Growing Entrepreneurs

By Alena Devlin

Last summer, COVID changed everything. My very busy active children, then aged 7, 5 and 3, found themselves at home, a lot.

Quickly running out of things to do, we decided to grow our own veggie garden. It filled our home schooling requirements for science, physical education - and, it turns out, economics and math.

Our little garden was producing a lot, probably because we were home to water it. The 12 kids in our neighbourhood decided to open “The Village Farm Stand,” selling extra fruit and veggies from our gardens, fuelled by their desire to buy their own Android tablets.

Now as a parent I had mixed feelings about this enterprise. On one hand, I was proud that they wanted to learn how to earn money and save towards a goal. On the other, it was going to be a lot of work. I caved because COVID guilt... and what else where we going to do with all this produce before it spoiled?

Turns out they are savvy business partners. They learned to pay for supplies, they paid for snacks and drinks for the village of children and paid the moms for our work, too.

They calculated how much to charge, and took orders from customers. They shared the profits with the ever growing number of business partners (they multiply like gremlins) and most of all marketing.

At last summer’s farm stand, Alex, 7, Patrick, 5 and Catherine, 3 all Devlin, and Declan Paul, 7, just a few of the dozen kids learning to run a small business in The Village,.

We had to put a stop to their screaming “Come to our farm stand!” pretty quickly.

Kids are adorable and can sell anything so we wanted to make sure they understood the value and time it took for people to support them.

They ended up earning enough for that tablet. But once they realized that I still controlled their use of it, they chose to keep saving for something else I was unwilling to buy them: as yet undecided, but perhaps Nerf guns.

Now we find ourselves in another year of COVID restrictions. The Village kids are planning each family’s gardens, so that they can offer more variety. They’re thinking of more products to sell and getting excited to buy their seeds.

Growing a garden is so worthwhile, especially during COVID. Growing entrepreneurs, as much work as it is, has been just as rewarding.