Our Newest Division (and Scaling Back the Farm)
Hi everyone!
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a newsletter. The year 2020 was certainly intense for everyone. During the pandemic our farm grew 250% over the year before and for the first time we made a profit. Suffice it to say, we were not ready for the magnitude of increased business, but wow, are we ever thankful for the support!
Kate and I had our first child 3 weeks before the shutdown – he now says “chicken” about 100 times a day. Around this same time, there were serious issues with the food system that affected every aspect of the farm. Kate and I spent one afternoon separately driving to every Tractor Supply in a 30 mile radius buying up every single Cornish Cross chick (meat chicken) just so we could meet demand. After some back issues in the fall (those were some heavy turkeys) I calculated I carried well over 45,000 lbs of water and 25,000 lbs of feed by hand over the course of the season. Alas, this didn’t leave much time for writing newsletters.
But now I do have some important news to share...
The news
I am both excited and sad to say that I am scaling back the farm this year to launch a new division of The Pasture Stand. This division is...
An online farmers market where consumers can find and buy food exclusively from their local farms (within a 30 mile radius).
The online farmers market is called, Pasture Stand. After years of people begging me to drop the "the" in our name, I finally did it! The mission of Pasture Stand is to advance the local food movement by making it much easier and more affordable for (1) consumers and restaurants to find and buy from local farms, and (2) farmers to get their business online. To put it another way, Pasture Stand is analogous to being on Amazon or Etsy and only being able to buy from local manufacturers and artisans, respectively.
The genesis of this idea happened nearly overnight. When the pandemic started the farm took off with the flip of a switch. I attribute a huge part of this to our website and e-commerce store. People could easily find us and quickly place orders. Many small farms serving our local market don't have websites because the setup requires a steep learning curve and maintenance can be expensive. To add insult to injury, during the pandemic, farmers market attendance was decreasing and restaurants were shutting down. Family farms really struggled through this phase.
The more I thought about how to help local farms, the more I realized all those solutions also helped local consumers by making the food easier to find and buy. The puzzle pieces kept coming together seamlessly until I really couldn't ignore the idea any longer.
So, that's the very abbreviated origin story (in an already lengthy post).
Our progress
We have a website! Feel free to check it out and even sign up for an account (creating an account is free for consumers and restaurants). My farm and a few products are listed and available for purchase on the Shop page. Please note this is a work in progress. There are many obvious design flaws that I'm fixing daily. Our site speed is also slow but this will be fixed soon. With that said our high-end security and payment systems are fully implemented. The geolocation feature is also fully implemented so you can find farms and foods within 30 miles of your home. So, with that caveat, here is the site! https://www.pasturestand.com/
On Pasture Stand, farmers can sign up to sell anything they produce from meat, to fruits and vegetables, to honey and syrup, to you name it. More about this later – but first I want to explain how the farm is changing this season...
What’s happening to the farm
The biggest change to the farm is that we’re no longer offering CSA subscriptions or home delivery. I am really sorry to all the previous CSA participants who were interested in rejoining this year. I can't thank you enough. I fully plan to be back in the following seasons so I hope to see you then. Until then, we’ll still have single-purchases of our typical items for sale throughout the season, as they become available. They can be purchased on our farm website or the market website and picked up for free. Without CSAs and home delivery, I can much more realistically pursue both endeavors. If you have any questions about the specific changes please feel free to respond to this email. I talk more about this decision in the “Summary” section below, if you’re interested.
Moving on, I want to mention how the new website will help local consumers and farmers…
How we’re helping locally-conscious consumers
We’re making it easy to one-stop shop for all your local food purchases. The market is open 24/7 so you can buy anytime. No more restricted market hours, seasonal changes, or showing up not knowing what’s in stock. I remember years ago the first time I wanted to buy a veggie CSA I ended up having about a dozen browser tabs open on my computer. The farm websites were outdated or nonexistent, so I had to call almost every single farmer to get ordering details. Those days are now gone. Everything will be on this website and it will be searchable, sortable, and simple to pay with a credit card or PayPal.
In addition, farms can create their own business pages where you can learn all about them, send messages with questions or feedback, follow to receive updates, and see what products they’re offering.
How we’re helping farmers
The back-end of the market contains a ton of resources that help farmers get their businesses online, automatically track inventory and sales, advertise their products, and so on… at prices that are cheaper than joining most in-person farmer’s markets. If you can setup a Facebook business page, you can setup an account on our site. According to a 2015 USDA farming census only 5% of direct-to-consumer farm sales occurred online that year; whereas online food shopping rates have been dramatically increasing (even before the pandemic). Simultaneously, attendance at in-person farmers markets has been steadily declining (again, before the pandemic) mostly due to several inconvenience factors. Small local farms need to get their businesses online, and it needs to happen quickly.
We have some other major features in the pipeline that we're very excited about. More to come!
Summary
My passion is helping small, local farms sell directly to consumers. It's the best way forward against our current, massively broken, highly centralized food system. Our small local farms are on average more transparent, ethical, humane, and environmentally conscious. Not to mention, the food is more delicious and nutritious. If I can help more farms succeed than just my own, then this market could have a significantly higher beneficial impact on our community, the environment, and our health. And with that, I'm shifting my focus to the new division of Pasture Stand.
This brings mixed emotions because I truly love farming - I'll never give it up completely. And I've delayed writing this email for a long time because I desperately tried to make the math work – but ultimately there is only so much time in a day. Over time, I'd really like to hire someone to get the farm ramped back up. But, for this season it needs to wait. Something has to give and unfortunately it’s the farm.
Thank you so much to everyone for supporting The Pasture Stand over the last couple years. I sincerely hope you stick with us through this new journey and continue to support the local food movement.
Best regards,
Kevin Smith
The Pasture Stand