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Clare
True Blue Farmgirl
2173 Posts
NC WA State
USA
2173 Posts |
 Posted - Aug 03 2005 : 12:37:21 PM
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Here's an intersting article from my local paper about some pretty industrious women... You might get some ideas for your own dreams too. (And age has NOTHING to do with it!  Here it is:
Story - Monday - August 1, 2005
Librarian finds her dream in Cashmere produce stand
Kim Lohse, co-owner of Farm House Produce has been in business in her storybook-like cabin for two months and business is better than she expected.
By Dan Wheat, World staff writer
CASHMERE — It’s seems unlikely — leaving the position of part-time college librarian to run an upstart roadside produce stand for no pay.
But it fits Kim Lohse’s dream of a job dealing with food, farming and rural life.
Lohse has always been a gardener, a canner, a cook and loved anything to do with farms. Her hero was her grandfather, Will Sauer, a cattle rancher and orchardist in Nevada’s Washoe Valley, outside Reno. Weekends there as a kid were a treat.
So when Anne McClendon and Gale Bates, owners of Cashmere’s Earth Song Farm, needed someone to own and operate a produce stand with them, Lohse jumped at the chance and counted on the “safety net” of her husband’s job as a U.S. Forest Service fish biologist.
“I’ve been on a high since the beginning of May,” she says. That’s when FarmHouse Produce opened on land owned by the adjacent Anjou Bakery on Old Monitor Highway, east of Cashmere. It’s a highly visible spot to the thousands of motorists passing daily on Highway 97/2.
She is in her element, even though the stand is just 10-by-16-feet and it can get crowded and warm inside.“I love being surrounded by food and flowers, meeting people and talking about food,” Lohse says. “I love turning people on to a vegetable they’ve never eaten before.”
Like shallots, a member of the onion family, and sorrel, a salad green with a bit of a lemon taste.
Her partners share in such delights.“It was the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year and there were five of us (partners), so we all thought that was a good omen,” McClendon says of the day FarmHouse Produce opened.
Anne Herrmann, Sunnyslope, and Michel Brockington, Dryden, round out the partnership. Herrmann volunteers at the stand and Brockington makes produce labels.
FarmHouse is something like a mini farmers market, just with longer hours. Earth Song Farm supplies about 60 percent of the vegetables, plus flowers. More veggies come from Two Rivers Farms in Leavenworth. A dozen or so other local producers supply fruit, berries, cider, jam, honey and soap.
Some of the producers sell their goods directly to FarmHouse Produce and some sell through it on consignment.
Most, but not all, of the produce is organic.
The afternoon of July 15, Willy Stockman, Leavenworth, brought in pint cartons of fresh blueberries and red raspberries.
“Oh, nice job,” Lohse, said, eying the luscious berries.
“Got a price?” she asked.
“Whatever, $2.50 (per pint),” Stockman replied.
Lohse paid him $3 a pint since the berries were organic.
Moments earlier, Phyllis Asman, Sleepy Hollow Heights, bought $11.88 worth of apricots, peaches, dried apples, carrots, garlic, plums, zucchini and squash.
“I love the Anjou Bakery, saw this little stand and decided to stop in. This is wonderful. This is better than the farmers market,” she said.
Business has been good with anywhere from 15 to 40 customers daily, Lohse says. Advertising is word of mouth and highway visibility.
“Their business is great. It’s a great outlet for local growers,” says Heather Knight, who owns Anjou Bakery with her husband, Kevin. The proximity of the two businesses undoubtedly helps both, she says.
Lohse says she likes promoting organic produce and being part of sustainable agriculture.
“We all have to make money, but that’s not what’s motivating us,” Lohse says. “We’re doing it out of a spirit of caring about what we do, helping small growers and giving people a sense of where their food comes from.
“Good service, quality products and treating people well is the heart of doing business and the bottom line takes care of itself.”
__________
At a glance
Name: Kim Lohse
Age: 58
Born and raised: Reno, Nev.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in anthropology from University of California at Davis in 1969; master’s degree in library science from University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., in 1977.
Background: A librarian for about 30 years, 12 of that in Canada and almost 11 at Wenatchee Valley College; taught English and lived almost two years in Europe; board member of the Chelan-Douglas Land Trust.
__________ FarmHouse Produce
Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays
Location: Highway 97/2 at Anjou Bakery, east of Cashmere
Temprary closure: FarmHouse Produce has been temporarily closed the last couple of weekends due to heat overloading the cooling system of a refrigerated produce display case. Owners expect to reopen this Friday. Call the stand at 433-4331 to find out for sure.
__________ Treading different sales paths
By Dan Wheat, World staff writer
CASHMERE — Anne McClendon and Gale Bates have raised organic vegetables and flowers at their Earth Song Farm since 1999.
It was their idea to start FarmHouse Produce.The women sold their produce through farmers markets the first year or two they owned their farm, north of the Chelan County Fairgrounds.
But they found it difficult to get their produce harvested, loaded and to the markets in time for early morning set up, McClendon says.
So they started a subscription service where customers paid for regular deliveries.
That allowed McClendon and Bates to deliver when they were ready. Each had a route of Thursday deliveries of 10- to 15-pound boxes of produce that went to 25 families, sometimes more.
But after four years, McClendon decided deliveries took too much time away from gardening. They dropped the deliveries and got partners to open FarmHouse Produce this season.
“The idea (of the farm) was to produce organic food for the community, as many people as we could serve,” says McClendon, 62.
Bates, 74, misses the deliveries and regrets that some of their former subscription customers no longer get their produce because they can’t make it to the stand.
The two have known each other since their Cashmere school days.
They operated Inn-Tenders from 1996 to 1999. It was a Leavenworth business filling in for bed and breakfast owners when they were gone.
*****
**** Love is the great work - though every heart is first an apprentice. - Hafiz
Set a high value on spontaneous kindness. - Samuel Johnson****
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Edited by - Clare on Aug 03 2005 12:37:46 PM |
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Business idea
