I don’t know about you but all this cloudy weather makes me yearn for warm, sunny summer days! Maybe this picture of a sunflower will holds us for awhile. In the meantime, here are a few announcements.
We now have over 50% of our members returning for 2020. Yay! But we still need to get the rest of you who haven’t committed to return and also fill those shares that aren’t returning with new customers. Recruiting new members is getting increasingly difficult. Finding effective marketing platforms is incredibly challenging. Spending marketing money without any positive results seems to be typical these days (I assume most of us tune out all the marketing since we are constantly bombarded by it). So please, please,please spread the word. I have found no better marketing approach than word of mouth from our members. Use social media (Facebook, Nextdoor, etc.), social nonmedia (talking to people), unsocial media (selfies?) and unsocial nonmedia (talking to yourself). Whatever it takes! And if you have any brilliant ideas how to attract new members please let me know.
Speaking of new members if anyone feels their company would be a good candidate to be a drop site please contact me. We’ve had some success delivering boxes to local businesses where the employees buy shares of the farm. Typically we would want to find at least five boxes worth of shares. Please consider it! All help appreciated! (Only five more exclamation points left and I meet my quota! [Ok, now just four])
Farm News
One of my goals this winter is to find replacements for the various add-on shares we used to sell but no longer due to the suppliers no longer being in business or changing their business model so it no longer works for our members. The one item that was most popular in the past was chicken eggs. In looking for a supplier to replace our previous egg supplier it became apparent that selling free-range chicken eggs must not be a profitable business. Many if not most of the egg supplier web sites and web listings are out of date or no longer available. Many of the others are small, hobby type businesses that couldn’t supply 30-45 dozen every other week (we, at one point, sold 60 dozen every two weeks). So I will continue the search. If we didn’t have so many darn coyotes around here it might make sense for us to resume raising chickens but being a coyote roadside restaurant just isn’t cost-effective.
In an unrelated item, we are trialing a couple new items this season: radicchio and escarole. We tried radicchio many years ago but since it was so long ago I don’t recall why we only did it once. Seems like a good reason to try it again! We’ve never grown escarole so we felt it was about time. Actually the hope is to get something a little different besides lettuce in the first few boxes. I think timing it to be ready in the first week will be a challenge though. Anyway, start looking for radicchio and escarole recipes!
Other that that there isn’t much else of interest happening here. We’re about five weeks out from starting the greenhouse, though I have to say with the warmer temps it seems like we should have started it by now. The garlic has been covered with snow for many weeks so I just have to assume it is doing well under there. And that is about it!
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, brain-teasers or other interesting tidbits. If nothing else, they may give me something to write about in the next newsletter! Did I reach my exclamation point quota? Yes!