Day Visiting Farmer's Market

Meeting With Melissa

Today me and four other people in my class walked from Salem State to downtown Salem to go to the Farmer's Market to meet with Melissa at her table for her Honey Pot Farm. We also met with her husband as well and we all talked to the both of them about their business and how it came to the Salem Farmer's Market.

I thought that the Farmer's Market was really interesting, it was right in the middle of downtown Salem and there was a lot of vendors there. I did not expect it to be such a popular event in Salem but apparently Salem has the Farmer's Market open every Thursday from 3 to 7pm. The way that the Farmer's Market is set up is a little confusing at first since it is hidden by some buildings and its on two sides of of a street and it was difficult to find the Honey Pot farm table, but we eventually found it in the center of the market. 

Most of the questions that we asked Melissa were about the bees on the farm and the production of the honey. We also asked questions about her sense of place in Salem because of the production of honey from her company. 

A lot of the answers that we got from Melissa are as followed (in bullet form):

-go to many farmer markets to sell honey besides in Salem:

      -Tewksbury, North Reading, Andover, Wilminton, etc

-not only produce and sell honey and maple syrup, also harvest a chicken farm 

-have 45 to 50 hives in order to produce large amounts of honey

-produce honey in the warmer months such as the summer and fall, maple syrup in the winter and spring

-bees can fill up a jar with honey in as little as a week

     -takes a day for a bee to produce 2 tablespoons of honey

-created sense of place in Salem by having two stores carry and sell the company's honey and syrup

-if the queen bee dies in the hive, the whole hive will eventually die

We asked them many questions about the bees themselves and how the endangerment of the bumblebees will affect the honey production of the honeybees, which is why some of our answers are specifically about the bees themselves. 

I felt that this experience was really good because I got to learn how other people can run a business and have it expand to different cities. It gave me a sense of place in Salem because it helped me learn more about Salem and what is has to offer. 

I took a couple of pictures today as well: