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Why you care we can't imagine, but here it is.....
The information presented here hasn't been updated for years.
Though all of the information here is true,
more needs to be added to make it current. We will do that as/if time (ever) permits.
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Sprout School & Shop Sprouting Seed Info Center
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Past
Last Updated 12/27/99
The Sproutpeople are comprised of Gil + Lori - a married couple, Sam - a six year old man child, and Alice - a 2 year old fountain of love.
Gil and Lori met in San Francisco, married six weeks after falling in love at a Grateful Dead Show, in 1986. Gil managed a comedy club, then drove a limo, then a cab. Lori finished her MFA (Gil got his in '83) while answering phones at the San Francisco Art Institute, then managed a commercial real estate office. We adopted two cats and two dogs from the pound before we moved to Seattle in 1989, bought our first house and put in our first garden. It was that garden and our first dog - Jupiter, and her love of nature that led us to quit our pathetic jobs and sell our home in 1991 and move - sight unseen - to deep Southern Illinois in pursuit of self-sufficiency. We packed the cats into the VW Bus in-tow, and the now three dogs (we adopted a stray fox terrier while in the NorthWest) into the front of the seventeen foot moving van along with us. We arrived in Carbondale, Illinois six days later, found a rental and started looking for our homestead. A month later we had spent all of our money on a beautiful post-glaciated forty acres with a shabby little old house. We put in two gardens totaling about one-half acre, collected a couple goats and a dozen chickens and began living. We realized too late that we were very alone out there and not financially prepared to be self-sufficient, and there wasn't a job anywhere. We sold our farm in 1992 at quite a loss and moved to unglaciated Southwest Wisconsin in pursuit of community and another farm.
We found Gays Mills quite by accident, got jobs picking apples, rented a house and began looking for our next farm. this time there was a plan - to grow heirloom vegetables and sell them at The Dane County Farmer's Market in Madison, Wisconsin. We bought our farm in the Spring of 1993 shortly after beginning our life as farmers market venders. We sold heirloom plant starts at first, but it was a very wet year and we couldn't get our garden spot tilled. We ran out of things to sell about six weeks into the market, Lori suggested that we try to come up with something until our garden started producing. She said "Let's grow sprouts." Gil said "I hate sprouts." So, Lori grew sprouts - we had over fifty quart jars full a few days later and had something to take to market.
A few months later we were taking ten varieties of sprouts and had developed a regular clientele who begged us to keep sprouting. Gil had found that he actually liked sprouts and realized that growing them was at least as enjoyable as gardening. After one particularly horrible market we decided to take our unsold sprouts to a local co-op. The produce manager at Mifflin Street Community Co-op, Kirsten, said "Sure, I'll buy 'em" and our lives took another turn from which we are still reeling. Bless her.
Present
It is so fleeting. I'd have to write every day to keep this current - or every hour - or constantly... we're trying to live in our present - so please forgive us if we don't write it down.
Future
What was here today (7/22/05) as I update some pages, was SO out-of-date it wasn't even funny. I think we need to write a book about sprouting and our lives as sproutpeople ...
Today (9/24/07) I feel the same way. A book would be fun. Time would be fun......
Try to tune in our Scrapbook Page:
for a visual journey down memory lane.....
SPROUTPEOPLE®
170 Mendell St.
San Francisco, CA 94124
Toll Free:
877/777-6887
(877/SPROUTS)
We only use the phone for emergencies.
Back in 2001 we were still using the phone. One day I was talking to a long-time customer while pushing my (then 4 year old) daughter on the swing in our backyard (this is what a mom n' pop business is like on the internet). It dawned on me that my priorities were severely messed up, so I stopped using the phone. I love to talk and I love to help, but my family would never see me if I picked up the phone again, and that's just wrong don't you think?!
The very best way to contact us is through E-mail =:-)
We are quite fast and VERY thorough. We love to help.
We have been an internet only business since 2001. We are not a big corporation. We are but 2 people, Mom n' Pop Sprout. We decided after years of juggling our family's (kids, dogs, cats and even our own) needs, and the needs of Sproutpeople, that we had to make more time for our kids, so we stopped talking on the phone. All calls go to voice mail and have since 2001.
We are very fast to fill orders and answer e-mail, and though we wish we could make the time to talk, we just can't seem to get more minutes into a each hour. We are many years older than when we started and our days are too short and made up of too few hours to do everything. This limitation in our business has not kept us from pleasing our customers, nor from growing (as we have every year since 1993). We do what we do as well as we can, and we think we do it very well indeed.
We appreciate your patronage more than we can say. We ask that you use the phone for emergencies only and that you search our site for answers before e-mailing us. This site is bigger than any 4 sprout books put together, it is always available and it is free, and we know that almost all questions are answered here.
Thanks again for your support and your many kind words.
Sproutpeople