Surprisingly, one of the biggest issues that we’ve faced so far is selling small quantities of produce that have been produced on our farm.
Fortunately we have been able to sell several lots of 5kg of tomatoes at a time to a friend who is bottling the tomatoes. This has really saved our skin – otherwise we would be drowning in fresh, delicious tomatoes!
What do we do with smaller quantities of 1-2kg that are harvested frequently?
It’s not a large enough quantity to go to a market and it’s not really consistent enough to take to a restaurant (some days we harvest quite a few tomatoes, and some days, there aren’t many tomatoes at all).
So far, we’ve been bottling and saucing many of our tomatoes, and doing this we’ve used up a lot of our excess tomatoes. I am definitely looking forward to the opportunity to use some of these tomatoes in rich sauces. Rach’s cooking has made the whole house smell absolutely amazing, and if the sauces are half as good as any meal she makes then they’ll taste superb too!
But we’re producing so many tomatoes, that there are still kilograms remaining, and we feel as though we have limited options!
One option is to open up a farm gate and leave an honesty box. We are trying this at our Frankston place, but because we don’t consistently have tomatoes there, I think people won’t think of our little stand at our driveway when they’re in need of tomatoes or other vegetables.
After writing this post, I put the table and tomatoes out on the nature strip for the day. Lo and behold, we got some sales! Perhaps my pessimism had got the better of me, so we will keep trying!
Historically, Vidamour Farm had an honesty box system, and this might be worth trying again. One of the other people working at Vidamour Farm (Mark) has been growing some leafy greens, beans and other plants. Perhaps when he has some ready for harvest, it will mean that people can get a range of produce from the farm – helping both of us make sales in the process.
At the moment we’re trying a few different options. We have to move quickly to sell the tomatoes because they have a limited shelf life and we don’t want them to go bad!
