Certified Producer Certificate Application

I have finally finished our application to become certified producers so that we can sell at the farmer's market. We are planning to start selling some things at just one market in Golden Hill to begin with. I am not even sure yet what we will have to sell as it is a bad idea to count your vegetables before they've ripened. We have Aloe Vera now, and I think we will have some passion fruit soon. We will certainly have avocados in the near future and I'm hoping for an abundance of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers but that remains to be seen.

The person who encouraged me to go through this process made me believe it was extremely easy but I feel a little differently. We have either an extremely large garden, or an extremely tiny farm, depending on how you want to look at it. I believe back yard (or front yard) gardeners should be exempt from some of the regulations that are required to obtain a certificate. I do support the certification process, as it prevents people from just going to a large retailer, buying vegetables, and then turning around and selling them at the markets, but I think the paperwork I had to fill out was a bit excessive.

5 pages of commodities listed on application

I was required to list our commodities which would have been fine if I could just write tomatoes but they require that I list each specific variety of tomato individually. We currently have 12 tomato plants, in 8 varieties. Each variety of all of our plants must be listed individually.

Even that would be okay, if I didn't have to re-apply, and pay a new inspection fee next year when I decide I want to try a new variety. I decided to pull out my favorite magazines, my seed catalogs, and list just about everything in them. I am hoping that will cover me so I can try new varieties next season without having to pay for a new certification and inspection. 

I'm sending the application off today, along with our $35.00 application fee. I'll let you know how it goes.

4 of 12 tomatoes, from left; Yellow Pear Cherry, Orange Queen, Champion, and Three Sisters

2 of 19 cucumbers; Armenian in front and Persian in back.

2 of 3 cats; Gidget (above).  Frijole (below).

Frijole thinks the birds at this yellow bird feeder need to be inspected.