It Just Won’t Go Away
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
I know I promised to end my exploration into Dave Brown’s and my publication, Better Hovels and Gardens, a masterpiece we hoped to sell to the very wealthy industrialists and financial titans wiped out by a severe downturn in the stock market (a bit of poor planning on our part since it didn’t occur to us if they had been wiped out they wouldn’t have any money), but I thought I should at least resurrect the section on profitable hobbies so the poor souls can make a few bucks to buy furniture for their lean-to, hovel or shack.
Arts And Crafts For Fun And Profit
You wouldn’t believe the junk that people have for sale at craft shows or from the trunks of their cars at farmers’ markets. What is even more amazing, people actually pay good money for this stuff. How does a person of average intelligence cash in on this severely unregulated area of commerce? You of course, are not of average intelligence.
Depending on the heights and depths of your fall from the lofty heights of power, you are likely somewhere in a range from sub-par to a complete write-off, but let’s say for today you are average. Well, I guess that is a bit of a stretch. Okay, you are fairly normal, not a genius, but not a vegetable either unless it is something from the legume family. Regardless of what you are, many people make scads of dollars in the lucrative field of crafting. How? Quite simple really!
Borrow, with no intention of returning, a card table and folding chair, go to the Saturday morning market in any small town and you are in business.
I have noticed that people who frequent markets, be it flea or farmers’, are almost always city folk who meander amongst fresh produce stands, smoky barbecues and pick-up trucks, chewing on a straw and looking for bargains. Their chit-chat to the peasantry is often peppered with farm-type comments like, “My alfalfa has gone for a crap” or “Caught the daughter in the haymow with the hired man again. Dang that girl! She’s just like her mother” and other comments only a person pretending to be a local would say. If the daughter really were like her mother, a clear-thinking farmer would have had her married off or rented out years ago.
Such faux homespun banter fools no one, probably because the female market frequenter is carrying a Gucci purse and her gentleman escort just climbed out of a fire-engine red Lamborghini and his $900 genuine python-skin cowboy boots have next to no cow poop.
But about your new business? What exactly is a bargain? Especially one where the buyer has to pay right away and not one with a sign saying there will be no interest or carrying charges until next year or even the year after that?
We have to put market prices in perspective. If one can buy a cabbage from California at the neighbourhood chain store for $3 ($4 if not an Optimum member), it only stands to reason that one trucked in from the 8th concession would sell for say, 89 cents or 2 for $1.50. That would seem reasonable since there is no need for a local cabbage to pay for a seat on a jet and suffer the indignity of a cavity search to cross the border. That would seem a reasonable assumption, would it not?
Au contraire, mes amies. Au contraire. The little sucker is now advertised as FARM FRESH and demands a premium price of $4.49, dirt, cabbage worm extra. People will pay any price if they feel they are buying local.
But what does all this talk of high finance have to do with you sitting at your little table in the pouring rain? Nothing really, but last week I paid three bucks for a cup of lukewarm coffee from some farm-person’s thermos and I just wanted to bitch about it.
I wondered at the time how a cup of coffee could be labelled local when I know of no coffee plantation in Central Ontario. Nor do we see Juan Valdez wandering down our main streets with a donkey and a sombrero. Local coffee, my ass!
And those Oro-Medonte pineapples looked pretty foreign to me. I think they are imported from Aberdeen or wherever pineapples come from. And another thing… I’m sorry, I get carried away sometimes. Perhaps it’s time to see my doctor about increasing my medication.
You may be surprised to learn that some hobbyists actually make a great deal of money selling doodads they make in their spare time while watching TV or sipping quality wine in the jungle behind the liquor store. It’s true.
I had a friend who would sit by the hour making little broaches out of acorns and other nut-shaped substances he found on his lawn or under his neighbour’s hedge.I noticed he always gathered his treasures on Saturday evening at the precise hour when his neighbour, Miss Cora Cavendish, was in her kitchen having her weekly bath. The Cavendish family never did invest in indoor plumbing and Cora bathed in a washtub on the kitchen floor. Her father eventually discovered my friend hiding under the window and his nuts were confiscated.
Unfortunately, his hobby was not as lucrative as other persons in the same trade since he sold his broaches for $1.95 forgetting that the clasps cost him $2.50. Economics was not his strong suit. Fortunately he died; otherwise he would have ended up in debtors prison.
(Image Supplied)
