The market day begins after a short night of sleep with an alarm at 4am. We get up, get ready, load up, and head out. Him in the truck with the trailer, me with the car in the opposite direction. He gets to the market, puts the trailer into place and gets started. I drive to pick up our two employees – two teenagers with no drivers’ licenses who, for whatever reason, have chosen to spend their Saturdays with a couple of older folks. They’re really good kids and we love them like our own.

On the way, we stop for drinks, a quick bite to eat in the car (usually doughnuts), and ice. Then we head to the market to begin. We’re usually there by 6am. Then the fun begins.

Booth set up takes 60-90 minutes, with time for emergencies (we left the spatula! we need a bucket! I forgot the extension cord!) to get to a store quickly. It’s a parking lot before we set up. We bring everything and build this space each week – Canopy, weights, tables, product, food, sanitation, shelves, signage, POS system, tea, chairs, coolers, everything. This was our 5th set up of the season and we’re finally hitting our stride.

We change something every season, which means every year is different. This year, we moved up to a double booth to accommodate everything we need. It’s still a work in progress, but we’ll figure it out eventually. For now, we’re doing what works to get the job done. We’ve figured out where everyone goes and their portion of the job. I take the orders and handle the register. W cooks and is training G, who cooks and helps bring out orders. S’s job is food prep. She assembles the plates and works with the customers on toppings to finish out their sliders.

We are currently out of ground lamb (yes, we were shocked, too!), so we don’t have any lamb sliders at the moment. This week, we had our biscuit & gravy, the breakfast bowls, braised lamb in a stock reduction over rice, and an Italian beef slider in marinara on a brioche bun with provolone.

We had our usual retail offerings – jams, jellies, honey, lamb meat, topped towels, bags, dishcloths, etc.

The Mother’s Day market is always a busy one. It was a beautiful day! Perfect weather. Not too hot. Not too cold. A breeze. NO RAIN!!! When we get a moment to look up from our booth duties, we watch the people. It’s so much fun to see the babies, the kids, the pets, and the people having a good time. We had music in the form of a live community band. Many times, fellow vendors will hop over to the booth to place an order and we’ll run their food over to their booth when it’s ready. We understand they have customers, too, and we want them to be able to get a good bite to eat. Throughout the market time, we discuss where we will eat lunch. It’s an important decision in the world of hungry teenagers.

The day went quickly. We were busy most of the time. Gone are the days of walking around the market to talk with fellow vendors and browse the wares. Now, if we get a moment, we RUNNNNNNN to a vendor to get what we need and hopefully we see something great we need to have. Tomatoes from Dakota Edge Farms. Lettuce from Fischer’s Family Farm. Bacon from Hill View Farms. This week’s slider meatballs were beef from Hayden Farms and Tichenor’s No Creek Angus. The sausage in the gravy is from Bittel Heritage Meats. We make our food from scratch and we use as many ingredients as we can source from our fellow vendors. If you ask, we’ll point you in their direction. BTW, my “had to have it” item yesterday, was a piece of strawberry cake from Taste of Home Baked Goods. It took me an hour to get enough bites to eat it, but it was tasty!

By noon, it was over. Time to take it all apart and put it away until next week. It all goes back into the trailer or my car. There’s dirty dishes and laundry galore! We tear it all down, put it away, and head to lunch. Normally, we’ve chosen a restaurant to fill our bellies. However, this weekend was the BBQ Fest (formerly International BBQ Festival, now known as BBQ & Barrels). I didn’t want to go, but I was outvoted, so we went. We had the kids turn on their phone locations in case of emergency, handed them $20 each, told them to get whatever food they wanted with it, and let them go be kids. Us old folks found a food truck, sat down to enjoy our food, then went out to find the kids. We watched them ride the rides with smiles and laughter.

I was wrong. We DID need to go to the BBQ fest. We gave the kids a moment to just be kids. Laughter and smiles are sometimes just what we need. Of course, they hadn’t eaten. After they were finished with the rides (and their stomachs settled), they got their food. We headed home after a really good day.

Today is Mother’s Day. My kids will be treating me to dinner tomorrow, when we’re all available. I’ve spent my day recovering from yesterday’s marathon. Tomorrow will be work. In this moment, I choose to be thankful – for a beautiful day, for happy babies, for adorable dogs, for laughing kids, for a cool breeze, for a beautiful sunrise, for the community of wonderful people who make up our farmers’ market, for our wonderful customers who keep coming back week after week, for strangers who visit our booth and become regulars, for people who stop by once because they’re from our of town, for this life – as crazy and hectic and beautiful as it can be.

Until next week…