Market cred

My family has been growing cucumbers for the past 15 or so summers. Those short ones, you know. As soon as I was tall enough and able to count, I was put behind the counter at the farmers market as the talkative and friendly kid out of the three of us to sell them. That makes it so that I've been earning market cred for about the past ten years.
I got up at six this morning, we packed the cucumbers and scales at the back of my dads car at 6.45 and was on the market by seven.
What you do is put up the scales, arrange the best looking cucumbers neatly to the front of the case and then you go browsing around. You see the first half an hour before customers arrive everyone is very sly about the price they put on their products. Whether the cucumbers are gonna be 20 kr. per kg or 18. That was the case today. They might tell you that they'll sell them for 20 and that's what you're gonna price them but when you leave (and their stand is in front of you) they put up a sign saying 18. And you wonder why you get no customers.
If your product is good, and I'm proud to say ours is, you get your loyals. They know they'll always get fresh cucumbers for a good price. In a small place like Võru and Võru County, the word gets around and people come to the market and buy your stuff because their neighbours granddaughters mother-in-laws postman said it was good and that the girl selling them gave him or her 3 cucumbers extra.
At about half seven, the market is officially open. Then you sell. If there's anyone to sell to.
You find out that you're not selling because the creepy looking man in front of you has lowered the price so you do that too and sell again.
There's some characters on the market.
You get your regular old women with the flowers and the dill from their garden. They've been to the market for at least 40 years already and they have the most market cred. They could tell you by heart how much a kg of cucumbers cost on the 11th of June in 1978. They also know your grandmother and what you do on your free time. and how many boys you've kissed behind the community centre corner. They have lots of market cred, community cred and they actually have all sorts of cred, the old women.
Then you get your typical farmer with wellingtons, selling potatoes and fresh peas in pods and he usually smells of pigs or any other farm animal, too. They're not that bothered over selling anything themselves, wives and children are there for that. They usually wander around and chat to the old ladies looking for information about last Saturdays market. They couldn't make it because a pig went into labour (or maybe the wife, again) and they now have 16 piglets (and six children, big families in Estonia are still generally quite small). They have normal credit.
Serious market fish come every day, even on the days there's no market and it's raining frogs. Then they sell frogs. They appear to have cred, but mostly in the eyes of the lady who collects money for the desk you sell from because they give the lady money and lots of free goods. Most people don't like them, they always bring the prices down unnecessarily early.
Young eurofarmer couples usually selling tomatoes. They're totally harmless, come in, do their thing and leave. They have no cred because no one knows anything about them other than what they sell, not even the old ladies.
There's always the graveyard plant salesmen and second hand clothes and someone at the gates offering free kittens. They're random, no cred either.
My mum creates a completely different group altogether, she has lots of cred and it simply expands to me as well.
When you go to the market, wrap yourself in as if you were going to a skiing trip, even though it's July. Seriously cold! And there's a roof over us. And if you're going buying, not selling, take a wicker basket, it adds you market buyer cred.
I'm going again Thursday!