JOY FRIENDS
The Sproutpeople
The Sproutpeople are comprised of Gil and Lori - a married couple, 2 children, 2 dogs, 2 cats, a goldfish and our trusty helpers who are actual clowns when they aren't working for us.
Gil and Lori met and fell in love at a Grateful Dead Show in San Francisco. Six weeks later they were married. 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. They adopted two cats and two dogs from the pound before leaving San Francisco for Seattle in 1988. Once there they bought their first house and put in their first garden. It was that garden and their first dog's love for nature that led them to quit their jobs and move to Southern Illinois in pursuit of self-sufficiency. In 1991 they packed their cats and dogs into a VW Bus and a moving van, arriving in Carbondale, Illinois six days later. A month later they spent all of their money on a beautiful post-glaciated forty acres with a shabby little old house. They put in two gardens totaling about one-half acre, collected a couple goats and a dozen chickens and began living. After realizing how isolated and financially-unprepared they were, they sold their farm in 1992 and moved to unglaciated Southwest Wisconsin in pursuit of community and another farm.
They moved to Gays Mills with the intention of growing heirloom vegetables and selling them at The Dane County Farmer's Market ( www.sproutpeople.com/market.html ) in Madison, Wisconsin. This plan met with difficulties. When they ran out of things to sell about six weeks into the market, Lori suggested that they come up with something until their garden started producing. "Let's grow sprouts," suggested Lori. Gil responded "I hate sprouts." So, Lori grew sprouts from ten different types of seed, exposing market-goers to a wider range of sprouts than they had ever seen.
A few months later Gil and Lori had developed a regular clientele who begged them to keep sprouting. Gil had found that he actually liked sprouts and realized that growing them was at least as enjoyable as gardening (there was no weeding involved). After one particularly horrible market, they decided to take their unsold sprouts to a local co-op. The produce manager said "Sure, I'll buy 'em." Thus began Gil and Lori's prolonged foray into wholesale sprout production. At their peak, they grew over 1,500 pounds of sprouts, grass, and greens, delivered to forty stores in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
In 1996 Gil and Lori expanded their business, selling seeds and sprouting supplies via mail-order and launching a web site. As time passed they grew weary of the wholesale sprout trade, eventually shutting down in 1999. Though they continued growing for and selling at the Madison Farmers Market, Gil and Lori concentrated most of their energy on the mail-order business and their family. In an effort to reduce the number of questions people asked them about sprout growing, they spent 18 months writing everything they knew after having grown over 200 tons of sprouts by hand and posted it on their web site in 2001. They have more information on their site than any 4 sprout books combined—over four hundred pages. As a result, their business doubled almost overnight. So, as is so often the case in life, things didn't work out the way they had planned: their efforts had not saved them any time to spend at home.
Gil and Lori now do business through their web site only and have moved back to San Francisco, exactly fifteen years after they left. They now employ people to help with the business and, though Sproutpeople continues to grow all the time, are enjoying their family more than ever. They spend some of their time working on their next life, as "dogumentarians" (see www.dogcity.tv ).
Visit them at: www.sproutpeople.com
The Sproutpeople's books:
Sprout Starter Kit
The right choice for anyone who wants to get into sprouts. Try a wide variety of tastes and textures while learning how to sprout just about everything. 2 Sprouting Devices and 20 easy to grow seed mixes along with easy to follow and thorough growing instructions will turn just about anyone into an educated sprout lover.