Weather: Sunny, blue skies, humid and HOT – at 9:00 AM the temperature is already heading briskly upward from the mid-80’s to the mid-90’s.
After getting rained out torrentially on the previous Saturday, I got to complete my planned market site visit on the 17th. Every 45 minutes, give or take, I walked the market counting the number of people in each stand and taking a count of the people milling around in market area but not standing in any particular stand. It’s not a highly accurate method as there is plenty of room for over- or under- counting as people move around. I did not include dogs in my numbers but I did count each person individually so that a couple with a toddler would be counted as 3 not 1.
The graph below shows what the market traffic looks like. Each color represents a particular stand with the medium gray at the end assigned to the count of people milling about.
Some notes the I took on the traffic patterns observed on this day.
The affects of weather
Surprise! ;) Torrential rain definitely cuts into the market traffic. The +/-40 customers who braved the rain on 7/10 swelled to 140+ at the same time of day on the sunny summer morning.
Humid, sweltering weather makes everyone look pretty wilted – dogs, babies, greens, producers and customers alike.
… of product
Traffic for prepared foods/goods (pies – whoopee and otherwise, canned items, tea, salsas and hot sauces, bread, and handmade soap) is pretty steady throughout the market hours, perhaps because shoppers know that these items will be available no matter what time they come.
On the produce side there are noticeable peaks and valleys. Shopping peaks in early morning for vegetables and cut flowers which can dwindle or run out entirely for latecomers, especially early in the season or when weather is uncertain. This year, for instance, has been a tough one of ups and downs for some crops and farms in the area with the weather swinging from heavy rain to very hot sunny weather and back again. So on this particular Saturday, even the most fortunate and/or prepared vegetable growers ran low by the end of the morning.
Fruit turns out to have a different pattern. Berries, which come early and, being labor intensive to pick, are more scarce, draw long early lines at the beginning of the season when their only competition are early beets, cool weather loving lettuces, hardy kales, radishes, and finally broccoli. Peaches, plums, and apples – which come in greater numbers once they arrive – don’t always inspire competitive early morning shopping but do draw big crowds. (And no wonder… very sweet this year!) On this particular Saturday, traffic for both of the fruit producers peaked towards the end of the market as vegetables mounds got smaller. And of course, fruit that is newly in season is a big draw.
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