I went to the Scioto Valley Farms Produce Auction today. It was my fourth trip to it this year. Most of the produce is grown by the local Amish people.

I bought 4 half bushels of peaches (2 bushels), 4 pecks of snacker peppers (1 bushel), 7 dozen ears of sweet corn, 2 pints of very good, red raspberries, 3 half bushels of Roma tomatoes (1 1/2 bushels), 2 pecks of patty pennies (1/2 bushel) and 3 2 packs of packaging tape.

I bought 56 homing pigeons from a friend of mine after the auction and just got home a couple of hours ago, so I didn't get pictures of what I bought.

The peaches were $10.00 a half bushel, a little under 50 cents a pound. They have some tiny spots of mold on some of them, so we are going to process and can them all tonight. Fortunately they are free stone, so they go very quickly. I am going to plant all the seeds. Peaches, unlike pears and apples come out very close to the parent fruit.









Keith

Keith

Great looking produce!!!

Wow! That is some well displayed produce!

Dang perty!
what dd the peppers sell for?

They do a really good job. I only took pictures in the caddy corner attached over flow section.

Tomatoes were mostly really high today, up to $17.00 per 10 pounds. I've bought tomatoes for a nickel a pound there before and Mexican cherry tomatoes for even less. They lost 3 of the big growers this year.

The pumpkins went from $1.00 to $2.50 each. They'll go up close to season.

Mums only went for $2.00 each

The Aphrodite melons sold for $3.50 each by the pallet. Singles and doubles surprisingly only sold for $2.00 each.

Sweet corn was high, with most of it selling at $4.00 a dozen.

Peppers were very high today. I paid $9.00 a peck on the ones I bought. I bid on 6 lots of peppers before I got any. Jalapeno peppers and hot wax Hungarian peppers were even higher.

Keith

I also bought a half of a peck of green peppers (1/8 a bushel) for $1.00. Slicer bell peppers were mostly around $8.00 to $10.00 a bushel. Better bell peppers brought $16.00 a bushel.

There was around 200 buyers at the auction. It lasted about 4 hours.

Keith

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,,,,wow...................

That's pretty cool, we don't have anything like that here...we have farmstands and such but everything they sell is at supermarket prices. The bulk of the produce goes to Hunts Point market in the Bronx.
You don't want to go there, lol...

Never heard of auctioning farm produce. Interesting.

I'm headed off to our Farmers market with 27 flats of blueberries in an hour. They will sell for $84/flat by the pint (12 pint) or $58 If they buy the whole flat. Certified organic.

I wish we had something like that here!

What the heck is a peck of patty pennies?

9.50 here at the local faahm stand

You almost assuredly have produce auctions in your area. Most are very poorly advertised. Most are closed to the general public too.

Patty pennies are a small squash. People also refer to them as patty pans. The Amish call them patty pennies. They have odd names for some produce. They pronounce jalapeno as you would in English, with a hard J and butcher the name Aphrodite.



I didn't find out they were supposed to be good to eat until last year. I used to think they were just decorative. A lot of the farm to table shows get excited about them. These will be the first ones I ever eat.

Keith

I usually buy sweet corn for 50 cents to $1.00 a dozen. Ohio has lots of corn. The most I ever paid for sweet corn was earlier this year at $4.50 a dozen.

Most sweet corn at the auction sells by entire pallets of 5 dozen sacks by the dozen for price.

They set everything up in rows, with each row having different rules on how much you have to buy. They sell mostly large amounts of everything up to a full highly stacked pallet. 1 row will sell singles. Two rows sell choice of stack. 1 row sells up to 4. I usually buy in the mid level range, like 150 to 240 pounds of tomatoes.

Keith

I wondered if maybe you were referring to patty pans. Just never heard them called patty pennies before.

What a nice produce area.

I could take a whole box of those Patty Pans. They are great sautéed with bacon grease and other seasonings.

I like the Amish, but will admit they are fairly odd. The head auctioneer is non Amish, but everyone else involved, including the back up auctioneer is Amish. The head auctioneer, Dave, rides around on a tall podium, pushed by a two or three Amish men. Two Amish guys read the auction tags and hold up a piece of produce for each lot. They carry long wooden staffs. They can read, but not well. They mispronounce a lot and the auctioneer teases them sometimes. The Amish men who push the podium also help spot bidders in the crowd, which usually ranges from 150 to 230 people. Another Amish guy bids to fill orders for buyers who aren't present. Yesterday, he bid against himself three times in a row for the three buyers, he was representing.

The largest buyer at the auction is a hippy like guy, Matt, who I've known for years from selling him peafowl and coturnix quail. He usually has a huge blonde afro, unkempt beard and usually wears pajamas. He buys many thousands of dollars of produce to sell at a lot of farmers markets he attends or sends people to. He works his rear end off. He often splits large purchases with a Mennonite guy now. Matt is the only non Amish person allowed in the office.

The office reminds me of the bank in Harry Potter. The oldest Amish guys, who have thin wispy, white beards, wear bifocals far up their noses and figure all the totals on adding machines that look ancient.

Amish children run each page of finished bids to the office, the second the last bid price is printed on it.

Almost all the produce comes by horse and buggy or horse and wagon.

People have probably been selling like this for thousands of years.

Keith

There's an Amish produce auction just north of West Salem , Ohio , on ST Route 301, that I go to sometimes.
It's set up a lot like that one, but it's open to the public , a lot of buyers buy for large local stores in the area.
I now go to the Amish that sells at the auction, and get a better price , and saves time.
They get charged 11% sellers fee, so they make more on the side with their road side stands.
Get to know them and they give you better deals.
I also go to the Amish bulk stores and get a lot of things a lot cheaper than in a store.
They also have canning supplies ,and mixes for canning.
In the fall when they do their butchering, the stores carry mixes for baloney , and sausage mixes.
Rubs for curing hams ,bacon and such.