Finding Local Farmer's Markets

After the trip last week to the Mount Vernon, TX farmer's market, I decided I need to see what other farmer's markets there are in my area. After about five laborius minutes of research, here are some tools I've found to help figure out what's in your area.

Check the area newspapers. And you might have to actually buy a real paper newspaper. After your done with it, recycle it, reuse it for something, or pop it in the compost.

This is the USDA find a market link
It doesn't have the Mount Vernon one, so it might not have your nearest market either.

Then you might check here at Local Harvest.
While your there, look around a bit. They have plenty of good information. For my location, it found some that USDA didn't have. But, it still didn't have the Mount Vernon, TX one.

Maybe one of these links will help you find your nearest farmer's market.

Mount Vernon Texas Farmer's Market

We spent Saturday morning doing one of my favorite things, visiting a Farmer's Market. I had just read that the Mount Vernon Texas farmer's market was starting up for the year, so of couse we had to check it out. There was some lovely fresh cabbbage grown just down the road in Talco, cute young rabbits, and an assortment of handmade bird houses and other ceder items. The vendors were friendly and the town very walkable. At least one antique shop was open, so you can get your vegetables and get your weekend antique fix all in one stop.

Farmer's markets are great. I hope to see more of them in the North East Texas area. We will definately visit the Mount Vernon one again soon, since it's the closest farmer's market in our neck of the woods.

Consider buying your market items from local sellers. At the farmer's market, you can ask what you want to know about how the food was grown, where it was grown (most farmer's markets require it to be within a certain amount of miles), who grew it, what practices they used. These things really do matter.

Bonanzle in BusinessWeek!

BusinessWeek did a nice article on Bonanzle (see it here) . Great read, for those of you who are looking for a new venue.

EBay still doesn't seem to get WHY many sellers left (or diversified) in the first place. Well, I opened a booth on Bonanzle because of what Ebay was doing last year. But I finally closed my shop on eBay because of all the great things Bonanzle did.

Instead of treating small sellers as desirable partners, eBay treated us as captives -not unlike what most credit card companies are doing...

And, I just saw this today on ReadWriteWeb. All about Bonanzle. Get off the fence and try it out.

One thing I keep seeing is people saying new sites have trouble getting traffic. I just don't get that from my experience with Bonanzle. My Bonanzle items are very easy to find (and are found by real live buyers). Their excellent instructions walk even the least tech savvy of us through using Google Base and their new Search Optimizing function from batch edit. Heck, they even have a Craigslist exporter. Could it get any easier than that?

Oh, and here's the full links for those of us who like to see where we are going:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc2009033_379735.htm

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/seattle_startup_bonanzle_takes_on_ebay.php

1980s He-Man 110 Camera!

Well, here's a nifty find! A vintage 110 He-Man camera! I've never seen one of these before I got this one a few weeks ago. I searched the Internet far and wide and only found a couple of more pictures of them. There was a She-ra version too. Thought I'd add a photo for you 110 camera collectors and He-man fans.

Camera is marked Mattel, Inc 1985 and HG Toys, Inc.

I'll be popping this He-man up for sale over on my Bonanza Booth. Until he goes to his new home, you can see additional pictures of the He-man camera there.