Permanent Sunshine

A month after Keith cut a hole in our 113 square foot store's rear wall, our retail expansion was complete – and our community's response has been all we had hoped. Customers tell us the shop flows better and browsing is easier, and within the first week our sales already reflected this. One neighborhood regular likes the new store so much that he thinks we should charge admission. While we won’t be taking his suggestion, we are glad that everyone is pleased with the changes we’ve made.

Unexpectedly, it seems to be the new paint job outside that is having the most impact. As soon as the build-out was done, it was time to check the 7-day forecast and schedule a painting party. (In Portland, pinpointing the day in early June least likely to rain is on par with trying to predict the last frost date, but fortunately we managed to do it.) The result? The exterior walls donned a shade of yellow selected to coordinate with the green we chose for the trim last fall, eliciting consistent compliments from passersby – this last a relief, as the building holds a prominent position on a busy thoroughfare, and colors tend to look different on a 14’ x 45’ wall than on a sample chip from the store.

When Keith and I decided to reopen Taproot last fall, we both acknowledged the learning curve we were undertaking. The retail experience I gained in my early twenties didn’t include merchandising on a whole, and I had never been in a position to make decisions about a store’s exterior appearance. I thought when we put up our signs, the customers would just stream in. While we’d had our share of walk-in traffic over the previous eight months, I didn’t anticipate the increase that going from white to yellow would produce, nor the change in people’s perception of Taproot. It’s brought folks out of the woodwork welcoming us to the neighborhood and asking when we opened. (In hindsight, I can see that gray signs – our identity system is in tones of gray – on white walls in an overcast city is one of the least visible initial choices we could have made.) The psychological effect has also been notable. One customer told us she had noticed Taproot many times but felt reluctant to visit because the space didn’t seem open to the public, despite our signage. Several new clients have mentioned how welcoming the new color seems.

The best part about finishing the exterior painting? Starting the landscaping! We’ve been pulling the red rock out of the parking strip beds over the past few months and solarizing the weed seeds; soon we’ll be amending the soil (currently the tilth is nothing to write home about) and putting in a selection of native and Mediterranean plants. Stay tuned for next month’s post, likely to be titled “Landscaping for Permanent Sunshine.”

The Natural Flow of Retail*

*or, Why a Room Measuring 8 x 14 Needs 3 Doors

When Keith founded Taproot out of his home in southeast Portland in 2002, he focused mainly on custom work, and his clients found him through word of mouth. 2004 found him manning his first booth at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, where he sold his trellises, tools and other garden accessories. New clients interested in custom work found him there as well, and each of the subsequent three years Keith booked a booth to sell his “hard goods”…and met enough clients each time to help book himself out until the next Northwest Flower and Garden Show came along.

About a year ago Keith considered renting a commercial shop space to expand Taproot's capabilities, but retail wasn't on his mind. He had already invited me to come aboard to help expand the business, and as we hunted for a workshop, Keith gravitated toward those tucked away in some of the tri-county area's more industrial corners. Along the way we encountered some oddball landlords. Upon calling the number posted on a fixer-upper in Oregon City, we were told to "just climb in through the broken kitchen window and look around, then call back if interested". A space on North Columbia Boulevard boasted several hundred more square feet than reported by the tape measure we took to carrying with us on these excursions, and it seemed as the search continued that no landlord we met knew or would divulge the actual size of the proffered property. 

A few weeks into this I was working my weekly volunteer shift at Seastar Community Acupuncture. I'd spent part of the afternoon bending Catherine's ear about it, and that evening as I sank into one of the clinic's overstuffed easy chairs, she promised a calming treatment to help me find just the right space. Keith came in for acupuncture that night as well; afterward, we floated out of the clinic, into our truck, and down Glisan Street. Earlier in the day I had seen a space for rent across from Pambiche, and I wanted Keith to take a look.

"Did you see that?" Keith asked. He'd only driven about a block and a half, and I wasn't paying attention. He made a series of left turns and pulled into a parking spot on the corner of 70th and NE Glisan. What appeared to be the first bay in an auto repair shop had a For Rent sign taped to the window. 

"Don't you want to see it?" Keith urged. I was so relaxed from my treatment that I didn't really care. He got out and looked around briefly before returning to the truck. 

"You've got to see this," he said. I opened my door, rolled out, looked in, and reached for my phone. Through the windows we could see a large area for Keith's metal shop, a bathroom, and a smaller room at the front corner of the building with its own entrance: A retail store! I wanted to leave a message for the landlord.

With the perfect space just happened to come the perfect landlord. Simon Kim, owner of K & S Auto (the business occupying the building's other three bays since 1976), answered his phone at 8:30 on a Tuesday night and offered to show us the space on the spot.

"I don't want to trouble you," I insisted, imagining him driving across town to meet us. He said he'd be right there - and there he was, in his Bermuda shorts with a large pair of pruning shears in one hand and a big smile on his face. It turns out he lives behind the building, and had just been out shaping the hedge. The three of us agreed easily on a rental fee. The next day we reconvened to sign the lease, and the next generation of Taproot was off and running. Only when we needed to supply our business insurance agent with the square footage did we brandish the tape...to find the space in fact measured larger than Simon's quote.

Keith and I put a lot of what our friend Johanna referred to as "sweat equity" into readying the store. As the paint dried on the walls, we realized the scuffed blue vinyl floor wasn't going to cut it. Naomi's Organic Farm Supply had free pallets at the time, so with their blessing we toted a couple of truckloads back to the shop. Keith cut apart and sanded the boards and carried them by the armful into the store where I was busily assembling the largest jigsaw puzzle of my life. 113 square feet might not seem like much (the room is about 8 by 14), but piecing together reclaimed pallet wood is a tedious art at best.

If our friends wanted to suggest that 113 square feet would be too small for a retail store, they didn’t. Personally, it never occurred to me that anyone would find it cramped. My mid-90’s retail background includes several months at Seattle’s tiniest fine stationery store, located downtown in a room that some might find comparable to an ample closet. Keith had another perspective. The carport he had used for metal fabrication during Taproot's first five years was about the size of our new store. There was enough room for a desk and our standard product line, so neither of us gave it a second thought.

Reopening Taproot in this way has been an unexpected opportunity to learn about how people move through space. We quickly noticed that the natural flow seemed to be in through the large folding doors on 70th (around the corner from the store's door on Glisan). Keith greeted customers and invited them to visit the store by way of the sidewalk. Some did, and some declined. Many of those who did take time to explore the store commented, “I’ll just go out the back door here." A colleague recently referred to the store as my “cage”. From it I have often observed people peeking in through the windows, palpably curious about our offerings but reluctant to enter - even one acquaintance the first time she came to see the shop.

As our inventory has grown, we've begun merchandising more and more in the area behind the "original" store, and since the weather warmed we've kept those 70th Street doors open during business hours. With the majority of customers continuing to use that entrance, some of whom still shy away from venturing into the "cage", Keith and I decided to expand. The first step: Cut a hole in the rear wall of the existing store (as evidenced by Keith's head in the photo above) and install a door. As of this writing, Keith is just completing this task. The door, a casualty of Keith's brother and sister-in-law's remodel late last year, is the store's third (the second allows passage into the metal shop). Tomorrow we will begin to sheet-rock in the additional 150 square feet or so that lie between the new door and our single-occupancy restroom. This will, we hope, provide our beloved supporters with the breathing room they need to shop comfortably, as we define what seems to be the shop's inherent natural flow.

Who Says You Can't Make Pesto in a Metal Shop?

Well, in fact I don't recall that anyone actually did. And I suppose had Keith been welding the day after I foraged for nettles, the metal shop wouldn't have been an environment conducive to the project. But he wasn't, and I had the ingredients, the equipment, the time...and the welder's permission to use the table for a culinary project.

One of the benefits of eating seasonally and locally is that it accords with the earth's wisdom on the topic of what we should be eating when and where. Stinging nettles have been shown to be an excellent liver tonic, and they are ready to harvest in spring - at precisely the time that the liver's influence over our physical and emotional health is prominent (and when the liver needs to divest itself of toxins accumulated during the winter months). Blackberries are ripe and ready to support the digestive system when it is experiencing its greatest annual hurdle: The shift from summer to fall. Autumn pears moisten and tonify the lungs, the dominant organ of those months. And on it goes.

I look forward to stinging nettle season, especially in winter when invariably I have used up the last of last season's vinegar. Given the common name's adjective - stinging - nettles can seem off-putting to consider as an object of one's foraging desire. Get a pair of garden gloves, though, and you're in business. With scissors, take just the top growth of not more than 1/3 of the plants in any given area, taking care not to trample tender wildlife, mid-March to mid-April. Collecting about a quarter pillowcase-full will be enough to put up a couple quarts of vinegar, a couple pints of pesto and a batch of soup.

Take the nettles home and rinse them. To make vinegar, soak the tender tops in apple cider vinegar for 6 to 8 weeks and strain. There are many recipes for nettle-potato soup, nourishing and capable of boosting energy levels, especially at a time of year when we are feeling collectively soggy here in the Pacific Northwest. Risotto is another option. The highlight for me, though, is the pesto. I far prefer it to the traditional Genovese variety, and use walnuts in place of the pine nuts Langdon Cook's Fat of the Land blog calls for. Tip: Don't discard the blanching water. Strain and drink as a tea for an immune system boost.

Once you've got the pesto, the only question is what to do with it. Whether you toss it with pasta and spring garden peas, spread it on crostini, or use it as a dip for another seasonal companion, asparagus spears, nettle pesto is a local seasonal treasure not to be missed.

http://fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/2009/03/stinging-nettle-pesto.html

Starting from Stone: the Backstory

Stones are where it all started for Taproot. Keith had been laying stone pathways for a client who wanted her collection of beach rocks incorporated into the paths. When she asked him for a trellis, Keith reflected on what he felt was missing in so much of the ornamental metal work he'd seen in the past: Row upon row of vertical rods that lead the eye up and out of the landscape they guard. Coming from a contemporary art background, that didn't work for Keith. He looks at his clients' yards as compositions. He wouldn't draw a line off the page, as it would lead the viewer's eye away from the piece; he wasn't going to design a trellis without something to lead the visitor's eye back to the garden.

That first trellis design is still the foundation of what has become our extensive standard product line. 40.5" wide and 84" tall, the five vertical rods of 1/2" hot-rolled round mild steel are crossed with four horizontals and each topped with a nondescript gray stone wrapped in steel on four sides. The stones provide a tranquil resting place for the viewer's eye, and the steel rods in which they're wrapped guide one's gaze back to the plantings. That first client was so taken with the trellis that she asked him for several more, and made it a fence. In the intervening years, Keith has added a bracketed option, so that the panels can be mounted onto 4x4 posts, as well as additional vertical or horizontal rods for clients who wish to tighten the weave.

We recently found ourselves running low on stones, and took Tuesday to drive out to the coast. Keith uses four basic sizes, each for different purposes and products. For example, the arbors require several stones all about the same small size; a 40.5" wide trellis/fence panel requires three sizes, as they tier up from sides to center. The sizes are so specific that there is even a laminated sheet with the traced ideal circumference of each to reference. In addition to canvas bags for the stones, we brought several plastic bags for trash. Trash pickup is the post-collection quid pro quo that Keith settled on years ago. Combing the cove this particular trip, we were pleased to find it fairly clean. Apart from a shoe, a length of twine, three plastic bottles and a few scraps, there wasn't much to scavenge.

Want to learn more? Our web site provides additional information about our entire line of fence and trellis panels, with PDF catalogs detailing the available finial combinations - including the stones we collected this week.

http://www.taprootworks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=5

The Jigs Are Up...On the Wall

Jig is a funny word. The first dictionary definition is usually something to the effect of "a lively dance", and/or the music to which one might, on St. Patrick's Day or otherwise, perform said dance. "Jig" can also refer to a trick or game: it's what is "up" in our somewhat antiquated colloquialism.

Some customers venture into the metal shop and ask, "What's with all those boards on the wall?" Occasionally someone comments, "Nice jigs!" and its obvious s/he is familiar with what appears often as the word's last definition:

"a device used to maintain mechanically the correct positional relationship between a piece of work and the tool or between parts of work during assembly"*

Hanging on the wall in the photo above are several examples of the wooden jigs Keith uses to fabricate his designs. (There are also a variety of metal jigs lurking around the shop, some of which are used in the production of our Wine Lanterns.) The one on the floor is new today, designed and built to accommodate the lengths of 3/8" hot-rolled round steel Keith is using to create a pair of custom pole bean trellises recently commissioned by a new client. Keith drilled strategically-located holes in the 1/2" FSC urea-free plywood that forms the base. Positioning the vertical lengths of steel in these holes and then securing them to the shorter cross-pieces with clamps and Very Strong Magnets is the necessary preparation for tack-welding them into place. It's a delicate process bringing the life-size drawing to life! Look for images of the finished trellises on our web site and Facebook page later this month...

*source: merriam-webster.com

"Where do you get the glass?"

It's a common question when our first-time visitors see the glass pendant color samples in the window, and they are usually surprised at the answer. Keith learned the trade working at several hot shops prior to founding Taproot in 2002.

"How do you make them?" is usually the next question. The glass pendants used in our designs are hot-cast, meaning Keith gathers molten glass from the furnace on the end of a blow pipe (shown above), presses the blob into the spikes of an Ikebana kenzan - a common glass production technique used to introduce bubbles - and poured into a mold. Then, using a tool Keith designed and fabricated specifically for the purpose, the hot pendant is placed in the annealer, a special furnace set to reduce the temperature of the glass slowly so it doesn't crack as it cools. As the glass pendants are hot-cast, and because the glass in our other finial product line is sculpted, there isn't actually any "blowing" going on when we are closed for glass production as we were the last Sunday in January.

Recycling glass doesn't just come into play in the fabrication of our wine lanterns. The hot shop we rent, Fremont Antique Glass in Seattle, uses post-industrial recycled glass in the recipe that owner Jim Flanagan developed during the company's thirty year (to date) history. Jim buys "cullet" from his sources, and then adds the proper chemicals to aid the glass in melting properly, thus creating "batch." The batch is then used to "charge" the furnace: the process of adding the treated detritus to the furnace little by little so it melts slowly and produces optimum appearance in the final product. Furthermore, much of the glass cleaned from Jim's production tools goes into a bucket for further recycling - back into another batch of batch, if you will.

Having been invited to provide garden infrastructure for both a garden vignette and a display garden at this year's Yard, Garden & Patio Show in Portland, Keith knew we were going to be running low on glass pendants once the arbor, trellis panels, and folding trellis finials he needed to produce for the show were completed. We produced 69 glass pendants in a variety of our standard colors last weekend, and with the work nearing completion, we are looking forward to the show. The six-foot arbor for Paul Taylor's ANLD booth features inset stones and clear glass pendants, while the trellis panels for Enviromax Landscape and Design's display garden will incorporate moss green glass pendants and inset stones. Come and see us February 18 - 20 at the Portland Convention Center!

Recipe for a Wine Lantern

Anvil complete, and a special-order trellis panel built and out the door, it was time for Keith to get back to inventory production. Everything we sell is made here in the shop, so if we're running low on something, it's up to Keith to make more. Keeping our inventory up when Keith is in the midst of a commission can be tricky, so he tries to produce as much product as possible between larger jobs. With one commission already slated for this month and more on the way, Keith's trying to gain some inventory ground while he can.

Since the fall our Wine Lanterns have been selling almost as quickly as Keith could make them. In the store stands their display rack, maximum capacity eight, so it's obvious when stock is thin. He managed to finish up a batch of lantern bodies toward the end of December, but we were starting to run low on glass hurricanes. Keith fabricates the bodies from domestic steel using jigs he designed and built, while recycled wine bottles constitute the wind barrier. To make the latter, Keith goes through a multi-step process in his cold-working station. The first order of business is label removal. The bottles have to be soaked for several days, then scraped. Next the top and bottom sections are cut off, leaving just the 6" cylinder. This fits within the steel structure and protects the candle flame while burning.

We only use Bordeaux bottles for the hurricanes. Bottles used in Burgundy wine production don't work because their curvy shape yields a too-short cylinder. Several friends and neighbors, including Luke Bates of UFO Pizza down the street, have (kindly) gotten into the habit of saving bottles for us. "Shoulders not hips" is the mnemonic device we've been using to help folks remember which bottles to keep, and which to put out with the rest of the recycling.

In the spirit of using every part of the animal, as it were, Keith is in the midst of new product development. An elegant candelabra incorporating the wine bottle bottoms is on the welding table as of this writing, and he has several ideas for candle lighting solutions using the spout ends. He just completed a beer lantern prototype on Saturday, and a beer-inspired chandelier is in the works.

Anvil Epilogue

The best thing about reopening Taproot in this neighborhood is the neighbors. Our landlords, Simon and Kyoung of K & S Auto, have been exceptionally supportive of us. Meris and Davis across the street at the Blackwood Cafe provide not only coffee (and homemade biscuits with gravy), but also camaraderie. Of course, we wouldn't have found the space at all had it not been for our friend Catherine at Seastar Community Acupuncture a block away.

Local business owners notwithstanding, it quickly became apparent that the residential neighborhood surrounding us is home to an unusually friendly group of people. It took us two solid summer months to move in, set up, and get open. During that time we were spending long hours here, and during our daily lunch and dinner breaks we began to meet the locals, many of whom came walking their dogs past our 70th-side door, curious to know what was going on in Simon's first bay. (We saw so many of our neighbors during meals that I began to wonder if they would think we did anything other than eat.)

"We're starved for this!" one woman exclaimed. Everyone has expressed mingled delight and relief at having "something other than car repair shops and churches" in the neighborhood, often in unexpectedly generous ways. One couple brought a sack of home-grown tomatoes and a homemade sherry-zucchini bundt cake to welcome us. Bestowed upon us by another new friend was a pound of bee pollen. "Just Say Gnome" originator Steve Herrington gifted us with two of his creations. From a local painter came a few tins of Gamblin paint. Another artist brought some wire she thought Keith might be able to use. Around the holidays we received two big bottles of home-brewed beer from yet another neighbor who has become a friend. Many local residents did some portion of their holiday shopping at Taproot, and during these first three months in our new location, all of our commissions have been requested by people who live within walking distance.

One man, Bob, has shown nearly ecstatic enthusiasm for Keith's work from the first day he ventured over from the cafe where he'd been having coffee. He stops by now and then to check out the changes in the metal shop and run his hands over whatever newly smooth item Keith has procured since the last visit. A well-traveled retired history teacher, Bob is great fun to talk with, and every conversation we've had with him has yielded some new insight.

One day in December Bob stopped by to see the anvil. He told us he'd been walking his dog the night before and had stopped for a while to watch Keith in action. One day while we were closed for the holidays we stopped by the shop to drop something off, and found a piece of paper pushed through the mail slot. Bob had been inspired to write a short piece of prose about the evening he'd observed Keith grinding the anvil, excerpted below.

Sustainability isn't just about reducing our carbon footprint. While that's naturally of paramount importance, invaluable are the relationships that develop when you do business in your community.

*

"...Man, look at that, that new guy is working late. The bay to his shop was up.

"Long legs and heavy boots straddled a bench where an anvil glowed white-hot. Bouncing off the lenses of his hood, sparks leaped and snapped as he carefully sculpted the metal...

"I knew the guy, already had some of his stuff, so I knew it was special. I could have hailed him, maybe bullshitted for a while, but then his concentration would snap. Instead, we quietly watched, wishing I'd brought my camera, but, no, action like this you shouldn't try to capture. It's all about the shadows dancing on walls..."

- Bob Carrico, Portland