I love to subscribe to email lists, some are other farms, some are other businesses and others are just for fun. A part of me is also curious to watch how others use email as a way to communicate, build community and connect with a customer base. I am a people person, Racey was away this week and I went to the farmer’s market this week. Standing behind a table and chatting with people is intuitive and easy for me.
And yet it is clear to me that if we want to reach more people, bring access to our food beyond the zip codes that are next door, face to face conversations are more difficult. I have grand ideas of videos and virtual farm tours, but for now I have dedicated myself to the weekly writing exercise of connecting through written word.
In the marketing world there are certainly people who believe email marketing is important, and one thing I notice is there is a rhythm to the email marketing. One beat to the rhythm is the holiday schedule. As a kid I remember the countless TV ads, in particular the car dealerships that seemed to have some version of a “blow out sale” every month.
As a business owner now, I find marketing and advertising difficult to prioritize and I get an awkward feeling when something feels too “pushy” or “salesy,” perhaps because of how much I disliked the TV ads as a kid!
I’m working on it.
In the meantime, perhaps you are gathering with some friends or family this holiday weekend. Perhaps you plan to gather and eat food together. Bring some farm food. Bring our story to your table, tell your friends and family how when you eat our food you support our farm, our community, and the land and ecosystems that feed us.
Update on the Freezer Project
I have a confession: I get angry when woodchucks dig under our barn.
I don’t get angry when predators eat our chickens, in fact I believe our farm is a part of the same cycle with all animals and plants, wildlife and livestock. But somehow a woodchuck making a home under our barn is crossing some personal line.
I know it’s irrational, no one else seems to be bothered by it, Susu is obsessed with them, Lovett wants to catch one and bring them home, and no one else even notices. Maybe it’s my desire to keep things neat, maybe I’m as stubborn as a woodchuck?
This spring I tried a new tactic and put down some fabric and gravel in the areas where they usually dig and that seemed to deter them. However, when we set the freezer in place the narrow and secluded passageway between the barn and the freezer was too tempting and they started digging. You can see some hardware cloth as my first attempt. This will take some creative rodent deterrent work. I’ll keep you posted.
We are waiting on the freezer company to get a part that broke during testing. They helped us out and sent the unit up so we could keep our crane date, but we are still waiting on parts. In the meantime I am working on the elevation problem. If you remember when we set the freezer in place it was too low, such that the freezer side door hit the concrete of the shop floor and would not open. We put some scraps of wood under it as a temporary measure.
I ordered some lumber to set under the container as a more permanent solution. Now the trick is to figure out how to lift it up. Even lifting one end is too much for our tractor. So I tried using a few jacks around the farm and discovered that I can lift it but need to leave room to put the boards underneath. So how to lift it and not have the foot of the jack where the board needs to go.
The picture above shows what I’m talking about. The jack doesn’t sufficiently grab the container while keeping the foot far enough away that I can set a new board in place. So I put my thinking cap on.
A shipping container, which is the frame of the freezer, is designed to be moved. So it has these “pockets” on each corner, top and bottom, where you can grab and lift the container. But how? They make special attachments that fit into the pockets, which I do not have. So I went to the scrap metal pile and made two lifting attachments so I can now lift the container with a pair of bottle jacks.
Hopefully this week I’ll get the proper blocking underneath the container and we’ll be ready to start using the freezer.
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