FarmSpam

I'm getting a pitch for some new thing pretty often recently. I'll run down a couple of them:

Your website can be on TV! Ramon Chevalier called and said he was a producer for Living In Style and wanted to talk about a program segment called Innovative Online Solutions; that my website interested him. He gave a number of 561-995-5352, x 133.
Their website is probably here.

What's funny about this is that I don't have a website for my farm. This blog is as close as it gets, and it really doesn't seem to be something that matches anything that they list on their site. So what are they after?

Unfortunately for my budding stardom, this is a pretty common pitch. If you can spare $19,000 (or $5900, or $3900) you too can have your own cheapo infomercial produced. They'll claim it's seen on "any or all" of a variety of networks. So they might play it once on a satellite tv station that no one subscribes to.

Folks who send a long email claiming to "eliminate the middleman between the farmer and the consumer" -- apparently by becoming the new middleman between farmer and consumer. that's the pitch from profarmproduce@hotmail.com, excerpt from the pitch below:
"... My brother and I were sick of the way we saw farmers get treated in this industry. They did all the hard labor all year around, and then the fruit warehouses and retailers controlled the price market.
Last year we decided to take matter in our own hands and start our own wholesale company in the Portland and Vancouver area..." They'll even sell you their product and allow you to mark it up and sell it to consumers. Isn't that called "retailing"?

A good one is a group of folks who send realistic looking cashiers checks in amounts over what is owed on a purchase. So they'll purchase $100 worth of stuff, and send a check for $500 or $700, and then an email asking that you just cash the check, subtract what you're owed, and send the balance back to a western union account. Sometimes they even offer to let you keep $200 for your trouble. Quite generous of them. Of course the check is bad and will bounce if you try to deposit it, but they sure look real. Embossed paper, watermarks, different colored inks. Pretty darned official.