When you hear the word “drive-through” what usually comes to mind is cars and SUVs idling in line for burgers & fries. Not so at the Weaverland Produce Auction where, instead, horse-drawn wagons often tended by small children and laden with heaps of freshly-picked fruits and vegetables snake their way slowly toward a fast-talking auctioneer. Drive-through produce auctions are a Pennsylvania Amish country innovation, begun in 1984 with the farmer-owned Leola Produce Auction. Amish and Mennonite farmers were responding to the nose-diving tobacco market and searching for other feasible crops that would help them and their children continue to farm.
While Lancaster County once grossed $25 million in tobacco sales on 12,000 acres, those days are gone, and farmers have instead turned to growing vegetables. Vegetables crops, while similarly labor intensive, are as suitable as tobacco for small acreages and can bring in sales of $5000-$10,000 per acre. Working with vo-ag teachers from the Eastern Lancaster County School District, farmers organized the first auction in Leola with help from Cooperative Extension. (Since the Amish organize their own schools, a proportion of vo-ag funds in Lancaster County are dedicated to adult agricultural education.) Growers have found this approach successful, so much so that at least ten other similar auctions have been created in Pennsylvania. These auctions help to make farming a viable option for the younger generation in Lancaster County. By taking care of the marketing and selling end of the business, they maintain farming as an income-producing activity.
Greensgrow attends the Weaverland Produce Auction in New Holland, PA, which was begun in 1998, by a group of 30 growers. They had seen the success of other auctions and wanted a similar operation in their immediate area. The number of growers who sell at Weaverland now totals in the hundreds throughout the season. The buyers also number in the hundreds and come from the immediate area and from as far away as New Jersey. Buyers are representatives of stores, markets, and restaurants, as well as local farmers who seek to add more variety to their roadside stands. The season begins a few weeks before Easter and runs through Thanksgiving, operating six days a week at the height of the season. The produce is freshly harvested that morning and arrives via horse-drawn wagon or even (very small lots) by bicycle. The morning starts with the drive-through auction, farmers driving their wagons right up to buyers waiting on platforms to inspect the heaps of sweet corn and freshly split-open melons. Then the crowd moves onto “the floor” where smaller lots of produce are bid on as the crowd moves up and down the aisles after the auctioneers. You can tell that the auction is a community gathering place frequented by regulars, where everyone is either recognized or stands out as an urban transplant. When the bidding ends, diesel-run forklifts and Amish children tossing melons two at a time make quick work of the remaining lots that need to be loaded into the waiting trucks and delivery vans. The Greensgrow trailer is a colorful member of the crowd, ready to haul a taste of the country back to Cumberland St.
(Information from New Holland News Online, Oct. 2001. “New Cash Crop Replaces Tobacco. and from Joe Weaver, Produce Buyer, Weaverland Auction.)
