Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The Cost of a Bargain

It is December 1 and already I can tell this will not be a good season for us. It may even be worse than last year which was, of course, bad. Not horrible. We won't go under as many small businesses recently have or soon will. We will survive, but we are not feeling complacent.

First, I must confess. I, too, have plucked from that fresh bloom of bargains that the internet is flogging so effectively this year. As a natural born thrift-lover (aka cheapskate), I feel virtuous when I save. But I am freshly aware, as I sit in the silence of a phone that is not ringing (much), of the cost of "saving."
Take Nervous Nellie's. Handling orders and making gift boxes this year are three regular NN employees: women who've raised their families on Deer Isle and appreciate that rare commodity here: a year-round job. Most of their menfolk are fishermen. Patty has cooked and poured tens of thousands of jars of jam here since her son went into first grade. This fall he shot a four point buck that will help feed the family this winter. Most of the fruit cooked at NN is grown in Maine, on family farms like Bradshaw's in Dennysville, less a business than a way of life. The gift cards, designed by my husband, Peter, were printed by a family-run print shop. The fresh balsam greens topping our gift boxes were picked by local fellows who livelihood also includes harvesting worms from the mud of a neighboring cove: Pickering, pictured here as it will look in a few weeks. It's a small and personal world.
We live on the margin geographically and in fact. Every package we ship bolsters and makes possible this life on the edge of things. That "free shipping" or "30% off" would kill Nervous Nellie's. It would be all over. Our business is really a web of relationships in a rural economy that is a culture of such relationships: the way life used to be most places and still is here. For now.

1 comment:

  1. You guys are great. Plugging away. Making do. Working it out. Over the long haul. That's the heroic task. Anybody can slay a dragon. But to get up each day and do it the way it ought to be done, every day. Whoopie. That's so it. Hugs and kisses to you all. And better. I'll take a case.

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