. so, my honey often goes to sugar. the glass jars allow me to melt the honey easily. Hang in there! Julia
ReplyDeleteJulia - THAT is a big consideration you mention. Raw honey that has not been pasteurized will crystallize much faster in plastic as plastic allows more moisture and air inside. You are correct too the new plastic melts far too easily to use when hot water bathing crystallized honey. I been hoping this year to have enough excess to allow some honey to form crystals so I can try some creamed honey next year.
DeleteOne other sort-of prepper person (guerrilla something) used to emphasize the huge advantage in local contacts that small business folks accumulated. To mind, that has to be balanced by the (often) larger risks that small business folks have in making a livelihood if times get rough. There are no guarantees, but you seem to have a good balance.
ReplyDelete