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Anna Ertl, whose family runs a farm in Raymond, Wis., near the Illinois border, shook her head as she watched a trickle of customers meander through a farmers market in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis. In front of her was a table with pickles, sweet onions and several dozen zucchinis. "You hear so much bad stuff in the media (about harvests), but people need to come down here and see what we have," Ertl said. "This is our livelihood. This is how we survive." Dan Koralewski, who oversees operations at the West Allis Farmers Market, said 5,000 to 6,000 customers generally show up during peak season in mid-July, but attendance seemed to be about half that this year. He blamed a combination of customer skepticism and hot weather that kept many people in the cooler indoors. Farmers markets in other Midwestern states also reported fewer sales. In Plainfield, an Indiana town of about 27,000 residents, attendance at the local farmers market is down an estimated 20 to 30 percent, said Brad DuBois, the executive director of the Plainfield Chamber of Commerce Farmers Market. Bryan Robbins, who runs the Greensburg Decatur County farmers market in Indiana, said it experienced a similar drop in attendance in recent weeks, so he started a new program for elderly customers who may be leery of the heat. Seniors can now pull up to a designated lane in the parking lot and hand over their shopping lists. Robbins or someone else will then fetch the products, allowing the customers to remain in their air-conditioned cars. "That's one advantage of being a small market in a small community," said Robbins, whose market typically draws 700 to 800 people. "Not everyone else can do that."
[Associated
Press;
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