Grow Slow Like a Walnut Tree
the roots and ethos of SmallStack
You might notice that I’ve included a voiceover for today’s post. To listen to the voiceover, just click play on the icon at the top, and make sure you have speakers turned on. Props to anyone who does voiceovers regularly—these are hard and intimidating!
Before we go any further, here is the space where I spread massive gratitude to those of you who have decided to become paying subscribers. Please know that your financial support has been—and continues to be—vital to the success of SmallStack, and this is my way of extending a personal thank you to every one of you for providing that support.
If you would like to become a paid subscriber to SmallStack, we do our best to keep it accessible. Annual subscriptions are only $25, monthly is just $2.50. We’re clearly kinda giddy when someone becomes a founding member, but we also love seeing all the free subscribers who join us here! There is no wrong way to be part of SmallStack.
I’m going to start us off with a fun story to help explain the ethos of SmallStack. Here we go.
Five years ago I bought a walnut tree. It’s a Chandler walnut, if you know your tree species. Being the gardening nerd that I am, I wanted to incorporate more edible permaculture in my yard, and nut trees are a productive member of any farm. Plant them, tend them, eat loads of nuts.
Problem is, that little tree was just a whip when I put it in the ground. I made a wide, deep hole for its roots, planted it with tenderness, watered it, guarded it, and then I waited. And I waited. And I waited some more. By the third year it put out just one walnut within the three tiny branches it grew, and a damn squirrel stole it before it was ripe. Visualize, if you can, a walnut tree of similar proportions to Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree in the famous holiday cartoon, and that’s what this tree looked like after three long years of growth.
It was excruciating.
In year four I began to worry that I was doing something wrong. I read books, I consulted my local extension agent, I checked the trunk and branches for wounds and damage. It didn’t bother putting out any fruit that year.
But I kept waiting, and in my mind I held firm to the vision of that what tree could be, of how it would feel to see it grow taller, fuller, more resilient, stronger. Of course it shouldn’t be creating nuts this early. What a burden of expectation that is! And what sort of root growth was happening where I could not see it?
This spring, year five, my little walnut tree has finally stretched new branches wide, open to sunlight, arms waving joyfully in the breeze as its pale green leaves unfurl. And at the base of many branch nodes are the tiny buds of little nuts. The tree itself is growing more rapidly on one side than the other. It is not perfectly balanced, and I still worry and wonder at what the future will bring for the both of us. But growth can be unexpected like that, and sometimes what it requires most is patience.
Here's your second (brief) story.
Once upon a time there was a guy who wrote his own Substack. He started off with a literal subscriber count of zero, but he wrote anyway. And as a small community developed around him, his roots grew deeper, and he found a resilience that felt new, rich, and warm. And where he saw others struggling to grow, he believed that they, like his walnut tree, simply needed the right time and conditions to bring the fruits of their labor to the table.
SmallStack is an orchard for me. (I know, you were expecting a breakfast metaphor here, and you’re wondering now if this is an orchard of sugar maples, right?!) Here we all are, some tiny whips, some large saplings, others enormous trees lending shade and shelter. In this orchard there is space for all of us.
SmallStack is growing slowly
SmallStack started as an idea: to build a space where the smaller publications could take the lead, grow in the ways that feel best, and support one another as friends. Now that we’ve been around for a month (can you believe it’s been a month already?), this is a great time to clarify the features you’ll find here and how they will be structured.
The Library is our top feature, and also our most difficult to get right.
The SmallStack Library will be a database hosted here in its own tab on the SmallStack site. Searchable and with filters for all sorts of useful descriptors, the Library will guide you in finding some truly amazing publications—all of which have 1,000 or fewer subscribers. We currently have over 1,700 publications looking to be listed, and managing a library of that size will take a champion effort. This is why the Library is not scheduled to open until September of this year. We appreciate your patience as we madly build virtual shelves to hold so many great publications!
Some of you have also asked for more clarity around who will qualify for getting listed in our Library. The only restriction is your subscriber count, which we know is always in flux. That’s okay. If you have 1,000 or fewer subscribers, you’re eligible to get listed. SmallStack does reserve the right to remove any listings which violate our community guidelines (please visit our About page and our FAQ page for more information).
Featured Posts will also debut in September of this year.
This series is limited to publications with 500 or fewer subscribers. The SmallStack Team will hunt and forage through the Library for great posts (maybe even one that you wrote!) that we will then host on SmallStack. Featured Posts shine the spotlight on you and your amazing creations and share them with the entire SmallStack audience. Our curated collection of Featured Posts will be a kind of “staff picks” for the Library to help guide you to outstanding work that you want to engage with. Featured Posts will be embedded with plenty of opportunities to promote subscribing, liking, commenting, and building up the creators of those publications. Lots of SmallStackers want to grow their audience, and having a post Featured by us is a great way to make that happen.
During Launch Week in September, when our library is scheduled to open its doors, we will be premiering a week-long series of Featured Posts across a range of categories and topics. Our current submissions to the library cover every topic you can imagine, and we want to celebrate as much of those categories as possible. You’ll hear more about Launch Week as we get closer to those dates, so stay tuned!
Featured Posts after Launch Week will resume a more regular schedule of publishing.
The Library and Featured Posts are dedicated spaces for publications with small subscriber numbers. By actively promoting them on SmallStack, we hope to provide them with growth opportunities through our own version of crowd-sourcing.
If you have questions about Featured Posts or the SmallStack Library, head over to our FAQ page to learn more.
The SmallStack community is made of more than just under 500 and under 1,000 subscriber folks—with over 3,200 subscribers here, we contain multitudes! And our full community deserves a space where we can all talk to one another. This is where Guest Posts come in.
Guest Posts are now live!
This is an opportunity for anyone in the SmallStack community, regardless of subscriber numbers, to take the microphone and speak directly to all of us. While there is no restriction on who can write a Guest Post beyond being a subscriber to SmallStack, these posts must provide content that the community finds value in. Topics can range from the reasons we start writing to how we connect with our readers, and there is no limit to the format they can take. We want to see your art, photography, poetry, prose, interviews, podcasts, and creative approaches to what makes “small” great. Got an idea? Why not pitch us?!
We have already received some truly outstanding pitches from this community. Many of you have volunteered unique, profoundly moving pieces for us. I am incredibly grateful for Amanda B. Hinton being part of our Guest Post launch, and I heard many of you appreciate the work she created for this community. I fully believe that our first guest post embodies the spirit of many aspects of the SmallStack crowd, and Amanda’s voice feels like a real beacon to a lot of us here.
To re-cap:
Guest Posts are open to any subscriber here, restricted only by content.
The Library is restricted to 1,000 or fewer subscriber publications.
Featured Posts are restricted to 500 or fewer subscriber publications.
SmallStack started out as a vision in the head of one person. It has grown to become a community, our roots burrowing deep, our branches trailing out looking for sunlight. And this growth will never be perfect. It might even be unexpected in some ways. Staying open to that kind of change means listening to the entire community here, which is where our best ideas and inspiration come from. We hope you will extend your patience to us as we grow strong roots together.
We also invite you to share how YOU are growing, whether that’s a celebration of your subscriber numbers, a change in what you create for your publication, or the roots of something deeper.
One small leap for SmallStack,
Robin & Robin
love the inclusivity in this orchard. this feels like such a thoughtful space.
‘Here we all are, some tiny whips, some large saplings, others enormous trees lending shade and shelter.’
Such sweet and reassuring imagery, Robin… I just love the landscape you’ve set for us here. We are a rhizomatic community, indeed, growing together and yet in our own deliciously unique ways.
Thank you for this love letter!!