But subscription farming is a good experience to teach you how to meet your customers' needs and how to do succession planting to stretch your growing season. Flickerville Farm is famous for its unique offerings at farmers markets. The key, says Peterson, is to sell things that no one else sells, or offer a higher quality product than the competition. For example, everyone sells salad mixes now. But we stay ahead by adding new greens.
Most farmers only offer lettuce for a few weeks during spring.
But Peterson has developed cultural practices that allow her to harvest lettuce from the end of April until late fall, drawing lettuce-lovers to her booth throughout the season. Peterson grows an amazing cornucopia of products that includes more than 70 varieties of vegetables and 50 kinds of flowers, including many heirloom varieties that are simply not available anywhere else. Vegetables and flowers are packaged and promoted in fun ways to entice customers to try and buy. She's found that this is far more effective than getting into price wars with other growers on standard items such as sweet corn and melons. Heirloom tomatoes draw customers to the Flickerville Farm booth at farmers markets.