Introducing the Word of Mouth Market

The Word of Mouth Market is now open for business!

First some rumor control: While it is true that I have given notice and will be moving my Genesee Graphics business out of its current location by the end of the month, I am not going out of business! I have been looking for a better location for the past 6 months, and am currently talking to one local landlord about a possible Main Street location. If that doesn’t work out, I may temporarily run the business from home until I find the right location.

The reason I need a new location is that I want to combine a farm market in the same location with the graphics business and therefore need a more visible and accessible location. I have planted around three acres of vegetables this spring and that is a lot more than I can eat myself! By combining the businesses I can save on labor costs by having one person supervise both operations.

I am not a big fan of self-service farm markets having tried that route with Strong’s World of Pumpkins in Caledonia for many years. Although 99% of people are honest and many will overpay for their produce, such operations inevitably attract thieves who will figure out a way to break into or carry off your money box. No fun!

In the mean time, however, since the early crops are coming in, I have opened a small self-service stand on the farm. (See picture.)  The “Word of Mouth Market” will not be publicly advertised other than through this column, Facebook and e-mail. I am not looking to do a high volume business at this location for obvious reasons.

If you have heard about the market from any of these sources, or by word of mouth, you are welcome to come down the driveway and check it out. Currently we have some tasty snow peas, a good selection of lettuce and greens and some of Miss Amy’s flowers at reasonable prices. All produce has been grown without chemical herbicides or pesticides, although I have not registered as an official organic farm. (See my previous column for a discussion of that.) I have also installed a small refrigerator to keep some of the tender produce cool until you get there.

Enjoy!

P.S. Thanks to my daughter Corinna for the fancy sign!

A sport is born!

I knew right away when I was introduced to Quick Start Tennis (QST) at the USTA Eastern Convention in January that there was a adult game lurking inside this children’s instructional system. It was just too much fun to let the kids have all to themselves!

Quick Start uses a smaller court with everything proportional (smaller racquets, lower net) except for the ball, which is an over-sized nerf ball. The nerf ball is the key to the game because its light weight and large aerodynamics profile make it slow down in flight, but it also bounces quite high.

That may be good for young children, but it also makes it perfect for a new racquet sport which I have invented called bashball (or as some call it, Biffball). Bashball is a combination of tennis and dodge ball. Since it is very difficult to put the nerf ball away, the best strategy (especially in doubles) is to smash the ball and try to hit your opponent with it!

Of course that’s a good strategy in regular tennis as well, but you have to worry about hitting someone in the wrong spot and causing serious injury. In bashball that is not a problem since it would be impossible to hurt someone with the lightweight nerf ball.

The generous bounce of the nerf also makes it the perfect game to be played on the not-yet-perfect lawn tennis surface at our club. I planted 25 pounds of creeping bentgrass in April, however the grass has not yet crept enough to cover all the bare spots. The court is also still a little uneven with an occasional stone poking through.

No matter! The nerf is big enough to bounce quite predictably most of the time, and when it doesn’t, well that’s the nature of lawn tennis, get used to it! I have played two doubles matches and one singles match so far, and the universal verdict is that this game is a gas!

Of course, I had to change the name of the game to get people to try it. Our macho male club members were not about to be caught dead playing a “children’s game”, but once they tried bashball they were hooked! I predict that this game has the potential to do what snowboarding did to skiing, convert a whole group of participants to a new way of enjoying the sport. Warning: Bashball may be addicting!

Although it can be a good work out, it is also a good choice for those with limited mobility. At age 58, I really can’t cover the court well enough to play competitive singles on a full size court, but I had no trouble playing singles last night on the smaller bashball court. Additional warning: Grass surfaces are slippery, but the good news is, if you do fall, you will have a soft landing!

One of the interesting things about QST (and bashball) is that it does not have to be played with real lines. Small plastic line markers are layed down to indicate where the corners are, but the players must interpolate where the actual line might be. Strangely, this results in more generous interpretation of whether a ball is in. Since it is not possible to know exactly where the line is, the tendency is to play anything that is close. If only real tennis was so generous!

Bashball may be good training for real tennis, but that’s not really the point for advanced players. Sure, the bang-bang nature of volleys smashed at point blank range may be good for tuning up your reflexes. When you can serve, volley and smash the ball on a lawn court, however, for that one shining moment you can feel like you are John McEnroe taking on Bjorn Borg at Center Court at Wimbleton. It doesn’t get any better than that!