The 500 sq. foot kitchen is not a lot of room considering she shares it with the Penguin staff and Dad’s Diner, which is located across the street.
She doesn’t mind the lack of room. All her racks and appliances have their practical places.
“It can actually make it harder, having too much space to cover. I can reach everything in a smaller area,” Johanne comments.
She has the early round ready in the freezer to make it easier to get the goods ready for the Penguin. While things are in the oven, she can have a cup of tea and do some work online.
Johanne started baking at an early age.
“I made Christmas cookies. They are still my favorite. Other people like them, too. I have a customer who doesn’t think it’s Christmas without my cookies,” she comments with a smile.
She recalls one incident when she was in her early twenties, eager to start a cookies-by-mail business. She took her carefully crafted goodies, which she had boxed up for shipping, to the UPS store. Not sure if she had done the packaging properly, she asked the clerk if the box would be good for mailing the cookies. The clerk took the package, shook it heartily for a while and then threw it over her shoulder, commenting that probably not.
“She must have been having a bad day,” Johanne says, laughing about it now.
She has continued to ship cookies for family, and it is going better these days.
Johanne has a second job taking care of tropical plants at Everett Mall a few days a week. Along with it come more requests for baked goods.
“I used to take free cookies to the ‘professional ladies’ there. They started placing orders against payment with me. One of my regulars has been a customer for twenty years;” she states, happy about her loyal ladies.
Johanne has adapted her own sugar cookie recipe.
“It’s half sugar cookie, half butter cookie,” she sparingly reveals while cutting out some of them with a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter. “The book ‘Crust and Crumb’ is my bible,” she adds.
Johanne’s husband Peter Watson helps out with the baking and selling.
“I do the cookies and the bread, Peter does the scones and the buns. It’s like a dance, working in this space. You have to know your steps,” she explains.
Johanne estimates they bake 20-30 dozen cookies for the Farmers’ Market and use about 300 lbs. of flour – an assortment of seven different kinds – in a week.
She worked at The Calico Cupboard some 25 years ago, learning a lot about the industry during that time.
“I’m not interested in a restaurant, I like the Farmers’ Market,” she says with conviction.
Johanne and Peter divide their time between the Anacortes Farmers’ Market and the one in Oak Harbor. She welcomes drop-in customers at the Penguin anytime; they are always open for business.
“If you see my little red car outside the coffee shop, come on in,” she encourages.
“I started at the Anacortes Farmers’ Market nineteen years ago. There were just five booths there altogether. I had a folding table for my goodies and a little blue stepping stool to sell my now ex-husband’s flower bouquets from. I made about $15 a week,” she recalls.
She kept on going and finally made $500 one week, still remembering the feeling of accomplishment from that. The market has since expanded. Likewise, Johanne’s booth has grown into a covered stand with several folding tables piled high with baked goodies.
“The other vendors use us as a barometer depending on our volume of sales,” she explains.
“I believe in buying local. If we each spent 30% on local goods, there might be fewer problems with the economy,” she points out. “When we went to Ocean Shores for the weekend recently, I bought everything for the trip here at the Market: broccoli, mushrooms, even a sweatshirt.”
The market vendors support each other.
“If I have leftover goods, I go and see if we can trade or share,” she says.
Johanne and Peter have such a large booth these days that during the Winter Market they cannot set it up inside the Depot with the rest of the vendors. Instead, they stay by the front door, braving the cold while welcoming customers.
“We are not getting rich by doing this, but we make people happy. And I still love making cookies,” she concludes.