photo by Karen Laslo
Emma Harris works her Pine Creek Flowers booth April 25, abiding by public health guidelines Farmers Market has adopted.
by Leslie Layton
For Emma Harris, the past five weeks of pandemic have meant a hard hustle.
She’s had to fashion a new business model in just weeks to keep her Chico flower farm, Pine Creek Flowers, afloat.
As the pandemic set in, she saw that her market sales were going to plummet; the spring opening of the Thursday Night Market was postponed and the Saturday crowd at the downtown Farmers Market was smaller. She says she didn’t qualify for a loan from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program; Pine Creek Flowers doesn’t have a payroll.
