Wednesday, July 29, 2009

My trip to the Produce Auction

Today my kids, parents, and I decided to take a trip to a produce auction. It was a very interesting trip. We arrived early to check out the produce. Everything looked really nice but you had to pay attention to how many items you needed to buy. For example, grocery stores also come here to buy produce so at one end of the auction you needed to buy like 40 dozen of sweet corn or 10 huge boxes of peppers.

Here are my tips if you have a produce auction trip planned...
1. Don't take your kids. It takes a long time and it's very busy. My youngest two and my oldest did just fine...my oldest actually made some money by helping people load produce into their cars.
2. Know your prices. It helps to know what the best price you've paid before for your produce. We compared the going price of our farmers market to the prices at the auction.
3. Be prepared to stay awhile...the small amounts of produce were the last things auctioned off.
4. Talk to other people. Find out what the best days are and if they have any tips for getting the best deals.
5. Have fun!

Here is what I bought today-
1 bushel green beans $12
5 dozen ears of Incredible sweet corn $15
1 bushel of green peppers $5
1/2 bushel of candy onions $5.50
1 peck of variety produce $1.25

It was a very fruitful day.

2 comments:

Frugal Sara said...

I have never heard of a produce auction. Sounds fun. Looks like you got some great stuff!

Niki Jolene said...

I've never ever heard of that! Neat!

:)