Hello Folks:
Thank you very much for taking the
time to check out the Whitsend farm site.
It always pleases me to receive a positive response from my doorstep
flyers.
Despite having delivered flyers for the past couple of
years, I am always a bit uncomfortable with stepping onto another person’s
doorstep, so I do not spend much time looking for the “no solicitation”
signs. My apologies if I missed such a
request. If I do see such requests, I will not leave any flyers at your house.
Flyers are the most feasible way for me to reach the
specific neighbourhoods I have targeted as being in my catchment area.
There are several questions that I often receive when
pitching my farm subscriptions. I will
try to answer them briefly over the next couple of weeks. Here are a couple of them:
Why does Whitsend request payment for subscriptions in advance?
Most of the farms overhead for the season is spent before the season begins. This includes the seeds, supplies, tiller fuel for preparing the beds before planting, and certification fees.
Why does Whitsend request payment for subscriptions in advance?
Most of the farms overhead for the season is spent before the season begins. This includes the seeds, supplies, tiller fuel for preparing the beds before planting, and certification fees.
Why
does Whitsend sell weekly harvest shares instead of operating a market stand?
- A most important factor to consider is the
planning. If I were to operate a stand
during the harvest season, I would need to estimate what customers are going to
want on a weekly basis. For example, I
might estimate that six heads of cabbage per week would satisfy the customers’
needs. On the first day, should 12
customers request cabbage, I would have to turn away six customers. Should they find their cabbage at another
farm stand, they would be less likely to check my stall first on the following
week.
As cabbage requires 55-70 days to develop to maturity,
it would be several weeks before being able to harvest the additional demand
for cabbage. This would assume that I
would be able to find the extra seed mid-way through the season, and that I
would have the extra growing space in the field suitably prepared.
- During a previous career in fundraising, I have found that my sales skills are better suited to developing a one-on-one relationship with a customer, and building it over a number of weeks or years. I am less effective when trying to catch someone’s attention in a crowd.
Why
do I have to take the weekly basket as is?
Why can I not select which items wind up in my share?
During my farm internship (which included workshops at
several farms) I wondered why individualizing a customer’s share was not a common practice. It seemed to me (and I still consider this
point to be quite valid) that offering a weekly share tailored to the customer's
taste was the ideal way to go.
During the research phase of starting my farm business, I
quickly discovered why giving every customer a unique basket is so difficult.
- Most customers have a basic list of what they want
through the year – carrots, potatoes, beans, peas, onions, lettuce, etc. I can produce these foods through most of the
season. This “basic” harvest share does
not add up to a value that would allow me a profit, without greatly expanding my
customer base.
- By concentrating so much of my production into just a
few crops, I run the risk of losing a sizeable portion of the share should
there be a failure of one crop or another, as sometimes happens in agriculture.
- Many preferred crops have climatic challenges during
parts of the season. To insure your
share against under performing crops, and to provide menu variety, I plant additional foods that thrive in
the more extreme parts of the climate season.
- Most of my customers tend to sign up in early spring. By this time, seed for some crops might be
unavailable. As well, leaving my
production plan to the last minute creates a time crunch when I need to focus
on other details for a successful season.
Leafy greens provide a good example. Spinach, Lettuce, and Kale are examples of crops
that I can grow for most of the season, though their performance is variable
during some parts of the year. I grow additional
leafy greens to augment my regular crops.
During the early part of the year, I grow crops
tolerant to cool weather and occasional early frosts, like Arugula and Mache. As the midsummer period warms up, I switch to
heat tolerant greens such as Orach, Amaranth, and Purslane. I return to the cool weather crops for the late
summer and autumn period.
This does leave us with some options. If I know that ¾ of my customers prefer
Purslane to Orach, I can adjust my production plan to suit this particular need. However, I need to know this at seed purchasing
time (November to January).
I am willing to take requests that I can commit to,
such as “no hot peppers but extra radishes, please”.
If there is something you absolutely do not want to have, I can remove it from your share. As long as another share does not go short of a particular crop, I can provide a substitute. This is usually the case, but I am reluctant to make promises that I am unsure that I can keep. I know I can supply you with a weekly basket containing a wide variety of high quality produce.
We can provide cooking and preserving tips for everything we plant. Keep in mind that many of the less well known crops can substitute for common crops in many recipes.
If you would like to sign up for the 2013 season, or still have a few questions, feel free to contact me. I would be happy to hear from you.
Until then, I have to bundle up and head out to the barn to get some of the building for the season complete - and to drop off a few more flyers.
Talk to you soon!