One of the many great benefits of shopping at a local Farmer’s Market is getting to know the farmers and producers. These men and women tend the soil, coaxing, nourishing, and committed to the process of bringing forth edible sustenance for the rest of us. They come from all different walks of life; each path taken somehow bringing them to the same destination week after week.
Farmer Kathleen Frawley never imagined that she would one day be on the opposite side of the glass, tending a vendor’s booth in the Chavez Park Farmer’s Market she could see from her Downtown Sacramento, California, office window. A former successful commercial insurance adjuster for the state, I met Kathleen in her 5th year as the sole owner of the Sweet Courage Herb Farm—which specialized in heirloom tomatoes, vegetables, and 350 different varieties of herbs.
“Find out what you love to do and do it, don’t retire.”
The path for Kathleen became clear during an economics course when the instructor advised that the best way to prepare for retirement was ‘to find out what you love to do and do it, don’t retire’. Tired of fighting with grown-ups about money and deciding to put her energy into something more meaningful, she started the business as a part-time venture. Next came the purchase of 14 acres of farmland, and a full-time commitment to farming. Year one was a huge loss in every imaginable way, and she recalls spending most of it on her knees in tears. A second year of loss was followed by one that broke even, and then a year when there was just enough profit to fix her truck and realize she could make a living off her land. Last year, her 5th in the business, would see a profit if her income followed the same curve as her loss.
A one woman, three dog operation—with lots of temporary and seasonal help—Sweet Courage is considered small by farming standards. All its business was through Farmer’s Markets, with Kathleen attending 5 local markets weekly. Even so, the income was seasonal, most of it coming in the spring from tomatoes. Herbs, her passion, saw her through the winter when she marketed them dried for tea. Throughout the year a loyal clientele sought out the quality herbs, fresh or dried. Their wonderfully characteristic flavor was due to a high oil content, the result of withholding water for two days, followed by a washing the night before being handpicked.
Although she had no regrets, there were times when her old life spent wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase were painfully delineated from her new one—spent in laborers’ garb with dirty nails. The incidences when her fellow human beings showed a clear preference for someone carrying a briefcase instead of a shovel stung the most. But with a freezer filled with organic food that she grew herself, and healthy meat from animals that led a happy life (she also farmed chickens and sheep), many of us would be hard-pressed to equal Kathleen’s sense of security—no matter how we’re dressed or what we may carry in our hands.
