clearing only $500 annually by raising produce for the city markets. The
study concluded that it took "the best management and a considerable
knowledge of farm practice and markets" to till such a farm to
advantage. On the smallest farms it was only the exceptional farmer who
could make more than a living without any outside source of income.[129]

Marketing the produce was a special problem of truck farming. The
vegetables had to be delivered and sold at the peak of their ripeness
and their highly perishable nature made this somewhat difficult in the
days before refrigeration. It was generally undesirable to sell through
a middleman, and therefore the farmer was responsible for personally
marketing as well as raising his produce. Moreover, the trip to
Washington was tedious and time consuming, especially in the early 1920s
when the condition of the area's roads was at a notoriously low point.
One market farmer's trip was described in this way:

He planted all sorts of garden produce and he had what you'd call a
market wagon; it was a covered wagon.... During the day he would
fill that wagon with his produce and in the evening he would hook
his ... two horses to the wagon to get to Washington. He'd aim to
get there by six o'clock in the morning when the markets opened. He
would sell his produce as much as he could [directly from the
wagon] ... to individuals at the old Center Market.... They paid a
higher price. If he had any left over he had to sell it at whatever
he could get to the people who owned the stalls.... It took him
three or four hours ... to sell his load of produce. Then it was
the next night before he came home.[130]

Conditions at the city markets were also less than perfect as large
companies tried to dump cheap produce from outside areas on the
Washington consumer. Not only did they compete with the local farmer for
the lowest prices, but they misused the stall space itself. Even when a
new market was built in 1933, this remained a problem. One irate farmer
angrily stated to the editor of the _Herndon News-Observer_ that the large
retail trucks held all the available spaces while the area farmers
"stand out doors (sic) all day and part of the night, trying to eke out
money for taxes, interest and other arbitrary costs." The streets were
filthy, he continued, and the market protection itself inadequate. "The
only pretense of shelter barely covers t