Food Choices,$6 Jelly and Independent Agriculture

As the 4th of July approaches we celebrate independence.  Food choices are everyday ways to buy direct,  from a store produced in volume or a host of in between. 

As a small direct to consumers seller at farmer’s market I don’t expect every person likes what I do.  Some resent my very existence.  Some love the options of different things.  Some buy and enjoy hot pepper jelly, or mint jelly or homemade from scratch bread.

Some appreciate a sugarfree homemade  blackberry jam at $8. Regular sugar options are a bit cheaper.

Once in a while someone snorts about paying  $6 for a jar of jelly.  others undercut the price. Why $6…in the store…well, in the store there isn’t the small scale producer. I, and people like me, may raise the peppers and process them into jelly. The jar alone is 70 cents and $1.50 for pectin. Add the peppers,  sugar, vinegar and other ingredients.  Add the unseen power bill and labor of growing,  harvesting and processing as well as transportation to a convenient location to buy, with a shaded area to buy and fans to deal with the heat… $6 is too much?

Any food large or small produced and processed food is yours for an exchange of money.  I am not getting rich. I am happy to be comfortable.  I don’t resent people who buy elsewhere.

Don’t resent the small farms for offering choices and expecting a fair living from it.