At the Dayton Produce Auction

Tractors lining up for the drive thru auction.

I mentioned that I am on furlough for the month of August.  One of the things I thought I might check out is working on a farm - and my friend David Sours at Public House Produce agreed to take me on.  I can only hope that having me around a couple of days a week isn't slowing him down - thanks David!

For the first item of business, I drove over to the farm and met David at 7:30 for the drive from Luray to Dayton, which is near Harrisonburg.  Up and over New Market Gap, then down I-81 for a short bit, and then we were off on country roads.  It's Mennonite country there, so as we got closer to our destination, we were surrounded by lush farms and few motorized vehicles.  And finally we got to the auction house.

Drive thru auction action.

Small lots auction area.

It was early enough that the heat of the daywasn't up, and themountains that surrounded us were still visible.  We quickly unloaded David's two lots of tomatoes - a heritage lot of "Pineapples," the same as in the auction video above, and a larger lot of "slicers," a good-sized sandwich tomato (Mary made a pizza with one of them last week, by the way).  Smaller lots like his stay up under the canopy there - I have a photo of some of the selection and the growers milling about - and larger lots, especially bulky stuff like sweet corn and melons, stay on the wagons and go through the drive thru auction area.

David went around working the room - exchanging tips, checking out some of the varieties of vegetables here, finding out if there'd been rain - there were lots of friendly folks around and they were pretty happy to share what was working for them and what wasn't...although that kind of information is politely delivered in the "Now, I don't want to tell anybody what to do here, but that there is a hacksaw, not a crosscut" kind of format.

After taking care of some market chores, we went and watched some of the big lots move through - the video is a sale of one lot.  Then we went over for some peach pie at the little food stand.  I closed out my visit by picking up copies of the sellers and buyers guidelines, and a schedule.  There's a market through the summer on Tuesday, Thursday and Firday, tapering off to two days a week in October and one day a week in November, until closing for the winter, December through March.