So many years of doing the market and packing our stuff up and we are still changing our system constantly. When our truck was no longer and we switched to a car, Jeff thought it was a totally crazy idea. How in the world would we fit all our market stuff in there? I was thinking about the gas prices and how much money we’d save with the switch. Something had been wrong with our truck and I swear the gas must have leaked straight out the bottom of the tank with how often we had to fill it up. It was so expensive, making trips to town incredibly costly, and it wasn’t sustainable for us. I told Jeff we’d be able to find a way to fit all our market stuff in a car. (It wasn’t the first time I’d convinced him to do something he thought was crazy, or vise versa.) And so far we have. But some weekends our car is so packed we can’t fit a single thing more. Sometimes I’ve had to carry things on my lap in the front seat just to get them home.

I like the look on people’s faces sometimes, the way their jaws drop or they scratch their heads, when they see how packed our car is or watch us load it up at the end of the market day. How do you fit all that stuff in there? Like a puzzle, we tell them. Like a puzzle. Each piece has to go in a particular order to get it all to fit. (It’s kind of a running joke, really.) Oh yes, and with the roof rack Jeff built. Can’t leave that out. With our previous wooden booth, Jeff attached it to the roof to transport it to market. It was time consuming to un-bungy and re-bungy to the roof each and every time, but it wouldn’t have fit in our car with everything else and that was the only way to do it. I mentioned our new pop-up booth takes less space, yet another plus of why I was so happy with it. However we wanted to pack it inside the car rather than on the roof and because of that it took some creative thinking to make the space.

Another thing we realized is that when we packed up our things at the end of the market day, our booth was ready to load into the car last, but it needed to be the first item to be loaded into the car to make our puzzle-piece system work. Not very convenient. So this past week Jeff took some old doors he’d salvaged at Habitat for Humanity for next to nothing and made a long wooden rectangle to slide our booth into. What this means is that we can now load everything else into the back of our car without having to wait for our booth to be ready for packing. We can just slide the booth into the box at the end. It may not sound like much, but this little change is going to make a huge difference for us! Faster, easier.

We were also packing along a wooden table that looked great in our booth and was the perfect size for what we needed, but took up way too much room. It was challenging to pack and we knew we couldn’t make it work anymore. So Jeff made it so we can attach wooden legs to another item we were already bringing with us, and use that for our table instead. The legs can be removed each time, taking up so much less space! Do I sound silly writing about all this? Maybe I do, but these are the changes we are excited about this week. Looking at the back of our car, that’s the least packed I’ve ever seen it for market, if you can believe it. (Oh, and I should probably mention that some items in the back are tied so they won’t go sliding over to Bracken’s seat, in case you were wondering.) Now if we want to bring home some vegetables from the farmer’s market, we will actually be able to fit them in our car!

We pack it all up. Then we check, is it all there? Almost forgot the table covering. Our display would look terrible without that. Got the sand bags? Check. Gotta keep the booth from blowing away. Jeff’s arms would get tired holding it down every time a wind came. Fire extinguisher? Check. Bracken’s chair? Check. (Jeff and I’s chairs are attached to the roof.) And so on and so forth. Last will be to add our food we packed for the day and all the layers I’ve brought for us. Many years at market has taught me layers are essential this time of year, gotta be ready for all sorts of weather when you’re out in it all day. (Though the weather forecast for today says sunny and in the seventies!) And then we’re off!

{We’ll be at the Eugene Saturday Market today in booth 350. Say hello if you come by!}