General
information about the
Homerville Wholesale Produce Auction.
Name
and address:
Homerville Wholesale Produce
Auction
9430 Spencer Rd
Homerville, OH 44235
Location:
One mile south of Homerville on
State Route 301.
Date of startup:
1997. We have completed
nine years with 20-40% growth per year.
The 2005 gross auction sales were
more than 40% greater than 2004.
Owners:
The business organization is a
partnership of F. W. Owen (manager) and Andrea Owen-Shearer
(auctioneer).
Committee:
There is a seven member advisory
committee.
Current chairman is Noah H.
Hostetler, 12139 Flemming Rd., West Salem, OH 44287
Website:
www.HomerProduceAuction.com
or
www.brightdsl.net/~fwo
Many documents that we use are available online.
This includes market reports, charts of quantities and prices, our
Guidebook, sales agreements, and photos.
Manager:
FW Owen (background dairy farming)
- cell 330/635-2287
- home 330/625-2801
- office 330/625-2369
- fax 330/625-2620
- fwo@bright.net
The Dockwalker is an important
person at Homerville:
Currently it is Menno S. Yoder.
The Dockwalker's job description:
- He welcomes buyers and growers,
- hands out both market reports and smiles,
- directs trucks to their place at the docks,
- assigns boys to load trucks and supervises them,
- reasons with people that become upset on hot days,
- and sorts out box mix-ups.
Auctioneer:
Andrea Owen-Shearer cell
330/461-2612
Paul Emerson
Order Buyer:
Ken Baumhardt - cell 440/225-0882
Cost 2.5% with a $5 minimum.
Building:
Open, clear span, pole
construction,
size 325x60 feet with over 500 feet of loading
dock,
and more than 24,000 sq. feet of concrete.
There is a
two-lane drive through inside the building.
Volume of Sales in 2005:
Our policy is that we do not
announce gross sales.
However it is a large amount, and has a
significant effect in the community.
Growth since 1997 has been 20-40% per year.
% Local Grown Produce:
Over 99% local. Any produce
grown in Ohio is considered to be local.
% Organic Produce Sales:
We have two organic
sections. One section for Certified and another for
Exempted(<$5000). Organic sales are 3-5% of the yearly gross.
Amount of Acres Farmed When
Started:
This was never surveyed.
The manager's guess is between 50 and 100 acres.
Amount of Acres Currently
Farmed:
This also has never been fully
surveyed. It is expanding rapidly.
Probably hundreds of acres. 479 growers sold produce here in
2005. Could they have averaged over one acre each? Very
likely it's far more.
Amount of Growers When We
Started:
We started with about twenty
growers. Only two had much experience with commercial vegetable
production.
Amount of Growers Currently:
479 growers sold produce at
Homerville in 2005.
Of that number 95 growers sold 75% of the
gross.
Many sold between $20,000 and $50,000 each.
Who are the buyers?
We had 1162 different individual
buyers in 2005.
Of these, at least 184 are thought to be
resellers (having bought $500 or more).
Of the 184, the typical buyer is a "Farm Marketer" at the edge of
Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Wooster, Mansfield, Elyria, and Lorain.
Many are from deeper into the Cleveland metropolitan area.
Other buyers are grocery stores, small chains, and restaurants.
Occasionally a bigger chain will buy a load.
We attract a large number of
table lot buyers and many tourists.
We had 90 lineal feet of
table lots tables in 2005 and that was often double-stacked.
Dates, times, and sale order:
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Table lots 5:30 PM
Large lots 6:00 PM
Usually selling with two auctioneers at opposite ends of the building.
Sale order:
1. Drive through
2. Bins and Pallet Lots (full pallets)
3. Carts (2-10 boxes)
4. Pecks rows
5. #2 produce
6. Non-produce (boxes and other farm related)
82 produce auctions were held
during 2005.
We emailed and faxed over 8200 market reports.
We said "SOLD" 34,922 times in 2005.
We sold 609,798 items by the count in 2005.
Market Report:
Market reports are published
after each auction.
We will send market reports to anyone in the world by email, and to
anyone in Ohio by fax.
Please send a request to join the list to fwo@bright.net.
History:
Two local dairy farmers happened
to have
a conversation about starting a produce auction while attending a
pasture walk in May of 1995.
This conversation led directly to the organization of the Homerville
Wholesale Produce Auction.
About half of the original Homerville auction growers were Shiloh
Mennonites.
The other half were Amish from Homerville and Ashland.
Several years later, Blooming Grove Auction was built 26.5 miles west
of
Homerville. At that time many of our Shiloh growers transferred
to the new auction nearer their homes.
By then local Amish were ready to greatly increase production. At
the
same time many English growers, who had been shipping to other
wholesale outlets, began hauling much more produce to Homerville.
