Though Ron would love to find a few more events for THF to sell our wares at, Mohawk Valley Garlic Fest is the last one we are doing this year. He has looked into a few others in our area; but we are not ready for two day events and others are too far away or just cost too much. Sometimes you are just not a good fit for the event too. That is something a vendor always has to factor in when deciding which events to sign up for. It can be very disheartening to run your tally at day’s end and discover you have just barely covered your costs. You also have to factor in the expected clientele at each event. That will change the items that you bring to sell.

We have made a few changes this year to our set up. The biggest (pun indeed) was purchase of a larger tent. Most event sites are ten feet wide but you can pay for a double space. We have done that for the past few years as ten feet is really not that much. At the CCE Herb & Flower Fest we had great wings on each side that gave us more covered space to work with. Turns out Ron thinks it does not look “professional” and he pushed for a different tent. That way we won’t have to worry about getting enough protection from the elements. Because we liked the brand we had, we went with their larger model.

We had a beautiful Saturday morning to work with so we loaded up the new tent; along with the tables, coolers and stove and headed out to Tiny House Farm for a practice set up. There was no way this testing could be done in our yard; the tent was just too big. A practice run was necessary as we did not want to be struggling to get the darn thing up at the Garlic fest on September 14th. We had set up and taken down the smaller tent numerous times over the past few year. It should have been easy enough, but the new one was a totally difference beast. The thing is twice the size of our other tent, obviously. But it took more than twice the effort to get it set up. You have to put the canopy on before you raise the tent frame up. Unless you are someone who can float in midair, you are not going to get it on after the fact. The problem is that once it is on the frame it adds to much weight that Jo and I struggled to get the legs we were working with up high enough to set the pegs.

This is going to be such a change for us. There is so much space inside the tent now that it feels a bit empty. But the biggest difference I will have to deal with is being inside, not outside. My table has always been outside and that left me free to move around, bagging the shiitakes, handling sales, and hawking my products. Now most of my time will be inside and I will have some figuring out to do. We will no longer have our logs outside on right side either. Which will change the way our salesman, Don is going to manage. Right now Ron is planning on having the logs front and center (literally) and Don working his magic from there. Ron will be cooking on the right side of the tent with Jo behind him getting the samples ready.

Once again our mushroom bolts will be sold un-soaked as we are offering them as Christmas presents. I am making special bows for them too. Ones with a more Christmassy feel. But not going over the top.

Ron will be hawking our bolts as the perfect gift when you are looking for something unusual. My skin care products will also be included in the Christmas push. They will make great stocking stuffers. They just need to right signage to catch the attention of those walking by.

A big attention getter we will have at this event and one we hope will sell well, is our new Tiny House Farm T shirts. We had THF shirts made three years ago but they were planned for staff wearing and giving to our returning shitake inoculation volunteers. This shirt was specifically designed for us to see. Ron went all out with it. The shirt itself is a combination of hemp and organic cotton, all sourced from the US. Did you know that New York states is new one of the sources for hemp? And before anyone asks, suggests or even thinks about it… NO we will not be growing hemp on Tiny House Farm. Turns out that crop is even more fiddley than shiitakes are.

The process of getting these shirts made was more than a struggle. To start with we had to decide if the large investment would be worth it. Once we all agreed it was, Ron tweaked his design until he was happy with it. Finding the right company to work with is made much easier by the internet. He was able to contact multiple companies at the same time. The price point was a huge factor in choosing the printing company. But then we had to deal with additional expenses as they advised we needed to use 6 different ink colors in order to get Ron’s desired result. We even took a hit from Labor Day as our shipping was delayed until the day after. BUT, the boxes arrived on Friday. Ron sent me a picture and my response was… Are you happy? It was a stressful couple of minutes before he replied with a strong yes. Both of us took huge deep breaths of relief. The whole process had been nerve racking. Until we had shirts in hand we had no way of knowing if they were going to be right. We also had no idea what the heck we would have done if they were terribly wrong.

But they are fabulous. I had pushed Ron into getting 4 sizes; small, medium, large and extra large. That was really all we could afford to go with as we had to get 50 of each size. So that ending up being a total of 200 shirts. We are going to be selling them for $30, tax included. I know that seems a bit high for a t shirt, but these are 60% hemp and 40% organic cotton. We had them printed by a company in North Carolina so we can state, truthfully this is a completely American made product. We did have one last battle over the shirts. Ron is determined that people will notice the shirts so just stacking them neatly on our tables was not going to do. I do believe that if he had his way, a female model wearing the shirt with the full sales pitch memorized would be a new addition to our event set up. He went through the gambit of possibilities from a simple carboard shirt form to a set of 2 human sized standing forms that would cost us $200. I put the kibosh on that plan. He settled to two flat torso forms that we can hang from the tent frame.

Ron’s immediate thought for advertising our new product was to go back to his friend Jennifer and have her do a make over of her previous shiitake shot. The two of us headed to Rome with cell phones and camera in hand. I tend to get better results with my trusty camera and those shots are easier to upload into my blog. Jen was happy to sign off on his model release with payment of the t shirt, some shiitakes and the promise of lifelong friendship. What she doesn’t realize is that her continued participation in our shiitake inoculation events is assumed.

He has already posted the final result on THF Facebook and our Instagram pages. But I got a couple good shots of him tweaking the scene. He really does love to tweak.

And you can bet Ron will be doing some serious tweaking on to our event planning right up to opening time.