we have been fans of the ogden farmers market for years. i love going downtown on saturday mornings to get fresh produce and see what more creative minds and talented hands than my own have crafted. we are hooked on local spice blends, and it just isn't summer until i've had my first mint limeade.
richard has been saying for the past few years that we should make something to sell at the market, and i shot him down every single time...until i quit my job. at the thought of making a little extra money, i jumped aboard his crazy train, and we started to brainstorm. we decided to go with a craft that richard made me when we were dating (he gave it to me the first time he ever told me that he loved me. swoon), which is a flower made out of a drum stick and guitar picks. i also tried my hand at making a craft i'd seen on pinterest. i signed us up for the whole season, and we had fun working on our projects. we invested in a couple of tables and a shade tent, and our hopes started to slowly get higher and higher. then july 13th rolled around, and it was time to hit the ground running.
my mom and dad came to support us. or so they said. i'm pretty sure it was so they could steal our baby. richard's dad actually showed up out of nowhere, too! he was on his way back down to st. george from visiting his brother in idaho, and it was a very pleasant surprise to see his smiling face!
marty boy was a good sport, and he was happy to play with grandma and grandpas. we really appreciated them coming to help us out. richard was playing his guitar almost the entire time (5 hours), and i was manning the booth. not that it needed a lot of manning. i think we sold three things. basically, it was a joke.
we talked about it all throughout the next week...was our location bad? was it our presentation? were the prices too high? we'd gotten so many compliments on "how cool" both of our products were, so we were a little confused, and a lot bummed out. we decided we'd try again the next week. we sold one thing. we walked around to do a little bit of research, and we noticed that ALL of the food vendors were crazy busy, but not very many of the craft vendors were. unless they were selling baby bows/headbands. we lowered our prices, made bigger signs (even one that looked like a homeless panhandling sign that said "furloughed. buy something."), and were much more outgoing with people who stopped to talk to us. we sold two things.
basically, we decided that sitting in the heat for 5 hours to sell 2 things was a waste of our time. we'd rather be playing with marty, or getting other things done. richard is pretty set on trying our hand at food vending next year, but i'm back on the fence. and although it was a huge failure for us, i still love the ogden farmers market! the people in charge were super nice and gave us a complete refund. and i still love going down and wandering around my fellow o-townies.
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