Mrs. David's Garden Seeds®

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Seed Store Work

David's Garden Seeds® seed store work is a lot more than ringing up a few sales each day. This week, my helper, Karen, finally begins work and I have to train her to do most of what I do every single day. I am excited because now I can take a 15 or 30 minute lunch instead of grabbing something, nuking it and running back to the store to eat it. For the past five weeks, I have felt chained to the store. There has been no one to watch it while I use the facilities.

Karen will need to learn the register and the iPad for our payment system which is PayPal Here. They are easy enough.

She will need to learn what to say and do as she rings up orders and bags them. She will need to help them find seeds in here and answer questions the customers may have.

Shelves need to be kept stocked with our seeds plus they have to be priced. Right now, the way our store works, all unmarked packs of seeds cost $3.96. This is our base price. If the seeds cost us more, then we mark them up so she will learn how to price them. Tax is also a factor. If the seeds are medicinal herb seeds or if they are flowers, there is an 8.25% sales tax.

We get website seed orders every day so those must be printed out and filled. Then they have to be shipped all over the country.

During the day, when all of our "chores" including cleaning are done, David has plenty for us to do in the packing department.

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Seed Store Work - July 20-July 26, 2020

Monday, July 20, 2020

I got up an hour earlier than I normally do so that I could be there when Karen arrived for seed store work. By the time I get out to feed the chicks, they are all squawking loudly but this morning, there wasn't a peep from them. They were all still in bed. Even after I let them out, some would not come out to eat. It was so funny.

Today started out great. My new helper got to the store before I came out of the house. She was super early. I came out and we got started with some seed store work. Then she spent about an hour with our manager/Human Resources guy, Jay, and they went over the employee handbook and did some necessary paperwork.

After Karen came back, I showed her how to pull website orders. We talked about a few other things and then she dove in. Because it is Monday, there are a lot of orders. She is still pulling some but the mailman has not yet come.

We have had a steady influx of customers, all from San Antonio, today. Most days, it is locals who are finally getting around to visiting. Our first family of customers this morning reads our blog and they kept saying what an inspiration we are. I was so honored. I love it when people read this!

Of course, today was busier than most because we had two people starting and because it is payday. Jay was trying to take care of two new employees plus get time cards over to the accountant. Hopefully, we will hear from the accountant soon because I have a lot of paychecks to write.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Karen showed up for her second day of seed store work! Yay! She is learning quickly.

Today, I got to take an hour for lunch because she was here. I went home and did some laundry and other chores. I have not been able to do that since our new store opened six weeks ago.

Good morning!

So what do we do that is considered seed store work? We print, fill, and ship all seed orders from our website. We stock the store with seeds from our storage area. We look up pricing and mark the seeds if they cost more than $3.96. The price of $3.96 is our base price for a pack of seeds, all part of David's Garden Seeds® pricing from the website.

We also have grills by Weber for sale in our farm store--the Smokey Joe and the original Kettle grill. So if you need a nice charcoal grill, we have them discounted.

At 3pm, I went back to the house and put a roast in the oven with vegetables, including our Texas 1015Y onions. At 4pm, I went to check on it and my house smelled like heaven on earth! At 5pm, it was done and it tasted amazing.

We had a job interview this afternoon and we met in the new building. It was fairly cool in there. We are waiting on a plumber to come do his thing and then we can do sheet rock.

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Wednesday, July 22, 2020

This morning, Karen did the website orders herself. I was there to walk her through how to use Paypal on the computer. Now she is working on restocking the store. She is definitely a self starter and does not require micro-managing in the seed store work. I am so thankful.

We had a job interview walk-in this afternoon, but the interviewee smokes so it was a no-go. We are a smoke free campus and a smoke free company.

A contractor was here working out in the orchard. The guys also burned a big pile of things, after calling the sheriff for permission, of course.

Today, our chickens are 12 weeks old. The two guineas are definitely in charge of the flock but I noticed yesterday and today that one of the guineas won't allow certain chickens to come out to eat. This is wrong. I have three eating areas but each time they tried to come out of where they sleep, the guinea would charge at them and squawk. I had to step in and close the door so the poor chicks could eat.

A large freight FedEx truck came today. We warned him not to go in the sand and he did not! Fancy that, listening to our advice and instruction!

Another new employee started today. She is in the seed counting building helping to get the seed packets ready to ship.

The heat has been a tiny bit cooler this week, only reaching into the middle to high 90s instead of 100 plus degree weather. I am a tiny bit thankful but it is still miserable out there.

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Thursday, July 23, 2020

This morning, we started filling orders and doing other seed store work. I finally went to lunch at 11am. When my time was almost up, Karen called and said there was a customer. I came back to the store early and he chose seeds. I helped him find some. Karen was observing and she told him about the pickles and pickled beets that David made. He bought two jars of pickled beets.

One of the disadvantages of living out in the country is how far away some of the stores are. We needed some ink and other office supplies so our manager, Jay, had to hop in his car. He was gone for over three hours (two hours travel time).

David had just sent me a text asking me to make ramen noodles for lunch when I got Karen's call. I already ate leftovers so I let him know I had to go back to the store. There have not yet been enough customers for Karen to learn the register yet. Every time we had customers this week except for one yesterday, she has been in another building getting seeds.

This afternoon, we had a good share of customers who just happened to notice us as they drove by. Karen has been restocking the store. David has not been able to find a lot of seeds yet that were sold due to the coronavirus panic buying. The seed store work has increased as orders from the website increase.

We sold another one of David's dill pickle jars. They have been selling well.

A customer came into the shop this afternoon and Karen was helping her. Then her husband came in and they said they were together. He got a call and took it on speaker. It was loud. He was loud. He was all over the store but not by his wife. He sat down at Karen's table and then he was over at the counter so I could not hear myself think as he continued to talk on the phone. Finally, he said he would be in the truck and left.

This evening, when we were in our home, David told me that a man on his cell phone boldly walked into his building yesterday and none of our guys stopped him. They thought he was a friend of David's by the way he carried himself with such confidence. He walked all the way up to David and asked him what he knows about oil fields.

David got him outside and told him he knows nothing about oil fields and that he could not be in our work areas. So when you come visit, please know that you can use our bathrooms and you are welcome in the store but that is it unless you are personally invited on a tour by David or me. We do give tours to our friends and family members.

Of course, Apache broke their three week in a row record of dumping our dumpster and did not come today. It is overflowing with a nice pile of boxes on the side.

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Friday, July 24, 2020

Apache surprised us and showed up this morning. They dumped the dumpster and then set it down partially in the driveway. They did not get the boxes so they will get those next time they come. I hope cars don't hit it. Maybe some of our guys will put it back in its spot off of the driveway. I stayed outside and watched instead of doing seed store work.

To celebrate all of our new people, David had lunch catered in again. We had brisket, delicious green beans, potato salad that was awesome, and huge pieces of strawberry shortcake with farm fresh strawberries.They were so good.

In today's seed store work, there is reorganizing some of the merchandise as well as stocking the store. We have had quite a few orders coming in all throughout the door and a steady stream of customers. Karen and I have both been telling our customers about the pickles, onions, and germination kits and they have been selling. In fact, we are out of germination kits and we have to make more. We have sold 3.5 pounds of onions just today to several customers and we sold another jar of dill pickles. Seed store work includes being a good salesperson! Karen is doing a great job!

We did a job interview this morning as we are starting to gear up for a busy fall season. The orders are getting bigger and more and more customers are coming in to the store to buy garden seeds for their fall gardens. They are buying up the pickles and pickled beets as well as our Texas 1015Y onions from our garden. They also snapped up all of our germination packages with a tray and lid, pots, plant markers, and our special David's Garden Seeds® Germination Mix. Now we need to make more so we will add that to the list of seed store work to be done. First, we have to finish restocking the store.

Soon, we will be adding to our products when we add rabbit manure fertilizer (we will soon get some rabbits) and composted chicken manure fertilizer. I am composting some chicken manure with veggie scraps and wood shavings right now. This will be more seed store work to package the manure fertilizers and put them on display.

At 11:45pm, I saw a mouse run across the bedroom floor and under David's dresser. I was just getting into bed and had not turned the lamp off yet. I sat there in disbelief and then convinced myself that it did not happen, that my eyes were playing tricks on me. Then he darted out and I knew he was real. I did not get much sleep at all, wondering if the mouse would get in bed with me.

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Saturday, July 25, 2020

This morning, there was evidence of a filthy mouse in my bedroom. I cleaned it up and cleansed it from a whole lot of unrighteousness. I felt so cheap and dirty. I heard that field mice don't stay in the house but leave in the morning. Where was he getting in and why was he getting in now but not before?

I spent the next two hours outside in the inner sanctum of the chicken coop, cleaning up chicken poo. Fun times. When my hand and arm muscles would not let me scrape any longer, I put in fresh wood shavings and it looked and smelled so much better!

I searched the house for possible places for the mouse to get in. The only thing I could find was a raised plastic ring around a pipe under the kitchen sink. A handyman had fixed our garbage disposal several weeks ago. He must have lifted that ring and not put it back. We shoved it back down.

I showered and cleaned some of the house. We did not go anywhere. I should have done some seed store work, like pulling orders, but I did not this weekend. Usually, I am here in the store doing seed store work from 9am to 2pm but we closed the store. At noon, a customer called my cell phone asking if we were open. I said no. We had been open for six weeks and only one customer came on one Saturday.

We watched Svengoolie and I fell asleep, waking up in time to put the chickens to bed around 8:30pm.

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Sunday, July 26, 2020

This morning, I started examining kitchen drawers before breakfast. I found old mouse turds in them. I was just sick. So, apparently, the mouse had been making visits to the drawers and the cabinet to the left of the sink and left us some evidence, but only there. I checked everywhere else but found nothing.

I emptied the drawers and the pan cabinet and ran several loads in the dishwasher until they were all clean. Then I stacked everything on the island and on the kitchen table. I cleansed the drawers from all that is disgusting. Then I did not put anything back in them.

I have to find the contact paper that I bought for our new home and never used because it feels too dirty to put stuff back in without it.

We stayed home from church as I cleansed and cleansed...I meant to go across the compound and do some seed store work but that did not happen.

In the late afternoon, we watched a long movie and then I prepared for the coming seed store work week. David did, too.

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Return from Seed Store Work to Our Small Farm

David's Garden Seeds® Is A Trusted Brand

Since 2009, over 1,500,000 home gardeners, all across the USA, have relied on David's Garden Seeds® to grow beautiful gardens. Trust is at the heart of it. Our customers know David's Garden Seeds® stocks only the highest quality seeds available. Our mission is to become your lifetime supplier of quality seeds. It isn't just to serve you once; we want to earn your trust as your primary supplier.

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