Hey, all! Once again for the 6th Weekly Wednesday in a row we’ll be sharing more of what you can do & what we’ve done to STAY SAFE, stay financially smart, and support (mostly 1 person) small businesses We all know that this pandemic is two pronged:
1) It is a terrifying virus that is largely unknown and can spread in a plethora of ways. We fear for our loved ones’ literal LIVES- especially those who work in healthcare & their immediate families (like Jenny’s 7 months pregnant only sister, Jenny’s brother-in-law, Jason’s sister-in-law with their 7 month old/ our first ever niece, & more).
2) It has been wrecking the financial health of small businesses and can put many out of business. With 2 to 6 or more months that folks like us cannot make money i.e. run their businesses, it’s important to us now more than ever STOP LINING THE POCKETS OF MILLIONAIRES & help out our fellow REGULAR PEOPLE with LOWER INCOME rather than those who are financially set.
***Below are some tips & tricks to go about your lives in a much more fulfilling & helpful way by ADDING IN ways that you can get EVEN BETTER groceries & items for the SAME price and a much higher quality from individuals rather than Big Box Stores-!***
Buying Local Healthier & Cheaper Foods
Since many of us literally cannot do our jobs (legally) and have our businesses on pause our budgets are very tight. Even if you’re still working full-time from home like almost all of our current wedding clients are, you still don’t want to put yourself in danger by going to large public places, so why not instead pick up some fresh, local food items from literal neighbors & local farmers…?!
Why Not Buy Tastier, Cheaper, & Financially More Helpful Foods DIRECTLY from the local source?!
Jenny did her due diligence early on and found that The Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are GREAT places to search for and find organic local foods for a steal! Last month she got a GALLON of fresh, locally made Maple Syrup (astonishingly for $30) while it was in season by an individual who makes it. Buying in bulk tends to be the best deal, but even smaller pint sized containers are tastier, fresher, & cheaper than a Big Box Store. The nice thing is ALSO that it’s much safer: You can bring cash in a plastic bag to set on the ground and pick up the maple syrup with a glove outside in their driveway instead of going into a packed grocery store!
Another GREAT item to get fresh locally from 1 person sellers on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist is EGGS-!! You can get anything from chicken eggs to duck eggs to quail eggs to try out new things-! These free-range, local eggs come in so many diverse colors, have much darker yolks, and are much healthier-! At only $2 per dozen for such HIGH quality eggs, why not order from a local person, then pick them up from their yard (with safe social distancing)…?! Out here folks go as far as having FULL fridges in their yards (use gloves or wash your hands with sanitizer immediately after handling to not cross-contaminate in your car) where you can pick out your eggs AND pay right at the fridge without seeing anyone-! It’s very cool and we just did this in the past week-! We’ve even seen fridges & freezers that offer meat this way-!
Last month we also got FREE Kombucha starter scobys (since ours are dead) from a local who on Facebook Marketplace is giving them away for free-! We already had the strawberry black tea & sugar, so with the starter we can make essentially FREE kombucha to enjoy-! Again the process was WAY safer: Jenny brought a big plastic bowl, left it on the doorstep, & the kind stranger filled the bowl with kombucha starters & starter liquid! Jenny picked it up with gloves, left a gift of a couple bucks & more gloves in a box for the guy’s parents (who he lived with and mentioned that they had no more sanitizer), and was safely on her way! To search for specific items in the Facebook Marketplace, you just go to the icon that looks like a storefront/ house, click it, then type in the item you’re looking for! If you have any trouble, feel free to Google how to get to the icon (as there are different ways on a computer vs phone).
RIght now you can ALSO buy cheap full plants on the roadside from folks who are cutting down the bulbs in their gardens-! We got 2 gallon buckets of Perennials for literally $2 that were marketed on Facebook Marketplace. On Facebook Marketplace & Craigslist you’ll also find everything that’s in season which here is: HONEY, raspberry plants, strawberry & asparagus roots (for growing), and much more!
Grow Your Own Food: Garden Plants (Curbside Pick-Up Edition) from the BEST Small Businesses in Town
We’ve had our own garden for 6 summers now-! Our HANDS DOWN favorite place to get our food plants that are already growing is Martin’s Greenhouse (no relation to the grocery store). Their herbs, fruits, & veggie plants are often 4 packs for $1 -! Our final plants that will be going into our garden (since our early Spring seeds are already growing) were ordered for curbside pick-up from them and we’ll be grabbing those tomorrow or the following day. Here is their website for ordering Curbside Pick-up (and they ARE allowing very regimented In Person shopping as well, but folks have to be socially distanced AND all follow the ground arrows so that no one is walking at each other): http://martinsgreenhouse.org/index.html
Our second suggestion locally for us for plants is the Potawatomi Conservatory! They have an annual plant sale right now that’s pretty crazy including 48 plant FLATS of veggies & such for a mere $11.50. The money from this Annual Sale goes DIRECTLY to the Conservatory which currently has to be closed due to the pandemic. To check out their selection or order, here’s the link to their PDF of included plants: FULL PDF of All Available Plants
as well as a screenshot of the veggie plant section:
(Orders need to be received by April 28th)
Another fantastic local place is Varner’s in Niles-! They’re doing curbside pick-up for ONLINE orders only (since it’s Michigan and they’re locked down until the start of May). They’re re-upping their amount of veggie plants this week & have ALL of their packets of food plant seeds listed for sale on their website, so keep checking their website for things you may want to plant! This is the ONLY place we’ve been able to find asparagus (which take 3 years in your garden to be able to start harvest for all of the following years, but TOTALLY worth the wait in our experience-! Here’s their online website for ordering: https://www.talech.com/biz/ordering/482548/VARNER-S-GREENHOUSE-INC--NILES-MI#/menu
Here are some of our favorite plants we’ve gotten over the past 4 years from them:
FREE or Cheap Vintage Items i.e. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!:
Facebook Marketplace, small businesses, Ebay, Etsy, and Craigslist ALSO have AMAZING deals outside of food-! (Jenny’s sister also loves Offer Up, but they’re not a hugely used app in our area). 4 Years ago when we bought our house we recycled 100 year old bricks from around the house to encircle our entire garden and our 2 lilac trees, but on the lilacs, the bricks don’t work amazingly well since they’re long rectangles pushed in a circle shape. Jenny happened to check Facebook Marketplace when we planted our 2020 garden weeks ago and found some really cool, vintage 50 circle paver bricks from a local girl for FREE! She had actually given away the first batch of 20, then found 50 more which she promptly left outside of her house for us to come pick up for FREE-!! These were perfect for circling our lilac tree & bush AND we even have leftovers for future projects-!
We normally get ALL of our vintage holiday decor from Estate Sales, but since those pretty much can’t happen right now (pandemic doesn’t work with massive amounts of people all in one small house), Jenny found our final pieces of affordable, amazing vintage Easter decor on Ebay (and one on Etsy)! Each order was around $4, the money went to a REAL person instead of a wealthy corporate owner, and we were all able to chat online and revel in the beauty of these vintage items (and as small businesses support one another). Supporting 8 small vendors for around $30?! Sign us up!!
Though she’s worked on it for 12 years since the diagnosis, Jenny’s General Anxiety Disorder has been managed well, but she normally dealt with it and any business, pet, home, family, or other stress by going to cute little estate sales, so Jenny has also used this as her stress relief every now & then. One purchase of hers from a thrift store (for $15) a whopping 10 years ago- a vintage stationary bike that moved with her to 3 states- has FINALLY come in handy- this time for Jason’s mental health! Jason at times has aspbergers (or what is now referred to as “autism scale”) meltdowns if he doesn’t do proactive things such as getting his workouts in, so he has been enjoying hours-long work-outs at home with a large amount of cardio during the cold, snowy, & rainy snaps being on Jenny’s cool old neon green bike-!
Jenny on the other hand finds happiness & a break in her General Anxiety Disorder when furnishing our work spaces with gorgeous vintage items. She was able to socially distance and buy a couple of authentic Mid Century Modern mirrors ($10 for a gorgeously pained & etched image of flowers on the mirror?! YES!) from a couple folks selling on EstateSales.Net as well as the Facebook Marketplace for our photo studio space, a MASSIVE triangle-circle matching Mid Century Modern clock for the steps up from our photo studio to our Consultation Office, and a cool Mid Century Modern terrarium stool (usually worth LITERALLY hundreds- and only 2 exist on Ebay at a time normally) for our home/ living room. It’s always nice to know that these pieces (though purchased cheaply from individuals) are:
1) Are worth QUITE a good amount of money (hundreds apiece) & have amazing re-sale VALUE.
2) Are GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT! We don’t need more mass-produced plastic & crap BS from abusive (to the environment and humans) factories to be made in such high quantities when SO many more QUALITY products exist- either thrifted & reused goods OR made by artists (who specialize in woodworking) OR small companies.
3) Have their funds go on to help REAL small businesses, low to middle income families, and folks outside of the ALREADY FINANCIALLY SET literal millionaires of corporations.
Buying Online from Pandemic-Struck SMALL Businesses
While we don’t have a lot of money to invest in well-made new pieces or things from great small businesses at the moment, we TOTALLY recognize how important it is to help keep our FAVORITE “non-essential” businesses going. Jenny went out on a limb and when she saw an ethically made artistic piece that she knew she’d wear forever (like the few other pieces she bought in person at her friend’s brick & mortar store in Long Beach 8.5 months ago) she got online and purchased a brand new piece from friend’s shop in Long Beach: Burke Mercantile https://burkemercantile.com/ ALL of the clothing in the shop is made with organic materials in the United States by small, ethical designers and owner Maggie’s focus is on gender neutral, timeless pieces that can last a literal LIFETIME! At stores like Maggie’s that are physically temporarily shut BUT STILL HAVE BUSINESS BUILDING RENT and home rent and business utility bills and home utility bills AND AND AND… it’s important to remember that most of these folks HAVE NOT GOTTEN ANY FINANCIAL HELP AT ALL FROM OUR GOVERNMENT and we can take it upon ourselves to help them out. Btw: Burke is currently running a 30% OFF Sale Items discount on her website-!!
Another plant business (but one that you can order from from online ANYWHERE in the country) is The Lily Pad Bulb Farm. We found them when searching Facebook Marketplace for ONE peony to go with our other $2 one that’s already growing. They’re a 35 year old family-run Washington-based business & were on Facebook because they couldn’t go to their normal large events to sell their plants like they normally do and were instead online marking perennial plant bulbs that were on sale-! They currently have 25% Off Daylilies on their website along with their other discounts such as free shipping over $30! We got our bulbs on super clearance around $2.99 to $4.99! https://lilypadbulbs.com/
We are SO LUCKY as a small business to OWN our physical spaces and to have just paid 6 months’ worth of all of our MANY different kinds of insurances (building, car, car, gear, etc) AND to have just moved our newest Homeowners Insurance to monthly at the start of March. We are also SO LUCKY that we book our couples a year in advance and work with them non-stop. Though we may not be able to photograph what amounts to a TOTAL OF 5 or MORE MONTHS of weddings (March through July rescheduled by their venues so far) our couples are so, so luckily to (almost every single one) still be full-time employed, working from home, and still financially be able to pay for their wedding vendors. It is completely heartbreaking what they’ve gone through in the past month with this Pandemic ADDITIONAL wedding stress that no one has had to deal with before (can the wedding still happen on my date? when are the venues rescheduling? if it’s still on time will any of my loved ones die as a result of getting Covid at the wedding?), but we’re so thankful that close to none have to deal with the additional very real stress of either of them losing their income/ livelihood on top of all of this!
We had completely spiraled a week ago today when we found out that NOT $1 of help has come to either of us or our business so far from the government even though we filled out ALL of the small business grant, loan, and more paperwork over a month ago as literally the first to fill it out (before it ran out from being drained by massive "essential” & still fully opened millionaire-run corporations), so right now we are (as usual) THANKFUL FOR OUR CLIENTS who literally in the past week of intense summer wedding rescheduling actually lifted our spirits with their extreme resilience, perseverance, and kindness. They and random food orders to us from Jenny’s parents & aunt Beth have literally helped us keep some sort of faith in mankind during this hard time.
MAY EVERYONE BE THE CLIENT THEY WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD & Do Unto Others as you Would Have them Do unto you (if you were in their position).