Month: July 2017

Hi All!!

This is the  year for change!  Maybe too much at one time, there is actually a reason for the changes.

What the changes will eventually mean for you!  Website–Pre-orders of berries in large quantities, more reasonably priced home deliveries, rewards points for customers who order regularly, having the ability to go to your account and see if your invoice is paid.  We will be able to develop a better recipe section, the ability to see the actual status of your order and how it was paid.  Customers can stop at the on farm store and buy what they want.  The list is actually of advantages is actually quite long.

We are moving our office into a building next to where we pack orders and our walk in cooler is stored.  The building was built right after World War 2 and it takes Dale about a month to cut enough wood just to heat the building.  Hopefully this year we will actually be able to get to the ceiling to work on it, so possibly we can cut down on how much it takes to heat the building.

We also put a store front in the building where the office is, since there are a lot of local people who want to stop by the farm and purchase items.  Each week the store gets a little better and we are working on our signage, when we have time.

We have changed the relationship with the participating farmers.  The original agreement was never fair.  One farmer who might have $40 worth of spice sells was expected to put in the same amount of time and percentage for the market as the farmer who had $700 worth of meat sells.  The farmers that did their share of work or more often did not have time to grow and had fewer sells, where as others ones grew more and had more sells, but did less.  The new relationship is determining the work requirements and percentages given to operate the market more based on actual sells, the types of the products and the actual participation (example like helping at farmers markets etc. which many of them never did.)

The website; with this we are going in the right direction; it is just that we hit some BIG BIG road blocks.  The person that was working on the website went on Maternity leave (she had a beautiful baby girl) and the person that was to help take over was somewhat a fish out of water and some actions had some unintended consequences that set us back by a lot.  After the last big crash I came to the conclusion that I must learn as much as I can about how these content based website systems and be less dependent on others, so I have plugged myself into a lot of tech supports  organizations that are teaching me.  A lot of people are wondering why we are leaving the old website, especially since the new site is no where near where I want it to be.  The other site was never designed for our application, was never going to evolve with us and had a great number of limitation, although I do miss many things about it, with the new site I have a great deal of hope for the future after we get past all these stumbling blocks.

I will am being interviewed on an internet radio station Friday Morning Empire Radio Now on 7/21/2017 at 9:52am EST.

Lets hope I am rested and do not babble like I am when I am overly tired.

Overly tired is another reason for the changes.  I personally was carrying so much of the work load to keep us going that I realized due to lack of sleep I was putting my self at risk of a heart attack.  So everyone else has to step up to the plate and help carry the load.  The participating farmers were mostly unaware as to how much background work it takes to operate the market.  They were SPOILED.

Sincerely

Marian Listwak