It’s that time of year again! Drum roll please… my 2024 Rewind, a mixtape of my five biggest hits and five biggest misses.
First, the “Never Will I Evers”:
Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Window Boxes
I have tried with window boxes for several years and they are just too little bang for too much buck. Not only do the coir liners get ratty after just one season, but window boxes need way too much work in summer. I wanted something from a Bavarian fairy tale and ended up with the equivalent of a floral comb-over.
I sought pro advice and while I won’t disclose the sources, I learned that the pros use fake flowers or filler. The window boxes you see in popular magazines; that’s a weave! I’m letting window boxes go. Bye, Felicias.
Stripping
I’m putting my stripping days behind me. My house is almost 100 years old and all but 2 of the windows are original. Layers of paint are caked into each pane thicker than the makeup on any given Bravo series. I got a wild hair to give the windows in my bedroom a fresh coat of paint and repair years of damage.
As usual, I consulted the dads of YouTube for the how to. After applying my first layer of stripper, the paint bubbled up promisingly into Freddy Kruger skin, but my optimism was short lived. Instead of peeling off in neat ribbons, the paint become a sticky nightmare. I regretted starting this project with every fiber of my being. I spent hours upon hours scraping and sanding just one window. The wood underneath was pitted and splintered; and beneath it all was a yellow beige paint layer that resisted my attacks. I've seen fewer nooks and crannies in English muffins.
Lead, people. It was lead paint. Now the internet told me to call in swat teams and the EPA (do we still have an EPA?) but I just put on a mask and gloves and muddled along. The mess was tremendous and the reward was nil.
She’s Crafty
Hello, my name is Brandi and I hate crafts. I like my little home projects, but when it comes to making something arty en masse for public purchase - the bottom line is I didn’t enjoy making “stuff” and it didn’t sell well. It is very time consuming and the mess of crafting just sort of created an energy field in the house that made it hard for me to relax.
Night Shift
I enjoyed myself at the night events I went to, but I have terrible night blindness and always felt like I was taking my life into my own hands driving home on the dark rural roads late at night. I’m better on a routine with an early bird schedule. The sales made it worth my time, but craft fairs and night events weren’t my crowd, overall.
Print Media is Dead
I wish it weren’t so, but I won’t invest in print media for advertising again. I’m convinced folks only scan the police blotter for gossip; I got very little traction on my ad, which ran for weeks in my small local paper.
I also ran an ad in the agricultural bulletin. It was free, but I got the exact kind of responses you would expect for paying for nothing.
It kind of bums me out, because I have a soft spot for the days of weird ‘Zines. I’m an analog girl in a digital world for sure, but for now I’m stuck gutting it out in the rat race of social media like the other earthlings.
And now, finally. Five little victories to offset the existential dread. Bring on the dopamine!
Win #1 - Taking Credit
Accepting credit cards boosted sales and helped customers. While I personally am anti-credit card, I was limiting my business by being cash only. While I would love to bring the barter back, more folks swipe with the plastic now. Any processor or third party app is going to take a cut, but that's the cost of doing business.
I use Square, which will even send you a little swipey thing for cards. I think it’s easy even for me to use and I’ve only had positive experiences with Square (so far). I don’t use most of the features, so I can only attest to the actual moola parts of it, but taking payments and getting the transfers deposited has been a snap.
Going the Distance
Last year was my first year and I started late and ended early. This year, my goal was to make every local market and I did it. This goal seems so small that I’m almost embarrassed to share it with the world, but in the context of my bigger life, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
It was never my dream to move across the country for a front row seat to the Mississippi version of “Grey Gardens,” yet here I am, watching it painfully play out in my own family. Long story short, transitioning my grandmother from her home of 40+ years into a long term facility specializing in dementia has not been rad. I give the entire experience zero stars on Yelp and two enthusiastic thumbs down.
It’s kept me up so many nights. Given me nightmares. Left me raw and searching, standing in bare feet in the grass with my coffee cup in the morning letting the early morning birdsong wash over me, hungry to absorb some of the goodness of this universe.
Showing up for my farmers markets and business commitments became my small and imperfect way of inching forward. It felt like coming up for air after being held underwater. It’s been said before, but 80% of life is just showing up. So keep showing up.
On Writing
I have always wanted to be a writer. When I was 9, I got a used typewriter for my birthday. It was a heavy, cumbersome, metal holdover from a bygone era. It hammered out a tiny script and the “e” and “s” keys were broken off, so after I typed my masterpieces, I had to go back and pencil in the missing letters, arguably the two most popular letters in the English language.
The problem with being a writer is that you actually have to sit down and assemble the word ingredients stuffed into the pantry of your head into something sensible and digestible. It takes me a long time to write. A paltry Facebook ad might take me an hour; a blog post takes me most of the day. For a person that really dreads sitting, writing feels like torture.
Most of what I write is just for me, but I set a goal to write a blog post every month; I envisioned it as kind of a recap of what was going on on my tiny homestead that month and I met my goal, although most months, I limped across the finish line about a week late. Sometimes you just need a base hit, not everything is going to be a homerun. I got my runner on base and that counts for something.
Wee Beastie Mode
My wee beasties were a hit. I made a couple hundred plant bebes and sold most of them at my Cool Tomatoes and Hot Peppers sale - I donated remaining plants to a few community gardens and also to the Master Gardeners’ Plant Sale. We (the Master Gardeners) had our most successful sale to date and we are aiming even higher next year.
I’m probably going to lay off producing on such a big scale because it is hard to track the seedlings once they hit that growth spurt. In the future, I’ll probably just build out a grow closet or tent, but plant propagation really makes me happy. There’s just something magical about watching those tiny green leaves poking out of the dirt. The miracle of every seed keeps me coming back.
Your Vibe Attracts Your Tribe
Not everyone is going to like you, that's just life. I mean, do you really even want everyone to like you? Have you met everyone? Everyone is terrible. Don’t worry about everyone. Worry about being you, and the right people will show up.
I’ve been truly humbled by the support I received from my customers, coworkers, and community this year. They showed up to rainy markets, braved the summer heat, and recommended me to their friends. Worked around my crazy schedule and welcomed me into their homes and businesses. They shared my Facebook posts and cheered for me every step of the way.
There’s so much love in the universe, floating in the ether, you can reach out and touch it, that’s how close it is to you all the time. The world sparkles with a billion small kindnesses and each kindness is a gift. I’m grateful beyond measure.