Commerce in Our Times and Place

I really don't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body (as Walt Disney was once alleged to have said, so it's hard to know whether it's a sentence ethat really can be taken seriously, but I really don't have any peddler inclinations).  Thus my summer and early fall's experience with Pt. Robert's Farmers'/Community Market is pretty unusual for me.  I found, over the 4 or 5 times I was there, selling the 4/5 of my fabulous CD collection, that I kind of liked the interchange, the process, the (mini)adventure of it.  I didn't wake up on Saturday mornings delighted to be rushing through my breakfast so I could get there by 9 a.m., but I didn't turn over in bed and decide to sell CD's some other Saturday, either.

The CD's have  been steady sellers, even as I point out to people that it's a dying (if not quite dead) technology, to be replaced by all the music that is available to anyone via the web.  As an almost former technology, it has to its credit that it really doesn't take up a lot of room...CED's are small, they're, eponymously, compact, right?  So, I imagine people will still have them hanging around on shelves for decades to come, but I doubt if they'll be playing them.  Given that, I'm particularly grateful that people buy them and take them to hang around on their shelves so I don't have to have them on mine.

Ed has also enjoyed selling his postcards of Point Roberts.  Link to many of the cards here and here.  We can only hope that the Post Office has been helped by an increase in postcard stamp sales.

The overall success of the market is reflected in our experience (or vice versa).  It was pretty fun.  Not too much work.  Generally enough buyers, although it would have been nice to have a few more sellers.  The growing season here is fairly short so a farmers' market isn't going to extend into the fall much unless you want to buy a lot of different kinds of apples, maybe.  There are meetings to decide what to do next, how to get it to continue to exist.  Depending on volunteerism is probably the worst way to bring something to an extended life, but here it's about the only way.  And if it is successful, it's usually because one mortal person has decided to really make it work, but then its existence depends upon that one mortal person, which is to make the event/institution/whatever a hostage to fortune.

I don't think I've got anything to sell on a regular basis once the CD's are done, and they will make it through only a few more market days.  I think Ed's are the only uniquely Point Roberts postcards on the Point, so they will probably have a longer shelf life.  I'm sorry we can't contribute more, but I hope the organizers can keep it going.  And I'd like to extend our thanks for their having made it happen this year.  It was an occasional event that had, at least as far as I could tell, absolutely no downside, and any number of small and pleasant upsides.