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“Well, flowers do come from the earth…” I reminded her, shrugging it off.
“I just really want to get it right. Maybe some lemon essential oils with it? Do you think that would make it better?”
“I think it’s fine just as it is.”
“Yeah, but…” she started, gaze falling.
“But?” I prompted, turning to look at her.
“I was just thinking…”
She did this.
When something was important to her, she had this tendency to avoid eye-contact and let all her sentences trail off incomplete.
“Thinking about what?”
“About maybe doing what I suggested to you months ago. Back when I first came here…”
“About the soap?” I clarified, watching her nod and clutch a reluctant Ginger to her chest. What the hell had she said about the soap? She’d made suggestions about trying different scents. Ah, right. “You want to try to sell the soap?” I asked, watching as she quickly glanced over, trying to tell if I was laughing at her or not. “I think that’s a great idea if you want to do it.”
“I know it will be hard. I mean, it’s not like we can get to town often. But, I figured, if I can grab a table at the farmer’s market next summer, we could just haul the stuff in, sell it until it’s gone. I’m not trying to make a ton of money or anything. I just… I don’t know. I want to share this with people. It really is the best. You know… back when Miller picked me up when you kicked me out, she stole a couple bars for herself.”
“I thought I was losing my fucking mind about the stock going down,” I scoffed, shaking my head.
“And I was thinking about looking around online for some shampoo bar recipes. I think the soap needs a little something for shampoo…”
“I’ve been using it for shampoo and conditioner for ages.”
“Yes, and your very short manly hair is very clean. But women want more than just clean. They want soft and manageable.”
“Do the research. And next week, we can head into town to get supplies.”
We hadn’t left.
Not since she came back.
We were scraping the bottom of the barrel with the feed.
I don’t know why I was putting it off so long. I guess I just wanted her all to myself.
But it was time.
“Do they have a craft supply store in town?” she asked, shooing the goats back outside.
They did.
And we went.
And she bought them out.
That was how Meadow started Barrens Botanicals.
Meadow – 6 years
Gunner and Sloane had just picked up Nico. He’d spent a weekend with us, in the woods, with all the animals, so they could have a little time away, a little time to just be people, be a couple.
It wasn’t the first visit we had ever gotten from the kids. It didn’t happen often, not with us living so far away from everything, but it happened.
And it wasn’t the trigger per se.
Though, let’s face it, it was a factor.
I was younger than Ranger, but my body had a clock. His didn’t.
We’d talked about a future generation, about kids, especially after a visit from one of them, after we got to spend a weekend showing them how to ride the donkey, gather eggs, milk the goats, help harvest food for dinner they would help us make.
We were good with the kids.
And I had been feeling the pull for a while.
Which was why I had a tablet in front of me on the couch in the living room. It had been a gift from a client a few years before, someone who decided it was blasphemous that we didn’t have more reading material than we had. So he bought us the tablet and loaded it down with ebooks on every imaginable topic. Which had come in handy for some research, to be perfectly honest.
I could also use Ranger’s cell as a hotspot and browse the internet, check out Barrens Botanicals’ social media pages.
Things had grown over the years.
It had started as a silly little need to feel like I was working. Blame it on my upbringing. But that first summer with my itty bitty table at the very big farmer’s market had been exciting. Even when I only left with two-hundred dollars to show for it.
Hell, two -hundred was better than what I had anticipated. I turned around and reinvested it all, coming back with three times the amount the next year. And, apparently, those who had taken a chance on the goat milk soap with the pretty flowers and lemony fresh scent and the low-impact shampoo and conditioner bars, well, they spread the word, they showed up in force and bought me out.
Every year, I made more.
And every year I sold out.
Eventually, Sloane – Gunner’s wife, a very self-made woman in her own right – helped me set up the social media, designed the logos for the company, sent out a newsletter about the farmer’s markets I would be attending the coming summer.
