Shannon Yarbrough's Blog

Last summer, when we first started thinking about having a booth at the farmer’s market, we knew from day one we wanted to focus on herbs. I also thought selling vegetable plants might be a good idea, so when February rolled around this year, I had seeds of all kinds ready to be planted! We’ve been patrons at our local markets for years and noticed there’d always been a lack of plants in general, so we wanted to fill that gap. But this being our first year, I still didn’t know what to expect.

The good thing about herbs is that you can tend to them year round, especially if you set up an herb garden on your kitchen windowsill. You can purchase fresh herbs to be used right away for cooking and canning, or you can plant them outside in your garden to enjoy through the summer months. There are several herbs that are perennials that will come back year after year if you care for them right. Or you can plant them in containers for patio gardens and dry them at the end of the season.

Vegetable plants are a different story! First, I planted way too many winter/spring crops (lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips, radishes). Our market opened the last Saturday in April. There was a “winter market” for one Saturday in March, but people didn’t have their gardens ready then and weren’t even thinking about planting. What did I sell the most of in March? Packs of seeds!

By the time May rolled around and the market was in full swing, people were in summer mode and wanted things like pepper and tomato plants. Thankfully, I’d planted those too! But after about 3 weeks, I was practically giving away the winter/spring plants just to find homes for them. AND…every week that goes by is one less week those plants are in the ground, and yet, they continue to grow! Their window of production gets smaller and the weather is only getting hotter.

Also, once the market opened, we discovered EVERYONE had plants! There were flowers everywhere! There still weren’t a lot of herbs, but one vendor was selling tomato plants that were already a foot tall. I made some adjustments with pricing and even started selling plants on Facebook Marketplace just to move some of that inventory. Thankfully, that’s where I finally got rid of all of my tomato and pepper plants. But the one thing that we continued to sell the most of each week was herb plants!

I did dabble in some flowers, and quickly learned that thanks to a devoted customer base we built up just after a few weeks that I probably could have sold even more. That gave me high hopes for the summer, when I intended to plant lots of sunflowers to sell. I planted 80 pots in April. We started taking them to market in June, and we sold all of them in about five weeks.

But then I planted several kinds of pumpkin plants in May thinking they’d be a big seller come June. Nope. And pumpkin plants grow fast! Again, the window to sell them is small just because of the health of the plant, even though it does take 3 months for a plant to produce a mature pumpkin. We tried the same thing with several kinds of melon plants and saw the same result.

It’s July now, and we’re probably one of the few vendors that still has plants to sell. Mostly herbs, but they continue to move well. Thanks to my background in retail (and my business degree), I’ve already planted things for September and October though the pumpkin plants were a failure. We wanted to be “out of business” on plants by the end of July, and it looks like we are right on target. We have other things to focus on for August, and then will move back into the plant business with mums come September.

But, this is our first year! I keep reminding myself of that. This whole endeavor has been a huge learning process. And who’s to say next year, no matter how much we plan, will be totally different. But that’s the fun of it, right?

So, if you are thinking about wanting to run a booth at your local farmer’s market next year, start planning now! Here’s a quick list of some tips that might help you:

What are you going to sell? Plants? Crafts? Baked goods? Visit your market and find that gap that will set you apart from the rest. As I mentioned above, for us, that was live herb plants and those have always been our biggest seller every week.Invest in business cards. Set up an email address. Set up a Facebook or Instagram page. And invest in good signage for your booth! It’s Marketing 101, but it works. We pass out business cards all the time and tell people to email us their requests. We usually have several items set back every week for customers who reach out to us. It makes them happy and turns them into repeat customers. And a good sign at your booth lets customers know what you are all about.Keep good records! Track your spending. And also track your sales so you’ve got a good idea of what’s selling and what’s not. I even set up a fancy Excel spreadsheet where I keep tracking of everything we spend and make.Speaking of tracking your spending, set up a sole proprietorship or an LLC and register the name of your business with your state. It also won’t hurt to set up a Tax I.D. so you can work with wholesalers and save money. There’s some paperwork and fees involved, but it’ll pay off.Cash is king, but think about other forms of payment. We accept all major credit cards thanks to investing in a Square reader ($300). We also have Cash App, Zelle, and Venmo set up. We don’t have very many mobile app sales each week at the market, but we do have several credit card sales each Saturday. But I’ve discovered Facebook Marketplace users prefer mobile app payments. Think ahead! From Day One, I knew what our focus was going to be each month. And since we were selling plants, I had to think about when to plant them so those particular plants would be in season and customers could plant them at the right time. It didn’t always work out (hence the pumpkin and melon plants I mentioned above), but at least I tried. And since I’ve kept track of everything, I know what to plant more of (and what not to plant) next year.Plan for special events. Does your market hosts any special events or festivals? Ours has a strawberry festival, peach festival, salsa festival, and pumpkin festival. For the strawberry festival, we brought strawberry plants and had a special display and sign just for them. We sold out!Don’t be afraid to diversify! I mentioned Facebook Marketplace above. Had I not started selling plants there, we’d probably lost quite a bit of money in vegetable plants. There were some days where I had four or five customers stop by in one day to pick up plants. To date, I’ve made just as much on Marketplace as I would have in about five weeks at the farmer’s market alone, and our market is only open on Saturdays from 8 to noon.Be prepared to educate! People have lots of questions and want to have a pleasant experience at the market. Not only do we love growing and selling herbs, but we also love teaching people at the market how to take care of them and how to use them. Finding that connection and sharing your passion for what you are selling is contagious and will create long lasting relationships. We have repeat customers we’ve seen again and again just because of our willingness to talk to them and teach them how to care for their plants. They’ll come back and whip out their phones to show us pictures of their gardens. We’ve even had several “keep the change” customers who have tipped us for our knowledge.Have fun! As I said in a previous post, I’ve had as much fun running the farmer’s market booth as I did as a writer or stand up comedian. I look forward to it every Saturday. I’m usually awake before 5a.m. like a kid on Christmas day. And I always hate to see the end of another Saturday roll around. When it stops being fun, I’ll find something else to reignite that passion.

I haven’t posted anything here in over two months, and there’s a good reason for that! Since the last Saturday in April, I’ve been running a booth at our local farmer’s market. And I actually started planning for it three months earlier. I posted about the planting process back in February. The market opened on April 27th, and it feels like it’s been non-stop ever since even though the market is only on Saturdays from 8am to noon.

We love going to farmer’s markets every summer but noticed a lack of vendors who sold herbs. We love growing herbs, but always purchased them from local nurseries. Our love of fresh herbs is what sparked the idea to start our own booth at the market this year. So, herbs have been our focus. As you can see from the photo, we also ventured into flowers and vegetable plants.

It’s been quite the learning experience and has definitely put my years in sales and service (and my business degree) to the test! There was a point early on where I was afraid we didn’t have enough plants, and then weeks later I feared we had too many! Today, we’ve reached a happy medium because we wanted to be running low on plants by July due to the excessive heat.

So what are we going to sell the rest of the season (the market runs through the first Saturday in November)? Yep, we planned for that too! We sell dried herbs and tea blends as well. And we are venturing into baked goods that utilize our herbs, along with herbal vinegars and oils. Here’s a picture that shows our dried herb and tea table that we’ve already had at the market next to the plants.

The plants won’t go completely away for long though. I’ve already planted fall flowers for September and October. We’re selling sunflowers and pumpkin plants now. It’s fun to see what sells week to week, and even more exciting when you don’t have a lot left to pack up at the end of each day.

It’s been a lot of hard work – early mornings to pack up the car, temperatures close to 100 degrees, rain – but we’re already planning to do it again next year. We’ve been keeping track of our expenses and our sales, and we even track our profit margins. I’ve even been selling plants on Facebook Marketplace just to move extra inventory and make some money through the week. Who would have thought crunching all of these numbers and doing all of this extra work to run a side hustle would excite me? But it actually does.

It’s not just the sales and the money. Connecting with people at the market has been a fun experience. We’ve met so many nice people and even have a clan of repeat customers that come to see us each week and hang out. I love sharing my passion for gardening with others and teaching them how to care for plants and how to use their herbs.

Gardening is a passion that’s in my blood and I think that sharing that passion with others comes from my father. I even pay homage to my dad by putting a picture of him on the table each Saturday. It’s nice when people ask about it and I get to share his story. He would have loved to have been at the market with us. I hate that I waited so late in life to really embrace this passion, but better late than never, right?

Two weeks ago I told a friend that doing this even brings me as much joy as doing stand up comedy or writing did, and I’ve been thinking about that statement quite a bit. I gave up comedy in 2019 and have no intention of returning to the stage. And right now, I’m thinking the same about writing. When I’m passionate about something, I really give it my all. As an author, I’ve always had trouble connecting with my audience. You don’t always get that instant gratification or feedback because you aren’t always present; you rarely know who your readers are. By growing plants and sharing them with others, I feel like I’m making a difference. I feel present in that world. And right now, that’s a nice place to be.

My last couple of posts in February were all about the seed and planting project I’ve undertaken this year in our basement. In year’s past, we always bought seedlings from local nurseries for our garden, but this year I’ve decided to attempt to run a booth at one of our local farmer’s markets! I’m focusing on selling plants – both vegetables and herbs – and also dried herbs and some other homemade items.

Growing up, my father had a huge greenhouse in our back yard. It was one of those arched-looking ones you see at nurseries made out of white PVC pipe and covered in plastic. He raised thousands of tomato plants. He sold some of the plants, but planted acres of them and then sold the tomatoes (and gave a lot away). I was too young, then, to really care about gardening, but it’s definitely in my blood. Since February 10th, I’ve spent several hours every weekend planting, transplanting, and preparing for the market.

Here’s how we started:

Those bottom shelves are packed with extra pots and other farmer’s market supplies. It was obvious, I was running out of space and fast. I ended up buying two more rolling racks – one for more plants and the other just for supplies. Soon, we’d collected enough extra flower pots that we added ANOTHER rolling rack just for other random supplies for the market. Yep, five shelves total. And I could probably use another, but it’s now spring so I can move plants outdoors instead.

Here’s how the plants looked after I added another shelf:

Having the extra space really eased some of the worry. I was concerned about where all of these plants were going to go because they were growing faster than I expected. Lesson learned not to plant so soon if I decide to do this again next year!

But the extra shelf required more lighting. The extra plants required more trays and containers. As you can see, I was also able to expand the growing space just by moving the extra supplies to the bottom shelves only. I would put plants down there too, but I have cats.

Here’s a pic of how the third shelf looks today:

It’s been a fun learning experience, and I keep learning more every day. When I’m not watching YouTube videos about how to make my own compost, I’m reading up on germination times for various seeds, or thinking about what I’m going to plant to sell in June and July. So, I thought I’d share a list of some of my favorite finds and other various items that I’ve used, including the lighting system and the shelving, if you are interested. All of these items were purchased from Amazon:

Growing Trays with Tools

Plastic Plant Cells with Lids

Heating Mats

3″ Single Peat Pots

Seed Cell Peat Trays

Variety Seed Packs with Peat Pots

Barrina 4′ Light Kit

Rolling Shelving Unit

In anticipation of the growing season, and wanting to offer some unique plants at the farmer’s market this year that our nurseries here in St. Louis don’t offer, I recently became obsessed with a company called Seed Needs. They have an awesome website full of all kinds of useful information. Plus, their seed packets are beautiful. They also sell on Amazon if you prefer to purchase there. You can sign up for their newsletter and get a $5 coupon. There’s chances to earn points for their rewards program on their website as well.

Here are some of my recent purchases that I can’t wait to plant:

St. Johns Wort has all kinds of medicinal benefits, and it produces beautiful flowers.

Borage was the top plant on my list that I made last year of things I wanted to plant this year. Pretty flowers. Great taste. I’ve never grown it before or tasted it, so I’m very excited about this one. I purchased the blue.

We had a lot of luck with sunflowers in the garden last year with just a simple pack I bought at the hardware store. When I saw this red variety on the website, I knew I wanted to try them.

I’ll be sure to share photos later on of how everything is growing.

Earlier this month I started planting seeds in anticipation of the upcoming garden season! Yep, I started a whole operation in our basement and planted just over 100 seeds in one weekend. In the past, we always bought transplants from local nurseries to start our garden, but I’m taking on a new endeavor this year and intend to sell plants at our local Farmer’s Market so I needed to plan ahead for that as well. This all came from one pack of sunflower seeds that I bought last year that we planted outside. They did so well that I decided to branch out and try more seeds this year. So here we are!

I wanted to focus on selling just herbs, but I decided to branch out and sell flowers and vegetable plants as well. So far I’ve planted cabbage, chives, cilantro, lettuce, beets, carrots, rosemary, lavender, celery, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and more. Since most of those are early spring crops, minus the herbs, I didn’t plant as much to sell. We’ll also transplant some to our own garden. But I do plan to plant more herbs and summer vegetables just for the market. Here’s a photo of my set up.

Not only did I buy indoor lighting just for the plants, but I also invested in these nice rolling racks. And I had to invest in potting soil, trays, heating mats and containers. The clutter you see above on the bottom shelves are all seeds, pots, containers, and farmer’s market supplies that I am planning to move to a third shelving unit which I haven’t purchased yet. There are Amazon links at the bottom of the post to all the items if you are interested.

I also decided to keep a journal of everything I planted, when I planted it, when it germinated, and growing times. I hope to also keep track of what I sell at the market.

The fun part has been watching the sprouts break through and start to grow. Almost everything has germinated within the last two weeks. There’s some stuff that will take a little longer, but it’s all been very exciting.

My father loved to garden. Growing up, we had a huge PVC arched green house in our back yard where my dad grew thousands of tomato plants. It was fun to visit the green house during the winter because he kept it nice and warm with two wood burning stoves. He’d even get up at two or three in the morning every night just to go check the fires.

Back then, my family did what they called “truck patch” gardening. Several elderly neighbors had vacant lots in our neighborhood and allowed my father to plant a garden on the lots in exchange for all the tomatoes and vegetables they could eat. My dad also sold tomatoes to local grocery stores and to anyone who stopped by.

I wasn’t much of a gardener until we bought our house in 2006. We’ve had a garden ever since. I think my wanting to take on this huge project and sell at the market comes from my father, and I like to think I’m honoring him in some way. We didn’t always get along, and I’ve had some trouble with grieving even though he’s been gone since 2016. I understand his excitement and love for doing this now though more than I ever did back home.

I’ve done I don’t know how much reading on germination times, cold stratification, heating mats, soil, seed cells, seed depth, watering, you name it. But that’s how I am with any project that I fall in love with and dive head first into. Above is a picture of my rosemary and lavender which I’m using heating mats and plastic cell lids to keep warm.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share more about how everything is growing and let you know how the market turns out.

Here’s a list of the items I purchased to get started:

Seed Trays – I purchased two kinds, but I love these the best because of their size. I can plant 50 small cells in one tray. They even include potting tools.

Reusable Seed Cells with Lids – I love these! they include planting tools, plant labels, and some nice little potting tools.

Large Peat Pots – I didn’t shop around long for these. They do the trick. I planted herbs in these larger cups so they can go straight to the market.

Small Peat Trays – These are great, and like I said, you can fit 50 cells in one of the trays above.

21 Culinary Herbs Seed Kit – I collected a lot of seeds last year from existing plants, but there were still some things I wanted to grow that I didn’t have so I bought this variety pack.

Rolling Shelving Unit – These things are huge! And a great price. I love them so much I bought 3 more just to use for other things in my basement.

Heating Mats – I admit I was worried about using these, but they have been great. No complaints. I highly recommend if you want to start summer crops or herbs that need warmer soil indoors.

Indoor Grow Lights – Another great buy! So easy to install these.

January 2024 has come and gone already! I’ve seen lots of memes on Instagram joking about how long the month has been, but it seems to have gone by quick for me. Here’s a look back on a few things:

We watched 4 movies this month:

Ant-Man 3: QuantumaniaReptileKillers of the Flower MoonRole Play

Ant-Man and Killers were probably my favs. Glad to see Killers nominated for lots of Oscars!

I also read 4 books this month:

The Lodger, That Summer by Levi HuxtonSomething Bad Wrong by Eryk PruittCapote’s Women by Laurence LeamerAlmost Surely Dead by Amina Akhtar

I read Capote’s Women in anticipation of the new season of Feud from Ryan Murphy that starts tonight, and I’m a long-time fan of Capote. The book focuses mostly on Capote’s swans, but there was some new tidbits about Capote that I didn’t know before and that I enjoyed reading.

We’ve been cleaning our basement lately and purging ourselves of lots of old blankets, framed photos, furniture, dishes, and junk. We took two truck loads to the donation center last weekend. We’ve ordered new rolling shelves for the basement which I’m looking forward to assembling this weekend.

Part of the basement project came out of wanting to start vegetable and herb seeds growing inside next month. I’ve invested in lighting, heating mats, trays, and soil. More about this project in another post.

But that’s it from here. I’m looking forward to moving on, and anxious to start growing things. How was your January?

Leave it to me to want to do Christmas crafts AFTER the holiday! I made ornaments from old greeting cards in January 2014, and some of you might remember my Putz house fascination that same year. Last week, after falling down a rabbit hole of Dollar Tree craft ideas on Instagram and Pinterest, I wanted to try my hand at making waterless snow globes.

Just some of my leftover Putz house decorations

I missed out on a lot of the after-Christmas sales since I waited until the weekend after Christmas to visit my local Dollar Tree stores. There wasn’t a lot of Christmas stuff left to choose from by then. Thankfully, I still had a plastic bin full of small figurines, bottle brush trees, and decorations that I’d collected when I was obsessed with making Putz houses, so I really only needed some basic items that Dollar Tree sells year round.

The first item was a glass candle stick which will serve as the base for the snow globe. I also picked up a bag of foam beads to use for the snow. And the main item was a plastic cloche dome with black plastic base. I searched three stores for these domes, and the last store still had plenty so I picked up six total for this project.

I also saw several craft projects online that use the small fishbowl votive holders available at Dollar Tree. My stores had two sizes so I picked up one of each. I also picked up a round, flat plate-like candle holder that I thought might work as a base. It’s a little too big to use with the votive holders, but I could probably make it work with something else.

I started by painting the black base of the cloche dome. I used green acrylic paint. Note to self: try spray paint instead! The first coat of acrylic paint does not go on very smooth due to the smooth plastic surface. The second coat was much better, but I had to wait for the paint to dry. I ended up adding a third coat, which also required time to dry. Also, the layers of paint don’t allow the dome to snap back into place very firmly. I knew I would end up having to glue it in place anyway, so I wasn’t too worried about that. While I was waiting, I went through all of my decorations to decide what I wanted to use for the interior.

For the decorations, I chose a porcelain Santa ornament that I had picked up at an antique mall for $1.00. I also chose a tall, green bottle brush tree. Back when I was making Putz houses, I invested in a whole box of various sizes of trees from either Ebay or Etsy. With some room left over, I also chose a plastic reindeer. I had a bag of these which were originally cupcake toppers. I just removed the small pick from the bottom.

Once the paint had dried, I glued the candlestick to the bottom of the base. I’m using a special super glue that’s more of a liquid instead of a gel. It’s also intended for glass. After the candlestick was in place, I glued the Santa, reindeer, and tree to the top. I let all of this sit and dry for a bit before adding the dome. Once the dome was glued down, I add some garland ribbon to the base along with a glitter-covered bottle cap and a small Santa button, all decorations left from my Putz house-building days. Here’s the finished project:

Not bad for my first one! What do you think?

Right away, I noticed the foam beads create a lot of dust. If you look closely around the bottom of the dome in front of Santa, you can see the dust on the side. Not a big problem and it just makes the dome look frosty, but I still didn’t like that so I’ll probably use fake snow going forward. I’ll probably also switch to hot glue in the future just to cut down on the wait time for glue to dry, and as I mentioned, I’ll probably also spray paint the bases.

Since the dome is kind of tall, it helps to use taller trees and figurines to fill up some of the interior space. I had painted some small twigs that I intended to add, along with a smaller tree, but by the time I started gluing everything to the base, I quickly ran out of room. I’m happy with it overall though.

As they say, it’s been a minute.

My last blog post was in July! At that time, I was energetically working on a new writing project which I ended up abandoning right around that time. And I’m sad to admit it, but I haven’t written anything since. Work got busy. The holidays came (and went). And I just didn’t feel like writing.

I still don’t.

That’s why I’ve also decided to take 2024 off from writing. Instead, I’ll be putting all of my creative energy into other projects which I’ll share here on the blog in the months to come.

I’ve been blogging here since 2007. Since then, my site has been a mosh of posts about my unpopular opinions, reading, reviews, hobbies, flowers, my writing, pets, movies, author interviews, crafts, photography, gardening, fish keeping, and more. Hopefully, 2024 may be a little more streamlined.

I’ve got a few creative projects on my mind for the new year, one of which I spent a big part of the autumn months prepping for, so that’s probably what I’ll be blogging about next year. I’ll share more in the upcoming weeks, but for now, if you’ve been a loyal reader, I hope you’ll stick around to see what’s to come.

If you’re a fan of my writing, don’t fret. I haven’t given up completely, but I won’t have a new book coming out next year.

So, I’ll see you in 2024! I hope everyone has a happy new year! If you’ve got big plans for your new year, share them in the comments. I’d love to hear about them.

This past weekend, I cashed in some of my words that I’d gotten ahead on with the current project. As you know by now, this summer I’m attempting to write an 80,000 word first draft of a novel in eighty days. That’s 1,000 words per day. For the last few weeks, I’ve been running 5 or 6K ahead of my word goal.

Today is Day 40, and I actually reached 43,000 this morning. I’m still 3 days ahead. But the reason I took a small break is because the novel is going in a direction that I didn’t expect. So, I needed some time to plot some of it out in my head to figure out what comes next. I guess my brain needed to catch up with my fingers!

Now, I didn’t take an entire day off this past weekend! I’m still writing every day, but on Saturday and Sunday I only wrote about 500 words per day. And I’m okay with that. On Wednesday of this week, I wasn’t able to write at all because of a work engagement. As I mentioned before, some days are going to be better than others. Based on my previous writing experience, I knew that 1K per day wasn’t always going to be easy.

Because I haven’t been outlining either, I also forgot some integral plot points and twists that I had written about earlier, so I finally took some time to go back and reread some of the earlier chapters. Though I didn’t want to, I ended up doing some light editing and even added a few sentences and paragraphs here and there to flush out some scenes. Yes, I know! I wrote an earlier blog post all about NOT doing that, advising you not to look back, but in this case, I needed to refresh my memory as to some scenes and important details I’d written that I wanted to utilize later.

It does feel good to be “over the hump” and halfway through to my goal, but I’m definitely getting that “stuck” feeling a lot more now than I was in the beginning. If this continues to happen, or I lose more of my word count, I’ll probably skip ahead and start working on the ending and work my way back. But for now, I’m still moving forward and hope to be a few more days ahead soon.

As the second month of my current writing project gets underway this week, I’m nearing the middle of my manuscript where lots of writers always seem to get stuck. I attended a book signing last month for a favorite author of mine, and he even spoke about how he usually has a good place to start and he knows where the book will end. And then he just has the tedious task of filling in the middle.

In the past, I’ve gotten stuck in the middle (with you?) plenty of times. I’ve even jumped ahead and written the ending and then worked by way back. Honestly, I hate doing that. I really like to write a book from start to finish, straight through, but that doesn’t always happen.

However, I haven’t had to skip around just yet on my current project which is attempting to write an 80,000 word first draft in 80 days. I’ve been writing straight through. I haven’t gone back and reread or edited anything either. But this week, I’ve definitely been getting that “stuck” feeling. So, how have I been getting “unstuck?”

I’ve been adding additional characters.

When I first started writing, the story focused on a handful of characters and I really wanted to keep the cast small. However, as the storylines progressed, I realized I needed those characters to go off and interact with others. This enriched the plot just a bit more and gave me other characters/storylines to build upon. More characters = more plot lines = more tension and conflict.

But, I’m not adding more people just for the sake of filling pages. I’m really trying to make them interesting and integral to the plot. Hey, look at the size of the cast of characters in the Game of Thrones book series! There are entire families! As I mentioned in my last blog post, it’s fun to sit down and see which characters show up when you start writing for the day.

Currently, I’m nearing 37,000 words. To date, I should be at 32K to keep up the 1K per day average. I’ve been staying ahead 5 to 6K for two weeks now which feels great. So, if you ever get that mid-manuscript slump, consider adding additional characters to give yourself new storylines to develop.