The Outerbanks is not a region synonymous with hills. However, in the quaint village of Duck, there are a few to be had. And this past weekend we conquered one particular hill. Syd and I had the pleasure of installing our first legitimate client's garden. By legitimate I mean that: They were not a member of our family. They were not coerced in any way, and they found out about us through our marketing material.
Because I'm pushing thirty (still scared of the interwebs), and because I still don't have a facebook account, and because it's not my yard, I will not divulge the particular hill--because that would be creepy. I will however say that the hill overlooks the sound. We had to park the Exxon Valdez (that's the garden truck) in the cull-de-sac because, well, it leaks oil like the Exxon Valdez. I understand that the fact that an organic garden installation business drives a gigantic diesel truck that leaks oil like it's its job is a little ironic, but we plan to run it on vegetable oil, and besides, that is another blog topic. The garden was located down by the water. I'd say it was a sixty or seventy foot drop--no descent--in about two hundred yards. A typical garden requires the removal of approximately ten wheelbarrow loads of sod, and the delivery of twelve to sixteen wheelbarrow loads of soil, along with about one hundred sixty pounds of peat moss. All I have to say is Suzanne Summers can keep her thigh master. I'm doing just fine gardening.
That was number one. Sunday brought two more gardens. not quite as strenuous, but fulfilling all the same. One of them, I don't mind mentioning is located at the Outerbanks Brewing Station. Feel free to go check it out. It has no plants yet, and is not completely filled, but if you want to know what a sweet rectangle looks like, have at it. After a few frosty brews, it could look like a trapezoid, which we are totally willing to build for you.
In short: One weekend, three gardens, one of which may serve as a great advertisement. Not bad!! The workout is a really nice upshot, but I won't dwell on it, accept to say that we have a new product in the works. It's a garden for which we bring the material and you build it. I'll stand there and drink a twelve pack while you tote the lumber, lug the soil, and clean up the mess. I might even throw in a few complimentary encouragements like, "that's not how I would do that," or "could you grab me another beer?," or what is this, your first rodeo?" In all seriousness, we really do like building gardens.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
How The Bernie Madoff Scandal is Helping With Our Business Plan
....Or how efficiency might be worth some serious driving. We've had several requests for long distance garden installs. At first burning forty gallons of diesel fuel to install a garden seemed a little like a bad idea, and possibly immoral. But wait. Syd had to drive Pine Knoll Shores, about four hours away to install a garden for her mother. That's right we make exceptions for family. After several spirited phone conversations, one alternator, one near death high speed stall, and one ulcer's worth of worrying on my part, she made it. Installed the garden and brought back a sweet recliner to boot. She also scored a manual meat grinder (circa 1968) for processing our worm food.
So, in honor of Madoff's guilty plea, we've decided to start our own pyramid scheme. Here's how it works:
If you live less than three hours away, we will build you a garden if you can sell two to your friends or neighbors (preferably next door neighbors). You don't even have to throw in the recliner. We've already got one. You should feed us and bring out fresh squeezed lemonade while we work.
If you live over three hours away, but less than five, you gotta line up three more gardens, that's a total of four. You also have to let us sleep at your house. Make us coffee in the morning and give us beer, Tylenol, and bourbon at night, not necessarily in that order.
If you live five hours away, but less than ten, you will have to sell 10 gardens, put us up for the night, take us out to a really nice dinner, rub our feet, and tell us how great we look since the last time you saw us. You will also have to furnish a doctors note for our real jobs, pack us a lunch for the way home, get a pack of pig's ears for the dog (she loves those things), and we are going to need a recliner, or some sort of apparatus that our worms will enjoy.
If you live more than ten hours away, you have to line up forty five gardens. We will install one for you. That's the demo. Then we will furnish you with Grow Your Own t-shirts, brochures, and your very own blog, and you will be our first franchisee. We will collect a reasonable percentage of your first year's profits, and the sky is the limit from there.
In all long distance garden situations, you will have to find a topsoil source, we will bring the garden box, amendments, labor and the huge truck to haul it all around.
We look forward to seeing you in your neighborhood soon.
So, in honor of Madoff's guilty plea, we've decided to start our own pyramid scheme. Here's how it works:
If you live less than three hours away, we will build you a garden if you can sell two to your friends or neighbors (preferably next door neighbors). You don't even have to throw in the recliner. We've already got one. You should feed us and bring out fresh squeezed lemonade while we work.
If you live over three hours away, but less than five, you gotta line up three more gardens, that's a total of four. You also have to let us sleep at your house. Make us coffee in the morning and give us beer, Tylenol, and bourbon at night, not necessarily in that order.
If you live five hours away, but less than ten, you will have to sell 10 gardens, put us up for the night, take us out to a really nice dinner, rub our feet, and tell us how great we look since the last time you saw us. You will also have to furnish a doctors note for our real jobs, pack us a lunch for the way home, get a pack of pig's ears for the dog (she loves those things), and we are going to need a recliner, or some sort of apparatus that our worms will enjoy.
If you live more than ten hours away, you have to line up forty five gardens. We will install one for you. That's the demo. Then we will furnish you with Grow Your Own t-shirts, brochures, and your very own blog, and you will be our first franchisee. We will collect a reasonable percentage of your first year's profits, and the sky is the limit from there.
In all long distance garden situations, you will have to find a topsoil source, we will bring the garden box, amendments, labor and the huge truck to haul it all around.
We look forward to seeing you in your neighborhood soon.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Little Babies, Proud Parents and Why I Love Garbage
Gardening is like parenting, or how I imagine parenting to be, as I only have experience with the former. I have received several phone calls this last week from an elated Sydney heralding the emergence of a new seedling. What's more, each call might have sounded exactly the same. "Marc, we've got a new baby ______ (insert vegetable's name here). " I'm not making fun of her either, because when I return home no more than three or four hours later, I cannot help but lift open the cover on every single tray and see what my little babies are doing. The beets are my favorite. So colorful right from the start.
The only difference I can see between parenting and gardening in these instances is that when one of my coworkers gets a call from their spouse regarding their children and closes the conversation out with something like, "sure I can pick her up from school..." Everyone around looks at them knowingly as if to say, parenting is the most noble of endeavors and construction of this house can wait until you've ironed out that detail of your afternoon. When I hang up the phone beaming with the pride of a new father, I get quizzical looks. It's common knowledge that my family consists of a dog, who is usually standing right there. I don't want to explain because it's kind of embarrassing.
"What was that all about?"
"Oh, I just got news about another baby beet."
.......Silence. I can't even begin to describe the look, but it definitely has some disbelief, disdain, and genuine concern thrown in there.
The baby plants are not even the half of it. The worms. At least they have a heart of sorts. We have several worm boxes in the garage. These worms are little warp speed composting factories, and their castings offer a highly concentrated well balance plant food. Yes I have a garage full of worms and I collect their poo. These boxes are also for sale. I know that is shameless, but that is kind of the point.
It's hard to even know where to start with the worms. Unlike the plants that I feel like I actually am raising from infancy, the worms were adopted All ten pounds of them. We are talking ten pounds of actual worm here, traveling in a composted sawdust medium. Two pounds of worms in each container. That's right a pick-up truck load of writhing "red wigglers." That is their species, not some nickname.
The worms have been an adventure from the beginning. From their first night home when we inadvertently sealed the container too tight, and almost killed them all, to the realization that a household of three people and one dog doesn't produce nearly enough vegetable scraps to feed ten pounds of red wigglers. Also worms prefer their scraps chopped up, don't particularly enjoy coffee grounds, or at least not our coffee grounds, and best of all can tell you when they are not happy. If there is not enough food, air, moisture, darkness, or too much, moisture, light, or you don't hold your mouth just right when you check on them, They try to leave. It's really just like a baby crying, except you have to listen really closely if you want to hear the worms crying.
It was touch and go there for a few days. Like any new parents we wanted to do well, and as I've mentioned we almost killed the poor things through gross negligence. So, we had some guilt to cope with like any self-respecting parents. The moments that really brought Syd and I together as parents though revolved around our evening check of the boxes. Did they eat the food? Are they wiggling like they should? Was it really a good idea to try to dress that one in a pink pajamas when we can never be sure of their gender? And most importantly, why are they trying to leave??? Don't they like us? Eventually we worked out the kinks and we have three happy boxes of worms. We've sold some and actually had to split one group into two smaller ones. Yes they are reproducing!! After one night of separation anxiety, they seem to be doing well. And now, we've enlisted the help of several neighbors and it's totally normal to come home to a bag of putrid veggie scraps on the doorstep. It takes a village!
Which brings me to my next point. Garbage, or compost to be more precise. You have to have it, and when you expect to share it, you have to have a lot of it. Spent grain from the Outerbanks Brewing Station, seaweed from some unsuspecting sound front beach, horse manure, etc. by the truck load. Hauling around trash is one thing, it's the getting it that is making me seem crazy even to myself. I will do or say just about anything to get my hands on some good garbage. Or, even worse, spot some discarded material in public and think to myself, the worms would really like that. I mean people will do anything for their kids right?
The only difference I can see between parenting and gardening in these instances is that when one of my coworkers gets a call from their spouse regarding their children and closes the conversation out with something like, "sure I can pick her up from school..." Everyone around looks at them knowingly as if to say, parenting is the most noble of endeavors and construction of this house can wait until you've ironed out that detail of your afternoon. When I hang up the phone beaming with the pride of a new father, I get quizzical looks. It's common knowledge that my family consists of a dog, who is usually standing right there. I don't want to explain because it's kind of embarrassing.
"What was that all about?"
"Oh, I just got news about another baby beet."
.......Silence. I can't even begin to describe the look, but it definitely has some disbelief, disdain, and genuine concern thrown in there.
The baby plants are not even the half of it. The worms. At least they have a heart of sorts. We have several worm boxes in the garage. These worms are little warp speed composting factories, and their castings offer a highly concentrated well balance plant food. Yes I have a garage full of worms and I collect their poo. These boxes are also for sale. I know that is shameless, but that is kind of the point.
It's hard to even know where to start with the worms. Unlike the plants that I feel like I actually am raising from infancy, the worms were adopted All ten pounds of them. We are talking ten pounds of actual worm here, traveling in a composted sawdust medium. Two pounds of worms in each container. That's right a pick-up truck load of writhing "red wigglers." That is their species, not some nickname.
The worms have been an adventure from the beginning. From their first night home when we inadvertently sealed the container too tight, and almost killed them all, to the realization that a household of three people and one dog doesn't produce nearly enough vegetable scraps to feed ten pounds of red wigglers. Also worms prefer their scraps chopped up, don't particularly enjoy coffee grounds, or at least not our coffee grounds, and best of all can tell you when they are not happy. If there is not enough food, air, moisture, darkness, or too much, moisture, light, or you don't hold your mouth just right when you check on them, They try to leave. It's really just like a baby crying, except you have to listen really closely if you want to hear the worms crying.
It was touch and go there for a few days. Like any new parents we wanted to do well, and as I've mentioned we almost killed the poor things through gross negligence. So, we had some guilt to cope with like any self-respecting parents. The moments that really brought Syd and I together as parents though revolved around our evening check of the boxes. Did they eat the food? Are they wiggling like they should? Was it really a good idea to try to dress that one in a pink pajamas when we can never be sure of their gender? And most importantly, why are they trying to leave??? Don't they like us? Eventually we worked out the kinks and we have three happy boxes of worms. We've sold some and actually had to split one group into two smaller ones. Yes they are reproducing!! After one night of separation anxiety, they seem to be doing well. And now, we've enlisted the help of several neighbors and it's totally normal to come home to a bag of putrid veggie scraps on the doorstep. It takes a village!
Which brings me to my next point. Garbage, or compost to be more precise. You have to have it, and when you expect to share it, you have to have a lot of it. Spent grain from the Outerbanks Brewing Station, seaweed from some unsuspecting sound front beach, horse manure, etc. by the truck load. Hauling around trash is one thing, it's the getting it that is making me seem crazy even to myself. I will do or say just about anything to get my hands on some good garbage. Or, even worse, spot some discarded material in public and think to myself, the worms would really like that. I mean people will do anything for their kids right?
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