Winter Sun and Dark Mornings
Little M woke up at 4:30 today and consequently she woke her brother up as well. The kiddos are sharing a room now because little M’s room has become the office. Ever tried putting a one year old and a four year old in the same room? Doesn’t do much for sleep but they are pretty cute. We have a three bedroom rental and could have gotten away with storing all the business materials in the living room but I could also see M getting into everything and big bro F doing “work” and using *expensive* paper and what not.
F is actually pretty excited about the idea of his mom and dad having their own business. He has always been in the garden with me. He’s part of the inspiration for the kids gift box. He has such a lovely connection with the garden and the food grown in the garden. There is a profound joy of picking food straight off the plant, warmed by the sun, to pop in your mouth. I hope that the appreciation of food he’s grown himself will translate into a consciousness of food and its value all through his life.

M’s first experience with carrots was pretty fantastic. There are these little baby carrots that work great for pots. M was curious about the soft fronds of the carrot tops. She motioned she wanted to pick one and I said yes. She pulled hard and when a carrot popped out she got the biggest smile on her face! She, of course, ate it before I get get to it to wash it. Immune boosting, yes?
Business planning has been coming along. Steve and I met with a friend who loves all things small business. She was brilliant. We told her our idea of a seed delivery food (like the food delivery box!) and she did such a good job and teasing apart what our business was all about. Her biggest take home message for us was that we needed to find some way of testing our theory. If our theory is that people would be able to garden more or create the garden they want with regular seeds and clear directions in addition to online support we needed to ask people. So we sent out a survey to our social networks and friends. The response was so positive — 231 people filled out the survey. The results confirmed some of our theories but also challenged what we thought people needed support on. For instance, we were going to create a starter box with tools, pots, gloves and soil, thinking that a barrier to growing was a lack of equipment. In fact, that never came up as a barrier at all. Time and knowledge were the most prominent problems. That’s what our seed box will help with — no more planning what to plant, doing the research on how to grow them or going to the shops to pick up the seeds.
We are creating many things ourselves — website, printing labels, seed envelopes, etc.. One thing we choose to outsource to a graphic designer is our logo. Neither Steve nor I have the design background that could really do our logo justice. It was the thing that our customers would see all the time and it needed to be really good. It’s also been a useful exercise to articulate exactly what we want our business to convey. We think it came out pretty nice.

Next up for us is to continue to research our market, social media marketing, build content and keep up discussions with the graphic designer.
To learn more, visit us at greatcultivations.co.nz
