Spring Hill Farms

Farmers Markets are increasingly offering products that are not locally grown. I am seeing more and more produce that is the exact same stuff you can buy at your local grocery store.

I don't offer my products at farmers markets but I do make my rounds to them occasionally and talk to many farmers who sell at them.

The number one complaint I'm hearing is the amount of vendors who buy produce from wholesale houses or produce auctions and then sell it at the market.

In fairness, not all of them are saying it's local but many rely on the fact that people assume it is local or homegrown because they are buying at a farmers market.

If you are buying tomatoes or cantaloupe at a farmers market around these parts in mid May....it ain't local by any stretch of the imagination.

This is a classic case of markets need vendors and vendors need an outlet.

My message isn't these types of products should not be sold at a farmers market. That is up to the folks who run the market. I am all for a free enterprise system.

However, I think full disclosure is a good place to start.

But by far the best way to get what you pay for is still "Buyer beware"

Ask vendors if they grew the product themselves. Sometimes they buy from other farmers which in that case it may be local farm raised product.

But if it came from a wholesale house many times you can get the same conventionally grown stuff at your local supermarket.

Until next time...

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The more distant your relationship with the person who produces your food, the more potential for corruption.

Dr Mercola and the Cornucopia Institute have been pointing out the mass corruption in the organic movement.

As with anything that becomes popular or trendy, the potential is recognized and seized by large corporations who are looking to profit from it.

I am including a video from Mark Kastel, co-director of the Cornucopia Institute that details some of the unbelievable antics taking place in the organized organic movement.

If you're short on time here are some of the highlights:

1. Those charged with reviewing and approving additives and chemicals for use in organic foods have in large part been affiliated with the same corporate agribusinesses and/or food producers lobbying for their use.
2. There are currently almost 300 non-organic and synthetic compounds approved for use in organic foods.
3. "Independent" industry experts, who have been advising the USDA's National Organic Standards Board on scientific matters, also appear to have been largely supportive of synthetics in organics
4. The Cornucopia Institute are now pursuing a pressure campaign aimed at the organic program at the USDA, and at the National Organics Standards Board, to persuade them to review the manipulation and misinformation provided at the November 2011 NOSB meeting, which led to the approval of synthetic, genetically mutated DHA and ARA oils—ingredients that have been "confidently linked" to health problems in infants.

What I want to point out here is my original statement of the more distant your relationship with the person who produces your food, the more potential for corruption.

While I applaud and support the Cornucopia Institute for their efforts to rally the American people to hold those accountable who oversee organic standards in the U.S., I also believe the best route to food transparency is to have a relationship with the folks who produce your food.

That's why I have an open door policy at my farm. Folks can come visit and judge for themselves if they want to do business with me.

Complete transparency to your customers is a safeguard against corruption.

How could I say for example 'we use no chemical herbicides on our farm' and at the same time be hosing down weeds with weed killer? If I know customers are coming and no door is locked, no cabinet out of reach it will deter me from such actions.

There is a myriad of temptations to cheat even on the small farm. Farmers need accountability. I need accountability. I need to know that my customers have the right to inspect what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

I gave them that right.

If you're paying with your hard earned dollars you deserve that right.

No amount of regulations or regulators is ever going to replace a relationship between two people.

Here at Spring Hill Farms we think honesty, integrity, transparency, and accountability should be some of the foundational principles you build your farm on.

Until next time…

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Are You My Mother?

 A recession is a transference of wealth from the meek to the bold - Dan Kennedy

I love Dan’s definition of a recession. While it seems hard to nail down the figure, the Fed says $878 billion dollars will circulate through the United States economy in 2012.

The question we have to asked ourselves is “how much of that will I capture for my business

Here’s some tips:

Check up on your attitude - W. Clement Stone said in the midst of the depression “I did know the opportunities were unlimited. For sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman—not the attitude of the prospect.”

It’s very common to have customers remark on fuel cost going up or food prices increasing or a million other topics that only accentuate the negative. Resist getting into these conversations.

 Work on being a place that is positive and upbeat. Customers buy more from those types of business.

Tap Into Consumer Mentality. Match It – Customers have money. They are just more reluctant to let go of it in a down economy. Their mentality has changed.  They are holding on to their money and less likely to spend it frivolously. That doesn’t mean they won’t spend it or they only want cheap food.  Actually quite the contrary. Many people are looking for a way to make themselves feel better in less expensive ways.

Talk to your customers about less expensive ways to have fun, feel good, etc. An example would be offering “special breakfast package” or a farm visit they can bring the kids to see your new baby goats etc.

Coach Your Employees or Helpers about How to Talk to Customers – Part of their job is to sell and influence buying decisions not talk about their life is or how rotten the state of the economy with customers.

 Customers don’t contact you or come to your farm to hear bad news. They can turn on the radio or read the newspaper if they want that. They come to you to find something they want and have a positive buying experience.

Farmers take heed: There’s enough bad news in the air, without adding fuel to the fire. When customers come to do business with you, they want to feel good. They want to feel good about buying.

 Action Tip: Spend the next few weeks thinking about positive ways to present your products as well as checking up on everyone’s attitude at your farm.

Until next time.....

www.sellfarmproducts.com

I recently read an article in the Columbus Dispatch about the manure problem in Ohio.

The article starts out "Under the best conditions, raising livestock is a dirty, smelly business."

The truth is under the right conditions, raising livestock is not dirty or smelly.


Until last year I let my hogs spread their own manure 24 hrs a day throughout the pastures. Then I decided I needed to keep some for specific applications. So I have been bringing hogs into the barn for winter to collect the manure.

As long as the carbon ratio is right there is no smell or mess. In my case, wheat or oat straw. Lots of it.

By keeping a good bed of straw in the barn I tie up the manure right along with the smell and mess.  Anytime you're smelling manure you know right away your carbon is low.

If you don't tie it up with a carbonaceous material you are losing valuable nutrients that you can use on your soil to fertilize it.

The nutrients either evaporate, which you smell, or leach away which wastes the nutrients by fertilizing the lawn around the barn. Or worse yet, running of into a waterway somewhere and polluting the water.

The whole idea of a huge amount of animals in one place (for long periods of time) is so unnatural it's no wonder big Ag had to come up with all these nifty, yet environmentally unfriendly ways, to store it or get rid of it. 

Big Agriculture spreads manure that is usually 100 percent raw manure. Nothing added like straw or sawdust. Heck just put those critters on concrete or slatted floors and let the pure manure pile up and then we can overload the soil with it.

Bad idea all the way around in my opinion.

If you read any old books they tout the benefits of manure as a fertilizer. But that manure was loaded with straw or other material which added to the organic material in the soil.

The combination of the manure with the organic material in my opinion is far superior to just raw manure you get from a factory farm.

As sustainable farmers we have to make sure we are doing things right. No manure running off into waterways or overloading the soil.

The American public is getting tired of factory type farms ruining the environment with all these unsustainable ways. I don't blame them I'm tired of it too.

The best way to send the message is to stop giving the factory farms your money. Give to a farmer who is acting responsibly towards the environment and the animals or crops they raise.

At Spring Hill Farms we think that's the right thing to do...

Until next time! 

 

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A Wisconsin judge has ruled that owners of cows do not have the right to consume milk from their own cow.

The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund reported on this in detail and you can find the link at the end of this blog.

Among other things, Dane county Judge Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Fiedler clarified his rulings by stating Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice.

 I want to use this crazy ruling in Wisconsin to once again say if you are a farmer that values the right to produce and direct market your goods, you need to join the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

If you are a consumer who believes you have the right to consume foods of your choosing, you need to support the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

 The FTCLDF is on the forefront of helping small farms keep, and take back, our rights to produce and consume foods of our choosing.

Take some time and read the article here and then either join or donate to the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

Until next time...

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In my never ending quest to reduce inputs from outside sources (like the local feed mill) I have been widening my research on ways to increase the amount of green foodstuffs I can carry through the winter for the animals.  [Read More]

I promised I would update you on the Little Tamworth Gilt who thinks she is a chicken.

A few weeks ago I noticed a pig running through the yard. I watched as she zipped down past the house and disappeared. I was sure she belonged to our oldest sow Droopy. But how did she get out?



Over the next few days I noticed as soon as we were all in the house she would sneak out and head for the laying hens which were being fed outside. She would charge right up and take her place at the trough!

Since the troughs have a bar that runs through the middle it was hard for her to get feed so she began upsetting it and eating the feed off the ground.

This became her daily ritual. Watch us feed the chickens and then run over and start eating. As with any bad habit (or so I'm told) it kept getting worse. Pretty soon she was waiting with the chickens when we went to feed them.

The boys would chase her back to the pasture and she would squeal as loud as she could to let them know she was not happy.

A few days of that and I caught her sneaking out of the hen house! Turns out she wasn't laying eggs she was climbing into the bottom box and eating eggs.

I resolved to fix the fence the next day and put a stop to her antics. I got up the next morning and went to the garden to check things out to find little pig had beat me to it and rooted out a bunch of sweet potatoes for her breakfast.

My next stop was the barn for some fence wire and thus ended the pig who only wanted to be a chicken because they roam around and get all kinds of goodies.

Until next time...

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Tamworth Pigs Plowing

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Tamworth Swine Dozer

My last post was about the push to get government to release farmers from the CRP program so they could put acres set aside in the program back into grain production.

Here's a good video talking about the pros and cons of tilling the soil.

 

Watch Video

The mind set with which you approach your small farm sales is critical to your success. If you approach selling direct from the farm as a traditional retail operation it will require a completely different set of parameters to operate by than if you approach your business as a direct marketing endeavor.

I’ll confess right up front I am biased towards direct marketing. I posted a while back as to why I don’t sell at farmer’s markets.

To me they encapsulate the retail mindset of selling farm products. You set up and essentially wait for customers to show up to buy.

I realize that farmers can do very well at these type of venues, but I see a huge amount of risk and loss of control. Take for example the farmer’s market closes up shop. Where do all the customers go? How many of them do you have a way to contact? Do you have a relationship outside the market with them? If you answered “no” to any of those questions you will take a big hit if that ever happens. Risky and not much control over what happens I say!

Contrast that with direct marketing of your farm products. You have a large diverse group of people that you actively initiated a relationship with.

Wouldn’t you rather have a large group of  customers that isn’t dependent on them getting out of bed and coming down to see you at the market?

I contend that in some ways we are training the customers who want to buy off the farm to remain in the retail mindset by how we market to them.

One of the most common questions I get is customers trying to figure out the system by which I sell products! They ask about my attendance at local farmer’s markets then about coming to the farm to purchase.

They are in the common retail mindset. I understand why. It’s the most common way to buy food. Once they experience how we market, they love it!

We encourage folks to come to the farm and visit, but discourage them from thinking it how we sell products. Farm gate sales are fine, but just as with the farmer’s market you are waiting on someone to come by and spend money.

I would have never grown my sales to level that they are so quickly by waiting on someone to stop by the farm or a farmer’s market!

That’s the retail mindset.

In speaking with farmers I think the main reason they gravitate to this type of marketing is because it’s what they know to do.

Let’s face it…the question on every bodies mind is:

Where can I find customers in significant numbers without using these venues?

Good question!

Since I have never sold at traditional farm venues I can only tell you how I’ve built my business. These steps are simple, but not always easy.

Figure out what your U.S.P. is. That’s your unique selling proposition. Why should people buy from you? Do this first. It helps you focus your efforts where they make the most impact.

Connect with I call “people of influence” to try your products. This was the second step I took when I started selling direct.

Create a system to glean referrals from your current customers. A high percentage of my new customers are from word of mouth advertisers – the best, least expensive, kind of advertising.

Have a system in place to get testimonies from your current customers and incorporate them in your materials.

Consistently use a system to identify and obtain new customers. I adapted a method from another business I owned that works like magic.

Find ways to make it easy for your customers to pay you. I collect payments automatically which makes it much easier for me and the customer to do business with my farm.

Develop a website and learn to drive traffic to it. This took tons of time and learning, but I now have a significant amount of internet customers. (a whole subject in itself -more on that another day.)

These are some of things I have done to build my farm business. I’ve never used a farmer’s market or had a wholesale account because I haven’t needed to! I believe farmer’s markets are a viable way to market your products and some of these techniques would work for them. For me, I like spending time with my family on Saturday morning.

 

Until next time…

PS- I explain exactly how to do this and more (minus the website information) in my latest ebook “The Secrets of Selling Your Farm Products Revealed.” If you’re looking for increased sales and more customers click here to get your copy today.

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Electric Fence Energizer

The demand for local, organic, farm fresh meat and vegetables has been on the rise for the last several years.

This means that people are actively seeking out this type product. Many “marketing type” farmers have been enjoying increasing sales every year.

According to Finding Dulcinea, In Indiana, the number of small farms increased by almost 80 percent from 2002–2007. Greg Preston, director of the Indiana Agricultural Statistics Service, told the Indy Star, “We are getting a lot of newer farmers coming in that are smaller—going into direct marketing, specialty products, organics, locally grown, this type of stuff.”

My farm has been struggling to meet the demand since shortly after we started selling direct. That is in part because I come from 25 plus years of sales and marketing experience.

But it’s also because the market for local farm food is growing and I’m enjoying the fact that people are actively looking for farms like mine.

But I’ve been around enough new and emerging markets to know that won’t always be the case.

Take for instance the big mortgage boom up to about 2008. I owned a company that used mortgage lending as a way to grow our business. We used many different mortgage companies and brokers all over the United States.

There was a mortgage broker on every corner. Many of them were so busy that they wouldn’t even talk to us about working with them. They had more business than they could handle!  New mortgage companies were starting up daily.

Why?

Because it’s pretty easy to take a client who has an 8 percent mortgage and put them into a new one at say 5.5 percent. I mean how much sales and marketing does it really require?

The broker simply says “Mr. Jones we can reduce your mortgage payment by $200 a month and give you a rate that’s 2.5 percent lower than what you had.”

So for marketing all they had to do was let people know they were open for business and give some teaser rates on the radio or internet and people flocked in to refinance.

But ever so slowly I started getting phone calls from those brokers who didn’t want to work with me a couple of years before. They were seeing a slow down in the refinance craze. They didn’t necessarily say that to me but I knew what was happening.

The demand was slowing and the competition was getting fierce.

Fast forward another year and many of those shops were out of business and gone forever.

Who was left?

The companies that had focused on running a lean and mean mortgage shop and had focused on developing long term marketing strategies. They did honest business and had a long term mindset.

How does this relate to small farms?

Because sooner or later the demand is going to slow down and the competition is going to get fierce.

Take the previous quote from Dulcinia. There was a eighty percent increase in small farms in Indiana from 2002 – 2007. That means there were a whole lot more farmers supplying the market in Indiana than previous.

Now if several of those farms were near you…you noticed it!

Farmer’s markets are increasing by leaps and bounds. Farmers are seeing prices come down to be able to move their goods as they face the Wal-Mart shopping mentality.

So called “farmers” are bringing in produce from the wholesale house and selling it as local. In my area if you go to the farmer’s market to sell pork or beef, you will be competing with all the butcher shops in the area.

CSA’s are exploding all over the U.S…..

Folks – times are changing.

Don’t get me wrong competition is a good thing,

BUT IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU MARKET IF YOU’RE GOING TO STAY PROFITABLE AND KEEP THE DOORS OPEN.

Then add to that huge corporations are working night and day to fleece the consumer into believing that their food is really pretty much the same as what you can buy off a small farm.

Big agriculture is teaching their farmers how to relate to the public and present themselves as the only solution to the food shortage. They are talking about using Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their communities.

Grocery stores are featuring local farmers that supply them with produce.

Localharvest recently reported many CSA’s experience as high as a 40 percent turnover each year.

Losing that much business per year is unsustainable. If you have to replace that many customers per year you are swimming up stream on your way to broke.

I was talking to a farmer the other day who said he had a lady call him about grass-fed beef. By the time he got back to her (a couple of hours later) she had already found another farmer who had sold her a quarter of beef.

He got a rude awakening that he’s not the only guy in town with grass-fed beef!

In some ways small local farms supplying people with food is still in it’s infancy. But folks things are changing.

What’s your plan to stay on the cutting edge of this growth and rising competition?

• Do you have system to get new customers?

• What’s your response time when someone calls or emails you?

• How easy is it to do business with you?

• What’s your process for retaining customers and turning them into word of mouth advertisers?

Begin to find answers to these problems now before you end up losing out to the farm that does have it figured out!

Until Next time…

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Small Farm Direct Marketing

Promote Your Page Too

Probably one of the most important skills you can develop in your farm business and actually in life, is the ability to see things from other people’s perspective.

This is the key to obtaining new clients, keeping present customers happy, and helping others get what they want out of your farm business. All the interactions you have with customers, or potential customers, can be improved by striving to put yourself in their shoes... [More]

 

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Small Farm Direct Marketing

Promote Your Page Too

Let's make sure we level the playing field for farmers in America. For too  long the big players have danced around the laws to keep the smaller producers at a disadvantage. Here's our chance to stop it.

I just received this email from the Center for Rural Affairs.


Do you appreciate the hard work that our family farmers and ranchers do?

If so, please take a few moments of your day this Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to call the White House and tell President Obama that you support the proposed Fair Livestock Competition rule [PDF] that helps independent farmers and ranchers get a fair price for their hard work. (It's also called the "GIPSA rule".)

On February 14, 15 and 16 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST, hundreds will participate in “Love the American Farmer and Rancher” call in day because the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) proposed Fair Livestock Competition rule would greatly benefit livestock producers across the country. However, the meatpackers and processors have pushed back against the rule, spreading false information to protect their own greedy bottom line.

You can help!

• Call 202-456-1111 to reach the White House Comment Line (you may need to call back if the line is busy)
• Share the message below (or something similar)
• "My name is _______ from _________ (city and/or state) calling in support of USDA’s proposed livestock rule. This rule would level the playing field for livestock producers. Livestock producers need this rule finalized to protect them from retaliation and level the playing field. I encourage USDA to finish and implement the GIPSA proposed rule as quickly as possible. Thank you."

For more information on issues related to fair competition in livestock, go to www.cfra.org/competition. Thank you for supporting independent livestock farmers and ranchers!

You can also go to the Food and Water Watch website and use their automated form.

 

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Farmers, have you noticed there isn't much out there about marketing products directly from your farm? I see discussions about it sporadically in various forums and blogs I subscribe to, but over-all you can't get much "how-to" information.

I recently started a blog centered around this topic. I will be posting regularly on the things I have learned and implemented since we started marketing our pork, chicken, eggs and beef direct in 2004.

I also started a Facebook page that will feature even more two-way communication between small farmers for the purpose of learning and growing their farm or produce business.

I've been helping small farmers succeed through teaching them what I know, or bringing them on as co-operative producers to help us fill our customer orders for several years now.

So if it makes sense to you, and you operate a small, (non-industrial) livestock or vegetable farm. Come over and join in. Together we can make local, sustainable farming a force to be reckoned with!

Come over and join us!

 

 

 

Small Farm Direct Marketing

Promote Your Page Too

"Back to the soil" was never a more attractive proposition and never so worthy of being heeded as during these opening years of the 20 century. It is true that social economists have often uttered this cry because they believed, and rightly, that the overcrowded condition of cities could be relieved, to the immense advantage of everybody concerned, if the congested population found in sections of these human hives could be induced to leave their crowded quarters and become tillers of the soil.

The advocates of the doctrine have had in mind a more decent and desirable condition for the objects of their solitude- a place where they could develop a physical, social and moral life superior to that which is possible to them in their present places places of abode. 

The cry with which this chapter opens, however, is not uttered especially to a crowded urban population. It is uttered to all men-to the inhabitants of every city, of whatever magnitude; to the dwellers in villages and hamlets, and to those who are already on the land, that they may be contented to remain there. It is uttered to the dissatisfied of every condition of life, or to those who ought to be dissatisfied. 

It is the cry, not of social economist only, not only of preachers, teachers, and statesmen, as distinguished from politicians, but of seers, of men who look into the future and see the good things that are there and the better things that are coming. - The New Agriculture 1906

It's hard to believe this was written over one hundred years ago. Back to the soil is the call of 2011.

You truly can develop a physical, social, and superior way of life in the country and on a farm. For the last few decades people have been trying to escape the countryside and head for the concrete.

But a new trend is beginning to surface. A group of society that longs to feel the soil in their hands, watch the animals graze, watch their children grow up with an appreciation for the things of the country.

The older I get the more I realize how much living in the country all my childhood effected me positively.

So I cordially invite you, come out to the countryside and grow something.

• Grow your children
• Grow your marriage
• Grow a garden
• Grow a flower
  
• Grow a pig
• Grow a cow

It does something for your soul to be connected with land, the community, the farm. Even if you can only come to visit, leave the city for a day and come see us farmers....you'll be glad you did.

This is not a commodity!

I recently read an article from Ag Web titled "Make Yourself a Farmer of Choice."

When I saw the title I was intrigued as this particular website is focused on industrial agriculture and commodity products as far as I can tell.

I thought "this should be interesting, how do you become a farmer of choice with a product that is a commodity?"

The author started out saying "how you position yourself as a farmer will determine your success with suppliers and buyers."

Ah so we're talking about the relationship with our "suppliers and buyers."

What about customers?

Well as a commodity farmer you don't have customers. At least not a customer as the small farmer who sells direct has customers.

I mean you go down to negotiate your grain sales, how much negotiating power do you really have?

Or you take a load of cattle to the buyer, and you get what the market says you get. Many people don't realize it but almost all commodity cattle is bought "on the rail."

That means your cattle are slaughtered and hanging on the rail before a price is decided.  

Um, what if you don't like the price? Do you load up your carcasses and take them elsewhere?

The author also said

"Ask yourself:

• What do we do best?
• What is our target customer?
• What needs do we fulfill for them?
• Who is our competition?
• What makes us different from them?"

All really good questions but as a commodity farmer I'm still left wondering how you would have much of a direct impact on these issues.

I'm certain you would have some impact but not nearly what the small farmer who is selling direct to consumers would.

The article went on to say “You need to know what sets you apart from your competitors. Your competition is anyone that farms around you.”

Huh?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the authors intent here, but how could you be in competition with your neighboring commodity farmer?

The very definition of commodity defies it.

Commodity - A basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers.

I can't figure out how you make a commodity competitive. From where I sit the commodity farmer has the least control over his products value in the marketplace.

The local commodity buyer doesn't care about how you raised your cattle on grass and never gave them hormones etc. They want to look at carcass quality and that's the end of the story. They are looking to get the price down not find ways to pay you more.

And grain? What kind of story can you tell the grain elevator and get a better price? They look at a few factors of quality and test weight and it is what it is...take it or leave it.

The best advice I can think of for a commodity farmer is start transitioning away from commodity sales with the intention of moving as much of your products to direct sales as you can.


Until next time....