With good demand and decreasing supplies, the rising lettuce market appears to have found its place above $30.

"We've had very good prices for the last 10 days to two weeks," said Denny Donovan, sales manager at Fresh Kist Produce LLC in Salinas, CA. "Salinas, Huron and Santa Maria are all winding down, so it looks like this will hold until volume picks up in the desert."

Donovan said Fresh Kist, which pulls most of its winter vegetables from the Imperial Valley in California, won't see an increase in supplies until after Dec. 1. He said it is very difficult to predict how long the market will stay hot when a shift to a new district is taking place. Before that district starts producing, it is difficult to get a read on yields.

For the Fresh Kist acreage in the Imperial Valley, he said the fields look normal with possibly above-normal yields. If that holds true as the crews get into the field, a more in balanced supply-and-demand curve should result once December rolls around.

But Donovan said the good market has extended to most of the vegetables that are popular for Thanksgiving, including Romaine and the other lettuces as well as celery, broccoli and cauliflower.

On Nov. 11, Iceberg lettuce was above $30 f.o.b. and Romaine was headed to a similar lofty level. Broccoli and cauliflower were in the mid-teens, and celery, which was in single digits a week ago, was also trading in the $15 per-carton range.

Steve Church, president and chief executive officer of Church Bros., which is also headquartered in Salinas, said this red-hot November is capping a good run for Western vegetable shippers.

"We've had very good markets since May on our core crops of lettuce, Romaine, cauliflower and broccoli," said Church. "We've had a higher-than-normal market throughout the summer and fall."

He said warm nights and warm days have had the Salinas fields producing ahead of schedule all season, causing grower-shippers to constantly be harvesting new fields a bit early. As the coastal California seasons for the various crops wind down, this cutting of fields ahead of schedule has caught up with the industry, as there are few fields left to cut for this time period.

Church said this has caused some shippers to go into the desert acreage a bit early and start raiding from future fields, which could mean that this hot market lasts until Christmas.

"I am predicting that the market, especially on Romaine and broccoli, lasts at least through the week of Dec. 15," he said.

The longtime industry veteran said for most of the Western vegetable industry, Christmas week and the following week are the two lightest-demand weeks of the year. Church indicated that the low-demand period might finally give the fields a chance to catch up and the market could return to a more normal level.

Brian Cook, sales manager for San Miguel Produce Inc. in Oxnard, CA, which specializes in greens, told The Produce News Nov. 11 that Thanksgiving demand is always good and this year is no exception. He said there might be a bit extra demand because of the hot market for other vegetables, but that had yet to manifest itself in a rising market price for greens.

"This time of year -- from Thanksgiving through Christmas -- we sell three times more greens than at other times of the year, but we are ready for that," said Cook. "We plant every week and right now we have a very steady market."

He said the greens industry, however, may get a good boost over the next month as high prices in the other commodities convince home cooks to serve the more-affordable greens for their holiday meals.

Kale, chard, collard greens are all in the midst of a renaissance, and those items just may find some new devotees this holiday season.

"That would be a great thing for us," Cook said.