7/6/09

It must be summer again, because every Friday I find myself loading up the van with  my big white umbrella, my folding tables,  and my boxes of  hand-dyed shirts, preparing to hawk my wares at the Richmond Farmers's Market in the afternoon, followed by  the Williston Market on Saturday morning.  This has been my summer routine for eight years now, and through all the uncertainties of weather and my mood and my customers' moods,  I still look forward to the market every single week. 

After my solo week of designing and dyeing, getting out amongst other humans (besides my small family) is a treat, as well as  a motivation to keep me turning stuff out. I have steady customers who want to see what I've produced that's new over the past week, and I don't want to disappoint them, though I'm not always able to complete much in the 5 days between markets. Stll, I aim to have one or two new designs or colors each week, which keeps both me and my customers interested. I've grown very fond of my customers over the years, and I keep them in mind as I decide on new colors, the colors I think they'll like and the colors I think will flatter them.

But the customers and possible sales are only part of it: I have a special place in my heart for my fellow vendors. To be a vendor at a market is to be in a subculture all its own, and even within the market subculture, there are smaller subcultures,  little neighborhoods. I always end up knowing the people on either side of me quite well, while the vendors across the green from me might as well be in another market altogether. You're a prisoner in your booth - you can't  leave and wander around, because that might be just the moment the millionaire will arrive wanting to buy out your inventory. So you stay put, and you get to know the people next door.  I've been neighbors of a succession of vendors, from a maker of ginger ale, to producers of organically raised meat, to my current neighbors:  Dean , who makes fabulous almond croissants , Dennis, who makes lovely wooden bowls, and Lynn, who makes a lavendar/lime soap I consider a restful spa treatment in itself, as is talking to Lynn , who has  become a close friend. 

If it's a busy day at the Market, we vendors don't get to talk much to each other, but if it's a slow day,  we sit together baking in the sun or huddling under our shelters, talking perpetually about Markets,  as if Markets were fishing holes. Where are the sales the best? (Where are the customers biting?) Which markets are good to get into?  (they tend to also be hard to get into) Which are not worth the trouble? (and does this become a self-fulfilling prophesy?). Other endlessly popular topics are our brands of umbrellas or pop-ups, our display arrangements, the companies we use to help us take credit cards.

And the time at the market goes by, sometimes very slowly, but sometimes, some blessed  summer days, there is nothing better than sitting in the sun, visiting with friends and neighbors, people-watching, and  enjoying market entertainment, which ranges wildly from cows and goats in pens on the stage to wonderful, etheral singers like Elizabeth Von Trapp.  The market can be miserable too: this summer has been especially challenging. Eveny single market day has at least threatened rain, and some days the skies have opened up. Last week in Richmond, a terrific wind came up in the last hour of the market, blowing Dennis's bowls all over the place and turning my umbrella inside out. The next day in Williston it poured rain. I  watched water wick up my tablecloth, closer and closer to my precious shirts, until I finally gave up  and  threw everything in the back of my van in a disorganized mess, which meant I had to wash and iron lots of shirts when I got home. 

Still, as my ginger-ale making neighbor commented a couple of years ago (while we sweltered under a hot sun and slapped away mosquitoes), no matter the weather, the inconvenience, the slow sales, it does beat working in an office. I don't think I could ever go back.