Creating Our Farm Stand
It was The Covid year, 2020. Yep, when everything shut down. I would finally have lots of flowers for the first time. But now, how to sell them? So being shut down, of course, became the perfect time to take on a project I had been planning.
If our flower farm was to succeed, we needed a farm stand. Preferably a mobile one; if I needed to go to the farmer's market or an event, it could tag along.
I had located a broken-down truck bed on Craig's List and my honey & I drove 100 miles R/T to pick it up. Luckily the tires were functional!
Jim scavenged around the farm and found old pieces of tin and boards that he used to create the framework. I painted and he hammered. Think we spent less than $20 on new materials; It made a very interesting piece of art. An old Chevy truck bed repurposed!
Jim created shelves and backings to show my floral offerings. We soon added a backdrop as the afternoon winds quickly blew my buckets over.
When the days were over 90 degrees F, I took pity on the blooms and closed the stand.
Opening the farm stand was a place to show my products and get a feel for what my neighborhood enjoyed. I placed a tip box on the stand and everything was "By Donation ONLY". I received many sweet appreciation notes from visitors to the stand. It was wonderful to share the flowers with all that came by.
By request, I added a PayPal & Venmo account for those who did not carry cash but wanted to support the stand!
It was a pleasure to stop and chat with those who dropped by while I restocked the cart. Must say it was definitely an icebreaker!
Fast forward to 2022, I was so busy weeding, harvesting, conditioning, and transporting buckets of flowers to the wholesaler I had no time to keep up to date with the flowers on the cart. Poor things would overheat even in the shade. I finally had to send it into retirement, except when we took the flower cart somewhere for an event.
For now, it is sitting at the entrance to the farm, alerting visitors that they have found the farm!
