I thought the community wanted a local produce stand

The Johnson Home mission is simple: to encourage others to take back traditional skills and offer the local community homemade and homegrown alternatives. Turns out my community may not be ready for those things yet. Here are 9 lessons I’ve learned by trying to offer my local community a produce stand of organic produce and homemade items for two summers in a row.

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We call ours “Farm Shelf”

Our roadside produce stand is affectionately named “Farm Shelf” because in it’s first season, it was a shelf sitting on top of a table under the shop’s lean-to.

Farm Stand is so widely used. I wanted to be more unique.

So when I say Farm Shelf in this post, I’m referring to our mobile roadside produce stand.

Lesson 1: Organic produce isn’t valued… yet

I live in the land of spraying row crops. No one seems to know much about the toxicity of those chemicals… for the crops and the people.

Or perhaps “willful ignorance” is applied here as heavily as the herbicides.

Organic produce isn’t much of a concern for this “small, rural farming community” for the most part… yet.

Our homegrown produce may never be able to be labeled or “certified” as organic due to our proximity to commercial farm land but I know our growing practices are all organic. We do the best we can in our gardens to produce health in the soil and in the food we grow.

Lesson 2: Location matters!

Location, location, location!… is NOT on my side.

We live 2 miles off the main highway through our tiny town that’s mighty close to the state line.

Folks only travel our road if they live on it or just want a scenic tour on the back roads into the next state. Basically only our neighbors use our road.

I have new neighbors who live 1-2 miles from our house who have never traveled down my road in their 3 years of living here. Safe to say our road is definitely one less traveled. Not ideal for a roadside produce stand you’re looking to make a little profit.

Lesson 3: Marketing your produce stand is crucial

Marketing is every thing to a farm store or produce stand that isn’t in the best location.

When safety concerns keep marketing to JUST neighbors, it lessens the exposure and further marketing of the produce stand. I won’t go into detail but just know I’m not able to market widely our Farm Shelf to anyone other than church family and friends I know well.

I see now why farmers would rather farm than run social media accounts and other methods of marketing the business. It’s a lot of work to be a content creator AND be the farmer.

Lesson 4: Pinterest Pretty doesn’t equal sales

Our Farm Shelf has been more work than worth.

It got more Pinterest traffic summer 2025 than road traffic which was nice because at least that blog traffic earned a few dollars for our homestead. Read that post here.

Pretty doesn’t equal productive. I LOVED setting up the Farm Shelf each day and taking photos for social media and to use on this blog.

The aesthetic was exactly what I wanted for the Farm Shelf’s look. But taking time every morning to harvest the garden, arrange fresh flower boutiques (sold TWO the whole summer at $2-4 per bouquet!), and get the Shelf set up for photos didn’t yield the appreciation or sales from my local community that I thought it deserved.

My expectations were too high.

Lesson 5: Kids can sell anything! (Baked goods + lemonade are a hit)

Most people stopped by on Bake Sale day when the kids made fresh baked goods and we had the lemonade sign out.

Twice they offered homemade sandwiches, chips, and water during hunting season as my dad was their “angel investor” for supplies. They made a good profit because a few of the hunters were MORE than generous with their “donation”. Every one likes to support kids!

Our homestead doesn’t want to offer baked goods regularly, though. It’s a LOT of work and we know we undercharge based on the quality and organic ingredients we bake with.

Lesson 6: “I’ll stop by another day” that never comes

That weird phenomenon where everyone assumes everyone else is doing it so they don’t.

Did every passerby assume our Farm Shelf was getting traffic by others so they didn’t need to also support it? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not like no one drove by in a day… many drivers did. Many of the same people rode by daily.

Perhaps it was the scarcity of summer 2024 when the Farm Shelf was only open on Wednesdays that brought way more traffic than summer 2025 when we were open 6 days a week, weather permitting.

Maybe folks said “I’ll stop by tomorrow” and every day was “tomorrow” that never came.

Lesson 7: Produce went bad

This lesson was the hardest learned in summer 2025.

Our garden didn’t produce as well as the summer before. Mentally, I wanted the Farm Shelf to be successful to prove to maybe myself that it was so I offered produce on it that I could have preserved for my family.

Last summer I wasn’t able to preserve many jars of tomatoes or green beans. I offered everything I could on the Farm Shelf. Not much was bought, so much went to waste.

The heat blazing on the produce and eggs a few days in a row meant our pigs got quite a few lovely snacks.

Even using coolers and ice packs were no match for the heat if we didn’t change them out at least twice a day. We lost a few dozen eggs one super hot day by not changing the ice packs. Cold to warm was suspect for me so I decided to feed those eggs to the pigs to avoid risk.

I’m positive there are ways to fix this issue; however, I was not willing to invest any more money into something that quite literally made less than $50 the whole summer and fall of offerings.

Lesson 8: I wanted the produce stand to be hands-off

Produce going bad leads into this next lesson learned…

I wanted the Farm Shelf to be as hands-off as possible. This is why the hours in 2025 went to 6 days a week open from noon until dusk unless bad weather. My goal was to harvest in the morning, set it out, and forget it. Let the produce stand be SELF-SERVE.

One little problem

… heat, bugs, and literally forgetting. Okay, so that’s three problems.

The road and Farm Shelf are on the south side of our property which is where the summer sun is for 12 hours a day or more. Trying to create shade for produce meant needing to shift things and add burlap curtains and moving the cooler to shade a few times a day. It’s also the side of our property where the wind blows straight in. No trees for wind block. We had to ratchet strap the stand down using trailer tie-down posts.

Sometimes I would forget to take down the Shelf at night.

Occasionally a rain storm would could up when I wasn’t home to bring things in. Lost homemade soaps and ruined sourdough starter labels that way until I got clever with plastic boxes which took away from the Pinterest Pretty set up.

Ants got into the cooler until I started using our really nice cooler which has a better seal. The pests made nests in a few of my propagated house plants that I had to throw away. I wouldn’t feel right selling a HOUSEPLANT that comes with a family of ants too!

I learned this: a produce stand is not a set it up and forget it kind of situation! As lovely as that would be, it’s just not realistic.

Early spring days meant not much producing from the garden except herbs and flowers. We offered homemade organic granola and other baked goods plus homemade soaps.

Lesson 9: Even low balled prices didn’t help

For organically grown produce, flowers, and eggs; we had the CHEAPEST prices anywhere! We low balled our own selves and still didn’t sell much.

Have you checked even in-season organic produce at the grocery store? These cheap prices didn’t bring in the sales.

Maybe it wasn’t the odds against us…

Perhaps it wasn’t the bad location, lack of marketing, cheap prices…

Maybe it was people didn’t need what I was offering. Maybe people don’t eat radish like we do. Perhaps they’re growing tomatoes, squash, zinnias, and herbs too.

A friend on my road but at the highway sells sweet corn, watermelon, summer squash, and honey well. Maybe people want those items. But in his case, I DO think location is a big helper. Just like my friend with the flowers in the coffee shop.

It’s been suggested to ask a property owner on the highway can I set up a few days a week. Not an option. Not only do we homeschool year round but we tend our garden and have other responsibilities around our homestead. This is why the idea of set it and forget it is appealing.

Know what you’re up against but try it anyway

I don’t share our produce stand woes to turn anyone off or away from creating their own roadside produce stand.

If that’s you, friend, and you’re here because you want to learn more about starting a produce stand, PLEASE try it! Just don’t go broke investing upfront only to find it’s not what your community really wants. Start simple with a table and tent in the front yard or perhaps up-cycled materials to create a free or inexpensive stand.

To be fair, I just believe the odds were stacked against us mainly being location and lack of marketing ability. Our people are out there! I just can’t reach them yet in this season and there are things our family isn’t willing to compromise on to make our Farm Shelf take off.

I believe it is important work to be of the few who produce quality, homegrown foods for your community.

What if the goal of the small farmer was to feed their small, local community? If we had those types of farmers all over, we’d need not depend on the grocery nearly as much!

If you want to start your own farm stand or roadside produce stand, be sure to check with your local ordinances to see what you can or can’t do. Or don’t. Choice and consequences are yours! 😉 I won’t say which I’ve chosen to do for our roadside farm stand…

The future of Johnson Home’s Farm Shelf in 2026

What’s in store for Farm Shelf in 2026? Not sure right now.

Spring is on the horizon and part of me wants to give it ONE MORE GO.

Another part of me feels guilty even saying “it’s a wrap!” because my husband labored many hours up-cycling our rotten decking into this beautiful cart of my dreams.

Then there’s another part of me that knows this isn’t where my purpose is… putting too much stock in trying to run a Farm Store or produce stand in the middle of nowhere.

My calling is to take care of my family, raise human babies and baby birds. The birds that will become food. The babies that will become contributing members of society and maybe, just maybe stewards of the land themselves one day. And if not, at least they’ll know the importance of raising your own food and knowing the quality of that food affects our quality of life.

What do you think?

Bold question to ask the internet readers… but what do you think of this? Do you have a farm stand? What’s your experience been?

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