Memorial Day weekend is the traditional opener for farmers' markets. Here in the Corvallis area, we open about six weeks earlier than that, but still, there's a big upsurge in both customers and vendors over Memorial Day.

Saturday's market was a tremendous success, with swarms of people taking a relaxed amble through the market on a beautiful spring morning. The Corvallis Saturday Farmer's Market is set in Corvallis' Riverfront Park, which is a wonderful setting, at the edge of Corvallis' old-fashioned downtown.

The market gets better every year. Anchored by a few organic farmers who have been perfecting their craft over the past thirty years, and filled in with almost every kind of home-grown product imaginable, quality is always king. And while people in Oregon are almost ridiculously nice in general, at the market these things are raised to a new level in both customers and vendors. It's what Saturday mornings in small-town America are supposed to be.

Some farmers' markets are little more than craft shows in disguise, or feature supermarket-style product in a different venue, but this is the real deal. All the goods have to be things that were raised on your own farm. They don't all have to be edible or anything -- beeswax candles where the wax came from your own hives is perfectly okay -- but it has to be local.

Interestingly, organic certification is losing its punch. There's too much low-quality organic stuff out there these days, and every new purveyor of low-quality wares, lowers the value of the label for everyone.

(Not that I've ever been organically certified. One of my rules is, "I won't join any organization that wants me to fill out more than two sheets of paper per lifetime.")

If you haven't been to a farmers' market lately, give it a whirl. Try all the ones within range, because they very widely. It's especially good if you attend in a lazy, "It's Saturday and I've got all day" frame of mind. Throw a cooler into the back of the car so you can have lunch instead of rushing home with your purchases. Do a couple of liesurely, unnecessary things before you go. You'll live longer.

We're dropping our prices this week. There's no more room in the refrigerator, so we need to drum up some extra sales. Since there are other egg vendors at the Saturday Farmer's Market, undercutting their cheapest eggs with our cheapest eggs ought to draw in some bargain-conscious customers.

Setting prices is a screwy business. Most farmers are too insecure to do it well, and end up setting their prices too low, increasing the odds that they will fail. Just the concept of, "What's the right price?" is pretty much an imponderable: a question with so many ramifications that your mind can spin around in tight little circles forever.

So we let our refrigerator set our prices for us. The process is almost entirely brainless. It works like this: If our refrigerator is full of unsold eggs, it's time to lower prices. If there are tumbleweeds blowing through an empty refrigerator, it's time to raise prices. That's all there is to it.

Once you let the prices float, your attention shifts to more important things, namely: "What can I do so customers enthusiastically help to empty my refrigerator in spite of high prices?"

Step One is to have the best eggs ever. Life is way easier if your customers stick to you like glue and spread the news by word-of-mouth because your product is so good.

Step Two is to get people to notice. Let's face it, eggs have zero mindshare with most people. If your refrigerator is bulging with eggs, one effect of lowering your prices is to draw in some skeptics who wouldn't try your product at the old price. If your stuff is the best, some of the skeptics will become converts. Sales are the simplest way to move this process along.

Step Three is to scatter instantly grasped indicators of what you are, so people get it. Wearing overalls and a straw hat at the farmers' market, having pictures of happy hens on green grass, smiling, and not being a jerk to your customers are all good. (Don't wear clothes that feel too much like a costume, though, unless you like that sort of thing. If you go all stiff and unnatural, it doesn't help.) People have this range of mental images of what a farmer ought to be. If you happen to fit one of them, flaunt it.

But avoid slickness. If you live on a real farm, slickness tends to be outside your grasp anyway, because everything you own gets muddied, faded, and battered. Customers are aware of this on some level.