49. The Covid Blog
The last three weeks of the Corona-coaster that is modern life has been an education. We’re learning a lot about ourselves and our neighbors: about patience, compassion, and privacy. Our every day has become a normalized level of chaotic, and we’re all trying to practice acceptance at our own pace.
For me as a sole proprietor farmer, I continue to have a level of liberty that many folks have been deprived of. My business has been deemed essential, and I often work an entire day without coming into contact with another person even in more normal times. Canceled meetings here and there have afforded me the time to actually operate ahead of schedule with regards to the planting calendar!
Any market gardener will tell you, at least from zone 7 north, that March is the hungriest month of the year. Nothing has been direct seeded since October, and it’s hard to have anything besides salad greens and storage carrots to sell, if you’re lucky. I’ve already shelled out for compost, seed, equipment upgrades, income taxes, and (this year), a pickup truck. April into May is supposed to be our Black Friday, when we start to get cash-flow-positive again. So the upheaval of the economy, the closing of restaurants and farmers markets: this could have not have come at a worse time.
But it’s never a good time for a pandemic. And this situation has a way of leveling the playing field of our social interactions. We know, without a doubt, every friend, neighbor or stranger we meet is going through some shit right now. So we start from there, and we move forward amicably. Hopefully with some empathy.
A business like Garden Variety Harvests has options and opportunities in a time like this. People aren’t going to stop eating, and our soils won’t stop producing simply because the world has bigger fish to fry. So it’s on us to figure out how to get our very valuable product into the hands of those who need it. Some ideas:
The global supply chains have had their hiccups. Our localized model is unique in its simplicity right now. I’ve heard countless stories of farms jumping to a delivery CSA model in response to Corona. As local producers, we can meet people where they’re at when they should #StayAtHome.
With restaurants severely restricted, our “cook at home” farmers market customer base has seen an uptick in demand, and many of the new folks aren’t used to cooking so much. We mustn’t forget that these new customers may need some help with techniques and recipes in order to make our products shine. Now’s the time to add value by educating about how our products are best put to use.
In trying times, being a local food producer is such a fulfilling daily pursuit. The demand for my product is palpable, and people appreciate the nutrition and social connection that comes from buying local and looking the producer in the eye as they do it (from six feet away, of course). Across the world, small food producers are answering the bell in the best way we can. We didn’t hope for this catastrophe, but when I started this business I dreamed of the validating day when I could be solving issues of food insecurity on a grassroots level. And that’s exactly what GVH is doing right now.