On the Side
Two 6’ folding tables, a 10’x10’ canopy, a green antique wooden stool and a folding deck chair, two 18-gallon totes plus two Wegman’s reusable shopping bags filled with ten bags each of eight flavors of granola, eight one-pint mason jars of flavor samples (only to look at, not to taste), one canister of Clorox wipes, a 16oz bottle of hand sanitizer and two weary adults.
It’s impressive what can fit in a Hyundai Kona and rattle on down the driveway at 6:25a.m. on a chilly Saturday in May.
Welcome to farmers’ market season!
For nineteen weekends between now and the end of October, Patrick and I will haul ourselves to the charming old town section of a Columbus suburb and set up in a parking lot across from an ice cream parlor to sell the granola we make in our kitchen. We’re trading the luxury of sleeping in after a week of 9 - 5 at our full time jobs for the kind of encounters and conversations that only a farmers’ market vibe can offer. Babies in strollers and cheerful dogs walking their humans from stall to stall, it’s more than worth the effort.
It was Patrick’s idea (which is hilarious in a way, since he owns the night in our relationship and I’m the annoyingly perky morning person) four years ago to take the granola recipe I’d been making for decades and tweak it into a menu of flavors that the good folks of Mt Vernon might be willing to hand over money to eat. Start small we thought, in a familiar place like the town square and see where it goes. Of course we’d have to do the whole research and development thing, so on a trip to Tybee Island several winters ago, we tested recipes in the kitchen of the condo we rented, making note of the ratio between dry and wet ingredients, baking temperatures and duration, and resolved once and for all the “stir/don’t stir after baking” debate. On the drive back home, we finalized the menu, mapped out the business plan and tried on a few names: Bowl o’ Granola (nope, sounded too much like “ebola granola”); GranolaLab (kinda scary and too synthetic-sounding for a product enshrined in the natural food genre); CrunchMasters (what is this—an exercise machine or yogurt topping??). We finally landed on Scoop o’ Granola (again, Patrick’s idea) and worked with a talented graphics designer, Allie, and the team at PrintPro in Columbus to create our current logo, run the labels and make the signs.
We debuted three flavors—Tropical, Chocolate Strawberry, and Chocolate Raspberry—displayed in a repurposed wooden drawer we spotted at the Habitat ReStore, all resting atop an old saw table covered with a cotton drop cloth flecked with natural brown fibers. We had tiny paper souffle cups filled with samples and a painted vintage wooden chair nearby in case one of us needed to sit down between sales (it also added to that made-at-home look). The smiles we wore genuinely on our faces kept any doubts under wraps (will they really like it? Really?) as the sun shifted its way across the morning sky, warming market patrons’ heads as they browsed about, looking for rubber-banded bundles of rhubarb and the season’s first strawberries. The Chocolate Raspberry drew folks in and a young father with two children in tow bought the first bag. Inspired, I blurted out “we’ll have a new flavor next week—Blueberry Almond!”. Patrick shot me a sideways questioning look as our inaugural customer replied “I look forward to trying that!”.
We sold seventeen bags that first day, and Patrick had tears in his eyes most of the way home. Since then, we’ve created over forty flavors, many based on customer recommendations, including a wood-fired bourbon maple that only rolls out in late summer.
Standing beneath our tired but sturdy canopy yesterday waiting for the opening market bell (triangle, actually, clanged to life by one of the market’s most enthusiastic volunteers), a parade of side gig memories (I’m not fond of the word “hustle” here) marched to the surface in somewhat chronological order, offering a broader view of the many ways we’ve tried to marry additional needed income with the pursuit of a new hobby or skill. To date, we have raised and sold goats, chickens and Bourbon Red heritage breed turkeys for meat, and sold eggs from our modest flock of laying hens. I’ve done take-home piecework for a large textile company, made and sold soft sculpture dolls, and steered my own consulting business. Patrick has served as a self-employed patient advocate and made commissioned wood-turned artwork while I sold antiques from two brick-and mortar stores and on eBay. None of these private enterprises (alongside our salaried weekday employment with office doors and health insurance) made us rich or eligible for retirement at an early age, but they did keep a few wolves from snarling at the door on more than one occasion and gave the gentleman who does our taxes a good deal of filing entertainment. In a world where context is a moving target, we’re both rich and struggling depending on one’s global or local vantage point.
Are we restless? Fidgety? Perhaps, or more simply, we’re just a couple of lifelong learners paying close attention to a well-cultivated creativity as we keep an eye on the home budget’s bottom line. One doesn’t always overshadow the other consistently, and we’re hopefully humble and decent enough to feel a rush of surprise when someone wants to put their hard-earned money into our hands. It’s gratitude more than laughter that accompanies us all the way to the bank most weeks. Toss in an element of enjoying being our own bosses and I think that’s pretty much the whole foundation of our extracurricular income pursuits. The stories we’ve collected as a result are more valuable than the good night’s sleep we traded to acquire them.
A few recent circumstances have put us in the hard place of taking on some new debt that has set our spines a bit straighter lately. It’s not dire but neither is it ideal. We can see the financial edge a few inches from our toes and have revised our definition of comfort. We still have enough to eat, nothing is in danger of being repossessed and the cats are excellent mousers, taking some pressure off the household grocery bill. I think we’ll be ok.
In the meantime, the house is filled with the aromas of baked vanilla oats and cinnamon. On a chilly day that won’t see a high even close to 50, that’ll do for now.
