Vertumnus – printable posters of farmers' market produce seasonality

The origin of this project was me, as a casual farmers' market attendee, grossly misremembering the start date of early girl tomatoes. Ironically, I still haven't achieved that goal, because I couldn't find a suitable source with varietal level granularity online. I'm half dreading a "Why didn't you check X?" comment and discover there's some perfect local varietal data source, but that would really be the best case scenario.The poster is customizable per crop, and the pictures reposition heuristically. There's only two regions, SF and NY, with very different source data for each. See https://vertumnus.fyi/about/sources for methodology.A static poster is not the greatest form factor for a schedule with annual variation, and this whole project was a non serious side exercise. See https://vertumnus.fyi/about for more.The project was coded in a single 731 prompt Claude Opus 5 session over 22 days within a 46 day period, from July 20th to September 2nd, 2026. I've published the entire transcript, searchable and organized by chapter, at https://vertumnus.fyi/about/transcript. A write up, with the stuff that Claude was good at and its repeated code quality shortcomings, is at https://vertumnus.fyi/about/ai.

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28

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medium confidence

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A printable poster showing when specific produce varieties are in season at farmers' markets in SF and NY.

The pain

Farmers' market shoppers don't know when specific tomato varieties or other produce will be available, leading to disappointment or wasted trips. The creator couldn't find varietal-level seasonality data online.

The gap

No centralized, detailed source exists for variety-specific produce seasonality at the farmers' market level. The creator filled this for two cities with manual data collection and heuristic image positioning.

Build angle

This started as a personal project to solve one person's frustration. The creator explicitly states it's 'not serious' and acknowledges the poster format is poor for annual variation. The business model is unclear—selling posters? Licensing data? Neither has obvious unit economics or distribution.

Strengths

  • Solves a real micro-problem for farmers' market enthusiasts
  • Transparent about methodology and data sources
  • Documented the entire AI-assisted development process
  • Niche audience exists (farmers' market regulars in two cities)

Risks

  • Extremely limited addressable market—only two cities, only farmers' market shoppers
  • No clear monetization path; printable posters have low willingness-to-pay
  • Static poster format doesn't match the problem (annual variation requires updates)
  • Data collection is manual and doesn't scale; no sustainable data pipeline
  • Farmers' markets themselves could provide this information more credibly
  • Creator's own lack of conviction ('half dreading', 'non serious side exercise') signals this isn't a real business
  • No evidence of customer demand beyond the creator's own need

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