Change in Focus

Greetings...

This site will transition to general gardening and herb topics rather than exclusive Orange County Farmers Market topics.  Just a brief explanation... after last year's vote to enforce our own rules and become more of a "producer" market with a "jury" selection process... and the "jury" system immediately taken over by the ODA Director... it was clear the real move was going to be away from a "producer" market and squarely into a reseller market.  Also, after attending numerous workshops on Farmers Market administration, I found out that as Market Manager, I could be held responsible if a customer of any vendor became ill or had other problems because a vendor did not comply with the State Food Safety Rules.  So this was another big reason we had to enforce our own compliance rules.  Since this was opposed by the ODA I could not continue to participate in this market.  Over the years, we had numerous complaints from customers of our illegal food vendors and as much as I tried to coax them into compliance they refused. In fact the "kitchen inspection" results for our biggest offender contains a list of multiple serious infractions.

We put a lot of time and energy into the market and did not want to leave... but the problems were serious and there was a complete lack of willingness by the ODA to play by the rules... rules that are for the protection of the customers.


Anyway, this type of thing is very common... it happens all over the country... what they find is that markets that stay committed to "producer only" rules flourish... and those that degenerate into reseller and flea markets tend to wither.

I could go on and on... there you go... I tried to keep it from happening to us ... but it did.... have to admit it and move on...

THINK SNOW !