Are you following Rustic Country Market on Pinterest?
Since we retired we no longer use meal kits for our meals. As convenient as they were, they no longer fit our lifestyle. Instead, we compost, we garden, we can and freeze a lot of our own food; plus we have chickens for eggs, and we buy meat from local farmers/ranchers.
That said, we now collect recipes on Pinterest to cook most of our meals. We have a variety of boards related to different types of food.
We planned to have our first, local, Rustic Country Market on April 27, 2024. We worked diligently the week prior to having our first market; getting our “store” set up. We priced everything, made directional signs and staged our store inside our enclosed utility trailer. The morning of April 27 we woke up to a blanket of snow; so we rolled over and went back to sleep. (Gotta love being a self employed retiree.)
Fast Forward to May 3 & 4, 2024
We rescheduled our first Rustic Country Market the following weekend. That morning I advertised it on Facebook. We used Friday as a test to see how long it would take to get the store set up (and tore down). It was a slow Friday, but things picked up on Saturday.
Our Rustic Country Market specializes in small batch roasted coffee beans, our nest run eggs, a variety of artisan rustic decor, including: cabinets/shelves, caddies, signs, birdhouses, benches, cups/mugs, unique gift items, plus seasonal items like Russian Sage bunches (similar to Lavender), dried spices, mixed spices, and vegetables.
Our Local Rustic Country Market Sale Dates
Every Friday, 9 – 12, starting May – Labor Day, 2024, we set up at the R Lazy J Ranch Farmers Market in Eagar.
Saturdays, 9-1, we set up at the Greer AZ Farmers Market. Dates: 6/15, 6/22, 7/13, 7/20, 8/3, 8/17, 8/31 (2024).
Local customers can reach out to us for local pick up if they want to order coffee beans or buy eggs. We prefer cash and Zelle.
UPDATE September 14, 2024: As a small business owner, we will no longer accept credit card because of the excessive costs related to accepting credit cards. Thank you for understanding.
In 2009 we started a micro coffee roasting company named Cold Creek Coffee Company, located in Battle Ground, WA. Our beans were used by two coffee shops and we had several repeat customers. We closed our business in 2014, when we moved to Arizona. (The move was complex enought, much less relocating a business.)
Our oldest grandson wearing our previous business .com hat. Today he’s a teenager!
Fast Forward to 2024:
Our original company name, Cold Creek Coffee, is now used by a company in Canada and another in Ohio. Honestly, that doesn’t matter because we want to rebrand our coffee business under Rustic Country Market as we start roasting again. This time we will specialize in mobile, small batch roasted coffee beans, in addition to selling a variety of rustic decor, coffee mugs, seasonal lavender bunches, dried spice mixes and our nest run eggs.
Local Market Focus
We are going to focus our small business on our local market. At this time, we are not going to sell online. We plan to start participating in a local farmers market, and roast coffee at the market. This way, our customers are getting the freshest roasted coffee beans possible. Our local, repeat coffee customers will be able to reach out to us to order fresh roasted coffee beans outside the farmers market hours. Expanding our market will be subject to demand and profitability.
In addition to attending our local farmers market, we plan to have several Rustic Country Markets at our house. I plan to set up a photo shoot booth so customers can share pics with their friends on social media. In the future, we’d like to invite other local, complimentary product vendors to participate in our Rustic Country Market, which may involve moving to a more central location in our local community. Our Rustic Country Market would be more of an artisan market vs. farmers market.
The pictures below are a sampling of some of the “one of a kind” items we have created for props and to sell. Some are a work in process…
Handcrafted. Reuse. Repurpose. Renovate. Rustic.
Most of what we sell at our Rustic Country Market is handcrafted at our home. We limit our outsourced items to other small business owners whenever possible. We scout for things we can reuse, repurpose, renovate or recycle. I love using my Cricut to design and create rustic country decor and household items. Some of the items we create are made using some materials that were not made in the USA which is (unfortunately) inevitable in today’s world. (IE: ink, vinyl, blank stickers, blank coffee mugs, blank canisters, etc.)
Primitive Bird House
A lot of the materials we use are old. For example, the bird house pictured above. We bought the antique roof tiles on the east coast a few years ago. The wood and handle (perch) were salvaged to create this rustic bird house.
Our Home Base…
My craft room.His Greenhouse.
Our produce is grown in our greenhouse that Jon built mostly from repurposed materials, and our garden. We primarily use heirloom seeds to start our plants. We try to avoid the use of chemicals on our plants, sticking with organic options and composting. Our spice mixes are produced in our home kitchen (and are not subject to public health inspection under the AZ cottage food program).
Air tight packaging to keep it fresh.
Our Russian Sage is grown in our back, which I will use to create decorative bunches to sell seasonally.
Our 2023 Russian Sage (similar to Lavender) and backyard chicken coop.
We purchase green coffee beans from US based coffee bean importers who source from coffee bean producing countries.
All that to say, our goal is for Rustic Country Market to be as small business, locally sourced as possible.
Rustic Country Market is going to change in the future.
What kind of change?
We are planning to expand our registered trade name, Rustic Country Market, into a home based business. I registered and created this website in 2015, and have an organic following on FB based on the name Rustic Country Market Living.
I’ve organized and supported others’ businesses most of my life, and now I’m going to focus that experience on Rustic Country Market. Our long term goal is to start/organize a local marketplace to sell rustic country items. In the meantime, we are going to participate in newly formed, local farmer market.
Adapting…
For some, there’s a fear of success, because success can raise the performance bar.
(Dilbert was cancelled in 2023.)
We “retired” and relocated the end of 2020, in the midst of global chaos; and took on a fixer upper in the rural White Mountains of AZ. As our home projects slow down, we are looking forward to doing what we enjoy, instead of what we have to do. We had hoped to travel in retirement, but with the economy going as it is, we’re limiting our love for travel to our local area.
It’s not the strongest of the species which survives, nor the most intelligent which survives. It is the one which is the most adaptable to change.
Charles Darwin
Believe…
We believe if you attach a feeling to a belief, you will make a way for change. We love God and we love USA country living. We love small towns. We love our garden, greenhouse, canning, home cooked meals, chickens, BBQ hut, wood fired oven and pizza. We love the smell and taste of fresh roasted coffee. We love our hot tub where we can sit under a vast starlit sky (because we live where there’s no light pollution). We love making things. We love crafting. We love going to garage sales and estate sales. We love repurposing things, instead of throwing them away. We love old and new rustic stuff.
We believe our name, Rustic Country Market, fits our country lifestyle.
Humble beginnings…
We’ve been busy planning our local, Arizona, home based business future that includes:
Rustic Country Decor
Small Batch Roasted Coffee Beans
Coffee Mugs & Signs
Nest Run Eggs
Various Dried Hot Pepper Spices
Dried Lavender Bunches
There’s a lot of details to attend to when starting a business.
Time has been flying. It’s funny how day to day, nothing appears to change, yet if we look back, EVERYTHING looks different.
I’ll be sharing our new journey, as things progress, on RusticCountryMarket.com, because I love to journal, write, and create.
