Small Town Business

Doing business on an island is kinda like planting garlic - you take your time, mix in alot of manure, lean on the hoe and talk about planting methods and weather with your neighbour, and eventually something juicy and delicious comes up.

For 3 weeks I've been beating my head against the wall trying to find 50-grit silica sand for the finishing plaster of our bedroom extension. Ron at Victoria Clay Arts explained that they only carry potters grade sand, and spent an extra 15 minutes going over the various applications of silica, diverging into how the Zinc Oxide we're using as white pigment can also be for pottery, food-grade or other applications, where to get different types, etc etc. Happy to share his expertise whether I needed it or not. Gruff and real and friendly and scary, that's Ron.

I finally hooked up with Jeremy at Sleggs Lumber up in Nanaimo. He'll order it in by Monday, and offered to ship it down to Victoria in the pick-up of his manager. I asked if the manager could be bribed to stop in Duncan en route and drop it off for me, perhaps in exchange for some organic heritage WildSide garlic. Which of course launched us into a discussion about what garlic I grow, how I got the original planting bulbs from Steve and Gail just up the road, when and why we moved from Vancouver, etc, and ended up not only with his manager Mel agreeing to the drop-off, but his co-worker Ken also ordering 20 bulbs.

So thanks to Ron, Jeremy, Mel and Ken, I not only will have my plaster supplies brought to me by Monday, but I know a lot more about pottery and lumber supply chains and have a new garlic customer.

By the way, all 1200 of our garlic bulbs came up beautiful this year, so we are selling that garlic at $10 for 5 bulbs. Come on by our roadside stand, or Sarah can bring some into Vancouver next week. Just let us know - ramble@WildSideFarm.ca.