Waters always puts in full day
Early one Saturday, Bill Waters is racing around to meet customer demand for his organic produce.
No sooner does he finish with one group of customers than another group comes along. He is continuously restocking his old plywood display table with carrots, beets, greens and other produce. His whirlwind of activity is a classic image of a multitasker hard at work. While putting out new produce, he’s totaling one customer’s price in his head and giving change to another just before bagging yet another customer’s purchase.
There’s no time for chit chat. Waters is a one-man operation at the Farmers’ Market at Sandpoint. At home, about 13 miles southwest of Sandpoint, he works from sunrise to dark weeding and tending to his acre of raised beds.
During a brief lull in customer traffic he says, gesturing to his rickety table and makeshift, handwritten price tags, “You can tell I’m a bachelor. I’m not real fancy.”
But fancy isn’t what drives customers to Waters. He’s been a staple at the Sandpoint market since it opened 16 years ago. And for about a decade, he’s been providing people with certified organic produce.
He says he’s able to live off what he makes at the market.
“I live a simple, meager life,” says the 59-year-old, But he wouldn’t have it any other way, saying he loves the privacy his lifestyle affords him. “I don’t like working for someone else.”
The trade off is a lot of work. He says he starts each day with a list of things to do in the garden and rarely gets to all of them because something else crops up. Trying to keep up is catching up to him, he says.
“To me it’s a mess,” he says, referring to his garden. “But I’m able to exist with disaster. One man can only do so much.”
Like other long-time small acreage farmers, Waters is starting to think about the day when it is too much work. He and others at the Sandpoint market wonder who will take over when they stop farming. “We need to make sure the slack is being taken up,” he says.
He wishes there were more people like him and fewer commercial farms, or what he calls “factory farms.”
“They don’t care what they do the environment,” he says. “That doesn’t sit well with me. My surrounding, my environment is very important to me.”
To those who are just starting out in small acreage farming, Waters advises, “Don’t go overboard on anything you do until you’re sure you’ve got a market. You don’t necessarily sell stuff right away. You can’t get discouraged.”
If that sounds like a true businessman talking, it may have something to do with the fact that Waters has a college degree in accounting. Though he says he never actually took his degree and got a job in accounting, he certainly applies the principles to his market business.
Waters keeps meticulous records of what he grows, how much he harvests and how much sells. He says he knows just what to bring to the market each week and rarely goes home with leftovers.
He was raised in Iowa and spent summers on his grandfather’s farm. He says he’s always liked growing things and says there’s a certain satisfaction in providing good fresh vegetables to people.
Besides, the growing season fits perfectly with the seasons of his other two passions: basketball and football. As soon as the market wraps up for the year and Waters get his garlic planted for next year, it’s time to kick back and take in some games.