From Your Farmer: May 2020
In one of the final days before our world came to a virus-induced halt, I attended the funeral for Marlene Willis. Marlene was our very first retail clerk at Ferndale Market, hired right before we opened our on-farm store in the fall of 2008. Her hiring was purely a matter of dumb luck and good timing, as my mom happened to bump into Marlene and she expressed an interested in our store-to-be. I called her up and offered her a job - no application or interview needed. That’s how the best things work in a small community. We’d known Marlene and her history in local retail, owning the Hallmark store and working the front desk at the Cannon Falls Beacon newspaper. From the start, she was our biggest fan, even when we probably didn’t deserve the cheerleading. We were total retail novices, but she encouraged us forward, making signage and teaching us how to better merchandise. She told me [...]