What trouble are we getting into here at the farm these last few weeks? Find out more in this week’s super-sized, double-length newsletter! But first a couple of important announcements.
We are still taking orders for 2023. I hoped I’d be done by now but people move at their own pace. It’s just their nature. But now would be as good a time as any to sign up for this season of tasty goodness! Order your share from our online farmstand and while you are there pick-up some eggs, coffee or fresh flowers for the season! All three sound perfect on this cold, windy winter (though soon to be spring) day.
Since we are still taking orders you can still tell all your friends about us. Why not? By now I’m sure you are running out of things to talk about so throw us into your next conversation. What’s the harm? And if they feign interest tell them to write your name in the “Where did you hear about us?” section of the order and we will credit your account $25.
Surprisingly we are still looking for a worker or two to help out this summer. You’d think a job with fresh air, exercise and plenty of sunshine would be overwhelmed with applicants. Maybe so or maybe we are just being too picky. Either way we still need help so send all your unemployed yet employable acquaintances our way!
Final payment for your 2023 share is due this month — unless you are on a payment plan. Please send in payment at your earliest convenience!
Farm News
Farming in the 21st century is far different from farming in the 20th century — or so I would imagine since I wasn’t farming last century. But I could also say that farming this decade is far different from farming two decades ago when I first started farming. Some of you are probably thinking, “Sure Farmer Chris. This whole climate change situation must make farming far more challenging!” Yeah, yeah, sure. Changes in weather are challenging, but not nearly as much as other aspects of farming. Aspects that weren’t around much last century and which have changed dramatically this century — more dramatically than climate change. What I’m talking about is all the tech changes that are happening on the internet!
Back when I started farming all you really needed to know was a bit of html to get your web site up and running. A few pages explaining what you do. A page with contact info. Payment was sent by check with the order form. Newsletters could go out via email. And email was fairly reliable. Those were the days.
But now the web site has to be interactive and responsive (that’s the technical term for fitting different sized screens). You must have an online store that takes electronic payments. You need a blog and the ability to automatically send email when a new post is published. The website needs security to prevent hacking. The web site pictures need to be fresh, colorful, lively and appealing — and load fast! You need to provide a way to back-up the site for when it inevitably goes down or gets hacked. And then there is the whole Search Engine Optimization issue! How can a farmer make a living in this environment?
I bring this all up in this newsletter because if you ever get to read it it’s because I resolved yet another issue on my web site. It all started when my email sending site — Mail Chimp — decided I was making too much money and they wanted a cut. Up until just lately they were willing to let me use their service for free. I imagine they figured they could rope me in when I had less than 1,000 newsletter subscribers then once my subscriber base took off and I became the influencer I’ve always dreamed of as a young boy they could jack up the rate. I would have to pay or lose my influence! “Nice little newsletter you got there. I wouldn’t want to see anything happen to it.”
But of course I outwitted them by not growing my subscriber base as fast as they thought I could. Mail Chump is more like it! Sure it grew, but like the celery we try to grow each year but fail most of the time, it grew very slowly. So after more than 10 years of influencing, my audience just pushed past 500. That’s when they decided they couldn’t wait anymore and put the hammer down. They sent me an email, “Farmer Chris. We regret to inform you that your newsletter sucks and nobody wants to read it. So if you really think it is worth reading you need to pay — and pay big time! $29/month take it or leave it!” Well, I couldn’t justify a half a CoupleShare worth or revenue each year for this lousy newsletter so I ghosted them. That’ll teach ’em to mess with me!
I found an alternative solution — Mail Poet — that charged the amount of money I felt reflected the newsletter’s quality and value. This solution charges $0.00 for the first 1,000 subscribers and the first 5,000 emails per month. “Perfect!”, I thought. “That’s my kind of pricing!” And another positive, or so I thought, is that it runs on WordPress which is the software underpinning my web site. One interface for all my web site needs. Win win!
After loading it up, configuring it and testing it with a quick email to myself I figured I was ready to resume my influencing. I exported my subscriber list from the chump email service. Imported it into the fantastic new email system. Wrote a quick test newsletter and waited for it to send on the selected time of 3:00 every day. Then I waited. Surely it will work, right! 3:00 came and nothing. Wait! Maybe this daylight savings time screwed it up. Surely by 4:00 it will send, right? Nope. 4:00 comes and goes, still nothing. Maybe that’s 3:00 Greenwich Mean Time or something? 24 hours later still no newsletter. Time to take off the farmer overalls and put on the web site developer khakis (is that the appropriate attire? Maybe if working from home they wear a nice shirt and no pants).
I’m not going to bore you with the details but after much Googling and pursuing Stack Exchange and WordPress forums I discovered Mail Poet has a test feature to see if things are working — huzzah! Running the test I discovered my cURL was broken. I didn’t even know I had a cURL. And now it is broken? I wish I knew I had a broken cURL earlier. I might have done things differently. Anyway, it times out after 5000 milliseconds (when I counted it seemed more like five seconds to me). Apparently that is not acceptable. So more Googling and more Stack Exchanging and more forum reading. Finally, it appears I am not able to fix the problem. It is a problem only my hosting service can resolve. Telling a farmer he can’t do something is sacrilege. Don’t we have “Right to Repair” laws? Apparently they don’t extend to Internet hosting services.
So now as I write this we are in day two three four five of the web hosting service trying to fix my broken cURL. Don’t they have a cURLing iron? Rollers? I’m hoping it gets resolved soon because my influence is obviously waning. With the long delay between newsletters my subscriber base is getting worried that I have ghosted them. Would I do that? Of course not.
Anyway, like I said, if you are reading this via email I think the problem has been resolved (?). As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions of new hosting companies (sort of kidding since now is not a good time to change but maybe in December!), etc.
Epilogue: Well they still haven’t fixed my cURL. Everything is straight as an arrow. But I bought some time by deleting a bunch of former subscribers who “Unsubscribed” from my newsletters. Obviously I over-influenced them. This reduced my newsletter audience below the 500 member threshold. Now I just have to unwind all the other changes I made on my website to reactive the Mail Chimp (they are now by best friend again) solution and then I’m back in the influencer business!