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Mum the Bahamian Apprentice - Sat Oct 23, 2004 11:40 am

If they ever have the Bahamian Apprentice, I'm voting in my Mum. I mentioned how in a previous post, how after transplanting to Canada, she and the crazy neighbour Miss Knowlton made money selling jams, goats milk soap and sachets at a local Saturday morning market.

Mum and Miss Knowlton got a third partner -- the witchy woman who is the wife of the petting zoo owner who sold Miss Knowlton the goats in the first place. She was the one who makes marijuana salve to fix blind donkeys.

They have been going to two markets a week and sell the wares that they make during the week -- usually in my kitchen.

On my humble 43 acres, I have numerous apple trees -- most of them gone wild. The apples are usually small, hard, blemished and not very sugary. However the ladies make jams, jellies, dried apple bits and stuff from them. They also harvest the mint that grows in abundance and dry it in the oven, mix it with cardomon (spelling?) and other spices that they get at the dollar store, and sell it as chai or herbal tea. They forage through the forest with the witchy woman and pick wild garlic, pickle it and sell it for $8 a jar. They also pick and dry blackberry leaves and bits of vines and make a tea. Of course they have the goats milk soap, and now a hand cream from the goats milk that they concoct.

The driving force is Mum. Both the witchy woman and Miss Knowlton have been neighbours for years and had a cup of tea together once every six months or so. Mum came to Canada and needed money. She has scrambled all of her life, and employment in the Bahamas was always tenuous. That gave her entrepreneurial drive and a street sense that the other two women in the group really don't have. Mum never really starved but she was always on the lookout for the next dollar. Canada seems like the land of milk and honey to her.

This was driven home when she asked me for a ride to the grocery store. She wanted to buy another case of pickling and jam jars. On the way there, I stopped at the petrol station. Mum insisted on paying. She pulls out a wad of bills that would choke a horse, peels off a twenty and throws it at me. Then she wants to go to the post office, and buy a money order. She buys one for a cool thousand to send for hurricane relief to her ex-pastor in Freeport. This is starting to get serious. After we got back, I delve into her business venture specifics.

As it turns out, going to two markets a week, Mum, Miss Knowlton and the witchy woman are grossing THREE GRAND A WEEK. After expenses, that is about $800 a week for each of the women. I'm starting to call her Mrs. Trump.

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