Shannon Hayes

Bob and I had the delight a few weeks ago of sharing our day at our farmers’ market with a young man who is preparing to go into grassfed farming. He worked closely with my mom and dad to understand the production end of the farm, then chose to spend a day with Bob and me to learn more about how our small family farm markets our products. From what I could tell, our farm wasn’t the first one he’d visited, and he’d spent a lot of time studying marketing.

As we set up for the day, we chatted about how Bob and I arrange our display, our techniques for keeping our products cold, the ways we felt our meats looked best. I showed him where to pile the ground beef so that customers could find it easily.

“Oh! Yes!” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “That’s for the upsell!”

I stared at him blankly. “The what?”

“The upsell!” He bubbled. Observing I was unfamiliar with the term, he added, “Your technique for getting the customer to buy more than they planned. Maybe they come to buy some lamb, but then you also get them to buy some ground beef.”

“But-” I stammered. “I-I wouldn’t do that.” (more…)

The democratic process is pretty sleepy in my town. Monthly council meetings are conducted by a group of dedicated citizens who talk about unglamorous issues such as road repair, dog warden reports and budget matters. Meetings begin at 7:30pm with relatively few attendees, as many of the citizens tied to the local farming economy are either still outside working, or getting ready to fall into bed. But if you want to wake a sleeping bear, suggest making the local junkyard law more restrictive.

Then you’ll see some angry constituents.
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The last of the tomato plants will go into the ground at our (zone 4) farm this week. The first ripe tomatoes of the season showed up at our farmers’ market on Saturday. Thus, it is with a decent degree a confidence that I descended the stairs into my basement last night to retrieve one of my precious jars of homemade canned tomato sauce.

When I got down there, 30 jars of tomato sauce sat on the shelves before me. At the rate my family uses tomato sauce, that equates to a 12-18 month supply still sitting in my basement at the start of tomato season. (more…)

“Today, I will do one thing at a time.” These are the words I’ve been saying to myself each morning lately as I leap from my bed. I mindlessly repeat them while at the same time working through what time homeschool lessons will take place, which emails I need to respond to, when I’m going to make soap, how much beeswax I need to rinse and render, when we’re going to photograph and upload our newest farm products to the online shopping cart, which websites need to be updated, whether I’m needed or not at the farm this day or this week, what spices I need to order for sausage making, whether I’ll find time this day to get the weeds out of the raspberries, if I’ve got enough change for this Saturday’s farmers’ market, when I’m going to get to the dairy farm up the road to pick up butter for making pate to sell, what needs to happen to complete the start up of our new yarn business, which essays and articles need to be written, how I’m going to steer my newest book into publication by September, which photographs still need to get taken for the insert, which presentations need to get written for the fall speaking season, whether or not the blueberry bushes need fertilizing, when I’m going to find the time to take the girls into the woods to gather ramps. (more…)