The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Truths...

This year has been…hard. It’s been hard, enlightening, and so much more fun than I ever would have guessed. We have laughed, cried, and sweat more than any other summer in my 30 years on earth. We have learned; we have lost; we have fallen more in love with each other as the days go on. We wanted to share throughout the year…but that seemed too hard, too much, and sounded a lot like excuses. Now that we are winding down and dreaming about next year, we are re-evaluating the entire season, where we want to go from here, and how best to refocus for the upcoming season. 

Weather: Okay, to be fair, we knew that weather was going to be a huge factor in growing things. I did not expect, however, for every weekend to either be approximately 1,000 degrees or rain. With half our garden being in another zip code, this made it extremely challenging to find a good time to drive out & work in the yard.

Health: I also did not expect one of the worst allergic reactions to the sun (blistery hives) to happen within the first week, plus Marcus developing an unexpected stomach issue (GERD). There have been a lot of doctor’s appointments, blood draws, and fatigue between the two of us. 

Murphy’s Law: It seemed like we had a LOT of things happen this summer that were out of our control - we have had some of the worst car troubles (including one of them being down for 7+ months); we have been ill; the weather sucked…the list could go on.

Adaptation: when we figured out that the vegetable side was going to be lackluster this year, we had to adapt quickly and began to learn how to make jams, jellies, and baked goods. This was without really planning anything - we had no outline, no idea of what it would be like, and no idea how to sell them. Turns out, we liked baking/making jams & jellies, almost as much as we liked being in the garden. Who knew? 

Time Constraints: I will be the first person to say that I struggle daily with time - things I think that should take five minutes often take hours, and vice versa. So, it was a huge surprise to me that Saturday Morning Market - something that I thought should only take us about 5 hours on Saturday and MAYBE four hours the week before to prepare for ended up taking 3 days to prep and wiped out our entire Saturday - counting in the travel to and from, we were getting up earlier than we were during the week! 

Cameron’s Farmer’s Market was an absolute delight - from leadership to the other vendors, everyone was so nice and welcoming. We made a lot of friends there, and are very thankful to have gotten a chance to sell next to such lovely people. 

So, Casey…what’s that mean going forward? We don’t know. We have learned SO much from this year, and we are excited at the possibilities for next year. We are finishing this year with

• September 21st - Cameron Farmer Market

• September 29th - Headlights and Highbeams Car Show - Castle Bridge Event Center

• October 5th - Cameron Farmer Market

• October 12th - Cameron Farmer Market

• October 19th - Cameron Farmer Market

• December 21st - Jingle Mart - Pony Express Community Center

This is not all - we are still working on setting up a few more vendor shows before the end of the year. As for what next year holds, I believe we will be moving towards vendor shows and selling a little closer to home, with a few stops in Cameron of course! 

We appreciate everyone who has joined our journey so far, and look forward to all the exciting things to come. Stay tuned over the next several months to see what the future holds for Peachie Lou Farms!