Family farm. About 240 acres. It was called truck farming, because we grew many types of produce that matured at different times of the seasons. Pickles, sweet corn, melons, green beans, potatoes, cabbage.......
There were old-school Farmer's markets where farmers from miles around would arrive and rent a stall under a large roofed structure, shaped like a cross. You would back your truck into the stall space and set up your produce. We sold by the pound at the Wed and Sat market. This market near Eastern European immigrant neighborhoods and urban downtown. People moving to the suburbs, the older generation dying out and shoppers wanting super-large supermarkets with everything* eventually killed this market. The gentrified pop-up shaded farmer's markets of today pale in comparison to what real farmer's markets were, just 2 or 3 decades ago.
The other market we went to was the 0:dark:thirty (3am-7am) wholesale market where we setup and sold bushels of our produce to stores. They would buy 30 bushels of green beans, or 40 crates of melons or 100 bags of potatoes. That was 2-3 times a week at high season. We would load them on their trucks and they would take off to the outskirts to the smaller supermarkets and resell the stuff. Fresh almost everyday and local for sure. There really wasn't too much trucked in produce in our area during growing seasons.
We ran a small cow/calf beef operation and also swine for a while.
We switched to soybean growing and that was how the farm was until the end.
The farm was sold eventually to add to series of parkland, the fields went fallow and are heading back to the woodlands they haven't been for probably hundreds of years.
Full disclosure, I wouldn't have taken over the farm. It was hard work for often little to no gain. Especially during the farm crisis (Remember Farm Aid?).
