Homemade Cakes Sell Well at Curb Markets, 1936

The Woman’s Touch or What Club Work Means to N.C. Farm Women” by Jane S. McKimmon in the October, 1936, Carolina Co-Operator

Twenty per cent of sales made on the farm women’s markets of North Carolina are from homemade cakes and the sum total realized from these sales in 1935 was $45,786. Certain women stand out as cake makers and have captured must of the town patronage.

Cakes have a real individuality which is easily recognized by the buyers. They may all be made by the same recipe but each artist gives her own particular touch to her products which makes it stand out from the crowd and brings the well-pleased customer to her again and again.

An agricultural economist once asked me why it was that women buyers seemed to pass up standardized Western hams in a grocery store and select the far less attractive looking home-cured ones. My explanation was that all good housekeepers preferred a ham cured by a well-tried formula which means good seasoning and that particular gastronomic touch which some people know how to give. There is a recognized standard of excellence in much of our home-cured meat but individuality is just as desirable in the finished product as in the expression of any other type of art which we see around us.

Mrs. Jodie Shipp of Durham County tells something of the work entailed in marketing her products. “To sell on the Curb Market,” she said, “is not the easiest job in the world and it makes Friday the busiest day of all the week. The vegetables have to be gathered, graded, and cleaned. Chickens must be dressed; butter moulded; and cakes and bread baked.

“That means rising at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning, cooking breakfast and lunch all at one time, washing dishes, making beds, hurriedly packing the market produce, and gathering flowers and perishable vegetables and fruits in order that the customer may receive them fresh with morning dew.

“The farm woman rushes to the market building and spends one-half hour setting up her table of produce, weighs her chickens, pins the price and the seller’s name on them, and weighs or measures her vegetables.

“Then she’s ready for the buyers, and for the next three hours a steady stream of customers pours into the market building in Durham and each farm woman tries to be the most tactful and the most attractive seller there that she may sell her produce.

“By 11 or 12 o’clock the marketer returns to her home, tired and worn out, but with a very happy feeling that she has done her best in providing funds for better living conditions in her home.

“The fact that the Durham Home Demonstration Curb Market in five years has climbed from the bottom to the second highest round of the ladder is something of which every curb market seller and customer is justly proud. The total sales for 1935 in Durham amounted to $27,000.”