Week of November 9 - 15

Hey guys,

This week has been kinda slow, and I've been preparing for my papers and finals. With that being said we did have a webinar to attend, and I will speak on that for a moment. It started a little late, but it was full of valuable information. One thing that I really enjoyed was the idea that attracting vendors and retaining vendors should look at more than just economics; it should look at social, human, and natural sources. Asking vendors about their experiences by using a survey is the same concept that we did at the farmers market. I don't believe our farmers market is at a stage where it could support more than one vendor (if we would even want to), but I do believe it is always a good idea to gauge the farmers about their experiences both economic and social.
One of the major things that the first speaker spoke about that I liked was the idea of specializing your product line: Become a new, creative type of market (new kinds of market that work from your own community or locality with specialty items that work with your culture; ex. seafood or health items). I believe this is a goal we need to strive for. Personally, I think we kinda met this goal already by having local-area farmers sell local produce at our farmers market, but this is always something we can push for even more.
The second speaker spoke a lot about the cultural and social aspects of farmers markets and the farmers in general, and one key point that I took from his presentation was that with the evaluation of farmers, don’t look at economic “American” viewpoint, but look at the farmers culturally and see if they can reconnect to their own culturally traditions; need to look at social aspects of farmers. I think this is one thing we need to do every time we put on a farmers market is to evaluate the farmers and how they felt the event went beyond financially. I would love to have their input in evaluating our project, and how they felt their social needs were met by this project or what was lacking.
Overall, I had to leave the webinar once the questions started because I had to go do my field experience for my education classes, but it was a pretty cool experience! I've had a great time in this class with all of you, and I just want to thank everyone for helping me out during my first semester in grad school, and what has been the toughest semester in my personal life. Thank you guys so much, and it has been an honor to work with all of you!