Basil, the next futures market.
I always wanted to be a farmer. That’s what I studied at UC Davis. Since we live in the suburbs, I never thought my son would be interested in growing anything beyond his library of books.
Vegetarian teenager goes MBA
As a freshman in high school, athlete and vegetarian, my son recognizes how much junk food his friends eat. He concocted a plan to sell spinach, which he was going to grow, to his friends at school. The exciting part for him was the new business model he had created. He proudly told me how he was convincing his pals to pay him 25 cents now and receive a bag full of spinach in a couple of months.
Undeterred by my news that his business plan was invented years and was called the futures market, he set out to grow his spinach. Since it was the middle of winter, he knew he was going to have to sprout the seedlings inside. Although his first attempts were a micro-greenhouse on the roof top. While the roof gets lots of sun during the day, it can also freeze at night. Lesson learned.
Frozen sprouts is the mother of invention
He finally settled on placing the seeds between wet paper towels and until they sprouted a tap-root and some cotyledons. With the intensity of a surgeon, he would carefully transfer the sprouts to yogurt cups full of top soil and compost. The compost came from the pile he had been nurturing in the backyard and he modified the yogurt cups, drilled a hole, so excess water would drain.
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A plague of leaf eating bugs decimates crop
After the sprouting came the real world; transplanting into the garden. It was at this point that I think I heard my son utter his first curse word, “Damn bugs are eating my spinach!” Welcome to the world of farming son. Faced with the insect challenge, and wanting to stay organic, he started toying with inventive ideas to protect his plants. His ultimate low-cost solution was to cover each little spinach with an opaque fruit cup. This had the added benefit of keeping the soil moisture during our unseasonably dry winter.
From farmer to harvester
I was pretty impressed at the way he tended to his seedlings, sprouts and maturing spinach plants. (I was hoping the care would translate over to cleaning his room, but that never happened). In the last weeks of school he was harvesting and packing bags of spinach that he took to his customers who included friends, coaches, teachers and our family banker.
In the final analysis, he told me he lost money, even though he didn’t have to go purchase spinach from the supermarket to fulfill the futures contract. On the upside, he has a new appreciation for farming, business and customer service. Undaunted by his set back in the spinach market, his next crop is basil. Well, I guess we have a farmer in the family after all.
