 This is this is actually our hundredth year of family grown my great-grandparents Edwin C. Roy and his son my grandfather Chester Started the original quality gladiola gardens in the St. Anne County and Right outside Kankakee, Illinois I grow a lot of cut flowers from the local flower shops Sunflowers gladiolas, besenias, celosia. I've got a few hydrangeas Just odds and ends stuff I'll try one or two different things over over a year or two and see if that work But those are my staple crops Vegetables squash zucchini cucumbers okra some kinds of peas Hot peppers tomatoes cherry tomatoes It's all I've done all my life. I mean from daylight to dark running water Moving irrigation pipe, you know, hoeing You know weeding weeding stuff planting stuff. That's that's all I've ever done the farmers market Runs. Oh every Saturday starting in May to the end of October Tuesday markets start in June July and August and We try to try to keep stuff planted to have new plants going all the way To the to the end of August is is my planting time from March to August I usually have a I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of repeat customers customers that come week-in week-out all through the season and Typically, there's a line in my booth One thing I do with all my produce all my flowers all my vegetables They're picked within usually 24 to 36 hours of each market day I know vendors that pick two three or four days before the market day and try to put it in a refrigerator Keep it everything. I Don't do that. I want my quality product If people buy from me, they know my stuff's gonna be fresh You don't make money at the farmers market by selling somebody a basket of squash today and they never come back You sell them a basket of squash and a quart of tomatoes today and you do that for 26 weeks in a row And that's the only way you're gonna make a living doing that what I do, you know what I've always said, you know I'm a typical farmer. I said I pray a lot pray for rain pray for dry weather play for me to get the crops in the ground but out here after the first two or three years I would I Be worried because if I was picking something I just didn't have enough stuff to go to the market and I finally realized that that's not what it's about that I decided a long time ago that God just give me what you want me to have, you know, I'm blessed I just that's you know, if you don't keep your priorities straight and keep your faith in God and what you're doing then You know, you're doing it for nothing. I made myself more or less a promise that I was going to try to hit a hundred years and this is it this is a hundred years and My wife's tried to get me to cut back my parents have tried to get me to slow down and Everything else. So I don't know. Will I cut back? Will I slow down? I you know, it's it's almost time to start enjoying the grandkids and in the life itself Instead of trying to have heat stroke It doesn't matter what you do in life. If you don't enjoy it, it's not worth doing and that's that's why I've always continued to do what I did