🌱 Happy New Year!

At the start of every year, I (Gil) write about resolutions and all the other words we use nowadays to express positive control we take of our lives. Every birthday and many major life events spur us to take charge of some aspect(s) of our life that we feel we should be better at. The changing of the year is one of those - and because many of us indulge over the holidays - eating better is often one of the things we aim to improve on. Regardless of when we are - today is always the best time to affect change.

It is true that Sprouts, as a living food - and Microgreens, as a living - just before harvest food, are among The Most Nutritious foods on our little blue planet - so they are a great add to your life - but this year I’m inclined to motivate you to add them, not just for nutrition - but because we think there is nothing as liberating as growing our own food.

Taking charge of our food supply is Huge. Sprouts and Micros can be grown anytime of year, even in the depths of winter - so get growing now! This is your gateway to health - which usually aids profoundly with happiness. More importantly - this is your gateway to independence - which is a fundamental desire of all of us humans. How’s that for changing one’s future?!

We love you! We have, now 2 times - tried to convince you to sign up for our new “short-form” (aka marketing) Newsletters. We all get some/many of those - from vendors around the internets. They’re useful. They often have deals and sales. Still - we ignore or toss many of them.

For whatever reason - most of you said “No, thanks” to us. Either you would seem to prefer this “long-form” Newsletter. Or, maybe hardly anyone is reading this one? Hmmm? Given the flat - downward trajectory of our sales these past few years - it feels less than a stretch to draw a connection here. I know a few of you are out there, because some of us have long histories of long communiques (you know who you are =;-) - which even now I can’t catch up on. Anyway - though I may be writing into a void - except for you true loyalists - this does seem the way we’ll keep communicating, unless there’s a groundswell for the shorties. All this is to say - that I will be sharing sales and deals here. I think.

It’s going to take me some time to get used to it. Until now it’s been just us (Gil, Lori, Sam, and Alice) - so having a sale or a special mix was something we all knew was happening, when we went to work. Now that I’m not making those decisions - I’ll just be passing along to you what I’m told - so it’ll be - well - different. I’ll push for the short-form emails too. Even though only a few hundred folks signed up for them (over 16,000 are signed up for this publication), we should serve everyone in the way they like.

Here’s one more chance to sign up for the Shorties: Click Me.

I’m very sorry we have so many items out-of-stock. Please know - we are working on it.

Our partner, Noah wrote this when he was young teenager. We love it and felt it just right for the new year, and really wanted to share it - so we asked. We’re honored that he’s letting us reprint it here. As much as I’m inclined to editorialize - I can recognize perfection when I see it…

A SPROUT’S PHILOSOPHY

Sprouts are always striving to be better. Stronger. Taller. Richer. More vibrant. They only want to be the best sprout they can be, and they work every hour of every day to become a bigger, better sprout.

They only have one thing on their mind. To grow! They don’t worry about the future; about the people who’ll come to harvest and eat ‘em up, they just work totally in the present,

They stick to what they know and never try to be anything else. They sow sturdy, long roots, and stay true to them for all their life. No matter what the future may bring, every sprout carries a little seedling along; a token of their past as a reminder from where they came.

Sprouts are wise. They constantly reach toward the sun, they work tirelessly to be more open; to take in more love, light, and warmth.

They spend their beautiful lives growing for us. Then, we harvest and enjoy them, and by doing so, absorb everything the sprout knows and has to offer. We are grateful.

One of the many things we want to do, now that we have time - is to write more Sprout Recipes and post them on our website. As it’s resolution time - I think sharing this most simple and delicious recipe is perfect - so here’s a way to start your day…

The true Breakfast of Champions!

• Sprouts (Any and All grain and seed sprouts including Amber Waves of Grain, Hulless Oats, Buckwheat Groats, Madison Market Mix - though our personal favorite is Oats + Groats with some Sunflower Sprouts.

• Milk (almond, cow, goat, soy, rice, etc.)

• Maple Syrup or Honey

• Fruit (fresh, frozen, dried)

• Nuts

• Etc.

• Put some sprouts in a bowl.

• Add some or all of these: fruit, nuts, milk and a sweetener.

• Dig in.

Notes:

• You may cook the sprouts by steaming - if you prefer hot cereal.

• Cooking is better left to the denser grains (Wheat, Rye, Triticale, Kamut, etc.) as the soft Grains and Pseudograins (Buckwheat Groats, Oats, Quinoa) will turn to mush quite quickly. Raw is of course always better - nutritionally speaking.

Gil’s favorite summer breakfast is Oats + Groats with some Sunflower Sprouts atop a whole bunch of fruit (strawberries, blueberries, and bananas) with maple syrup and raw Jersey cow milk.

Besides adding more recipes, with all the time I now have - I am determined to edit many of our pages - to perfect them, so they serve you better. As I’ve told you time and time again - including right here in this publication - Sproutpeople is first and foremost about education. We do need to sell products, but that isn’t what drives us. My life’s work (which I’d never have believed 32 years ago) seems to be sproutpeople.org. I have spent 30 years writing out what I know, from growing - by hand - over 150 Tons of Sprouts and countless thousands of trays of Microgreens and Grass. Honing it to perfection - and maybe someday putting it in book form - well - that’s my goal. That’s my work. I want my experience to live beyond me and to help growers for generations to come.

The first and so most important thing is Detailed Instructions. Every Crop for which we offer seeds has a profoundly detailed page devoted to it. We use Tabs (on computer) and Pull-Down Menus (on mobile devices) to organize our wealth of content. When you come to any crop’s page - besides the brief description of the crop, and basics like Yield Ratio, Nutrition, Flavor, and such - you will see Brief Growing Instructions - which are intended for the experienced grower.

The Detailed Instructions (for the not yet experienced grower) are the most essential element of these pages. They’ve been good for decades - but I’m making them better. So, hopefully by the time you next visit, you’ll find that I’ve greatly improved formatting and edited (by removing and adding information) the text for…

• Leafy Sprouts

• Brassica Sprouts

• Bean Sprouts (except Mung Beans, which have unique instructions)

• Grain Sprouts (the big Grains)

I’ll be getting to all the other crops too - but this upgrade is a big deal, to me anyway. I’m shooting for perfection - so it’ll take time, but here’s to progress =:-)

Sadly I’m technologically challenged now. I was a wiz in the 90’s-00’s - but now I’m having trouble getting these onto the site. I’ve spent several hours failing so far, but hopefully Noah will bail me out, again - though he too is encountering some techno-difficulties. He’s perseverant though! I spent days re-writing these detailed instructions. I Very much want you to see them. If they’re not there yet - they will be - soon.

We no longer love when people buy seeds elsewhere and come to us for instruction - but we sure are flattered by it, and because we have Mixes unlike any you will find anywhere else - we’ve always felt everyone has to eventually try our seeds, so we like to believe that Sproutpeople will survive for many years to come - and I’ll be doing my part to make it better. It’s my job =:-)

We don’t pay to advertise. We did have a one inch add is a high end vegetarian publication in the mid-90’s, and for a few years we paid google for “keywords” - so we’d show up at the top of searches. We stopped doing that decades ago because it rubs us the wrong way and frankly, we - when searching anything, ignore sponsored results - and our website has more information about growing Sprouts and Microgreens than any other - and has, since before the turn of the millennium - so a true search engine has to show us near the top, because sproutpeople.org actually has answers in its millions of words.

When times have gotten really tough around here, I (Gil) have sought help. In late 2018 - when Lori and I realized Sproutpeople wasn’t generating enough revenue to pay our wonderful full-time manager, Kate, our one remaining part-timer, the amazing Luisa - and us - I investigated “influencers”. We’ve always been an earnest business. We always put quality and customer service above sales. I thought I could get one or two of these powerful social media people to say something about us - because they were big into health food, growing, and such.

Not one of these social celebrities even responded. Being the naive person I am, I thought someone who truly cared about what they said would like to know us. We’ve been online since 1996 - and we shared everything we knew about growing, for free - the way the world wide web was originally intended. So Naive! No one cared about two people busting their butts for decades, just to spread the word of Sprouts.

It’s all about money. A business needs to pay all its costs and expenses. A real business, like Sproutpeople has inventory worth many thousands of dollars (at least). Our inventory has always been Seeds and Supplies. We have to have them in order to sell them and then ship them to customers. We pay rent, utilities, and fees to everyone and their uncle - and we paid our employees - well. Social media influencers don’t have inventory. They just sell words. It made us very sad that none of these people, who are thought of as gurus by many - had any interest in us. It made us sadder that we had to fire Kate in January of 2019, because we had to take her hours for ourselves if we were to be able to pay our bills and buy groceries.

What really pisses me off is that we get emails regularly from agencies that represent influencers. You see - we can pay an influencer to write about us. It’s like all the people who have written, asking us to send them free stuff so they can do an honest revue of our products. Maybe we’re just too old - but to us that is not a recipe for an honest review.

We went online to share. Sure, we started to sell our offerings as the years passed - but to this day - our website is first and foremost about education. We want everyone to grow - at least some of their own food. Doing so changed our lives - and so we share that with everyone - in hopes it will have a similarly liberating effect for our visitors. We just cannot abide paying people to be earnest. You either are or are not sincere - and taking money before anything else makes for a kind of sincerity we are not interested in. It makes me So Mad! The internet was supposed to be about sharing.

Taking a breath…

As usual, my attitude runs to the intense side. Please excuse my outburst. Now that I no longer have to even think about this stuff, maybe Sproutpeople will be better run. Maybe my attitude has held it back of late. Our partners may see advertising as a good idea. Not paying influencers, I think - but really, Sproutpeople needs to get growing again (sorry - it just fits so well =;-) - so maybe it’s time. Not my job!

I really have to relax. All I want to do right now is spend time with Lori, not working - and dig in the dirt. It doesn’t snow here - so I can dig all winter. You know, if I do that instead of ranting on about inequities - I’m much happier. Here’s to me and Lori not being in charge of the tough decisions anymore. Happy New Year!

December was cold and wet here in San Francisco. Our 4 legged family members don’t prefer that - but they are good natured beings, so they seldom complain. We have made zero progress on finding Yoshi (that Amazon driver stealing a cat has given us a new concern), but Django and Gus aren’t in the least upset by that, and Ira is happy to keep looking - when we’re out walking the neighborhood. We’ll never stop.

Come to Sproutpeople

Sproutpeople.org is an encyclopedic resource of our creation - for indoor farmers of Sprouts, Microgreens, and Grass. It is so enormous that it gives some the impression that we are a big business. The reality is that we are basically 2 people who eat and breath Sproutpeople - and 2 part-time helpers (one being our son). Our site has been online since 1996. It’s the employee that allows us to serve all of you.