“Thanks. That would be nice. Helpful.” Juniper watchedherself pick a cuticle underneath the table. “So, I wanted to get your thoughts on an idea I had.”
“Absolutely,” Rowan fired back, almost before Juniper had finished her thought.
They were both being awkwardly eager. Juniper took comfort in that it wasn’t her alone feeling this way. She took a steadying breath.
“I have had this idea for a few years now, really ever since I moved home before finishing school,” her voice trailed off at the realization of what she just said.Off balance, she mentally chastized herself. In so many ways.
She slowly looked up at Rowan, but Rowan’s face didn’t say anything. She was looking at her as intentionally as ever, as she had every other time they had sat down to discuss their work together in the last two weeks.
“Um,” she continued, “I’ve always wanted to start a mobile delivery service for the produce grown in the Tribal garden. I worry a lot about accessibility. Expanding the garden’s central location with the current funds now means that we’re not able to replicate the garden in other areas of the Rez for a while. And I get it. It makes sense. We don’t have the funds or human power to operate across multiple locations at this point. But I still worry. We don’t even have a mechanism for any kind of distribution, even in the central garden.”
“I understand. That’s something we should definitely think through.”
“I have this idea to convert my mom’s powwow food truck. Obviously I know a lot about the food truck business,” she added with a giggle, lightening the intensity of the air around them.
“Obviously,” Rowan chuckled back.
“But I also know that’s not going to happen right now either,” she said as she felt her tone dropping again.
Rowan sat back, and Juniper felt herself flush as she watched her roll her sleeves up to her elbows. Precise hand movements revealing what appeared to beverycapableforearms. Gloria had been right in her initial assessments.
Rowan crossed one leg over the other, draping one of those exposed forearms over her thigh in that sexy dignified older man way, like President Obama. Yeah, Juniper was a lesbian, but it was Obama for fuck’s sake. And there was Rowan. Looking all dignified, older. Also, sexy.
You’re a fucking mess, Juniper Banks.
“Have you considered using funds to build a farmer’s market to distribute the produce? I know it’s not as accessible as the mobile delivery service idea, but it could be a good place to start. To create a central hub that people are familiar with. It’s constant, they know it’s there, they know when it’s open.”
“I hadn’t thought of that… actually.”
Rowan leaned her forearms against the table and pressed her weight into her elbows while lacing her fingers together. She was excited, and it was frustratingly attractive to Juniper.
“At my old organization, we saw how community farmer’s markets served a real purpose in food deserts. I guess the better term now is food apartheid, since it describes the system that creates inequitable food availability.”
“Oh, that makes sense. The desert part implies it’s a naturally occurring ecosystem, not something caused by humans.”
“Right, exactly.” Rowan’s eyes were glowing. “So, your plan is to sell the produce?” She asked.
“Elders will always get a box of produce free each month, shifting to each week once we get our outputs higher. Other community members will have to pay for now, which I already don’t like. Ideally, we should be able to provide all of this for free, but we have to create program income in order to have sustainability, much less if we want to keep growing. And we were thinking of opening it up to non-community members in the future, once we start harvesting the additional crops from the land expansion piece. Then we could shift charging to them and open the free produce boxes up to all community members.”
“Something we worked on was a campaign to sort of stretch everyone’s dollar a little more. When someone spent $2 on produce, if they were receiving cash assistance, they got $2 more to spend, which was subsidized by the government. Maybe you could try something like that with some of the grant funds? We’d have to play with the pricing model, maybe get someone from accounting to help with that part.”
That was actually a really good idea.
“Do you think something like that could work here?”
“I think so. It could be a way to bridge that gap in the meantime. What fresh food is anyone getting at the dollar store? This is an immediate accessibility improvement. A huge step toward your goal of providing it all for free.”
“Well, it’s not just my goal. It’s our Tribe’s goal. But thank you. You said you helped work on something like that?”
“I did.”
“Could you write that part of the proposal?”
Rowan flashed a smile. “I would be happy to. And one day, we’ll get you the food truck.”
Theone day,thewe, those words were not lost on Juniper. Despite her rational brain telling her this was not her best idea, her defiant heart tugged her in the opposite direction anyway. She flashed a smile back.
Chapter 9
