You, our highly esteemed Farm Share/CSA customers, are our number one priority when it comes to who gets the best of the produce from the farm. But how does that happen? How do we decide what you get to choose from each week? How do we decide how much to plant each season for every person that joins? How do we decide how many people we will allow to be a farm share member? These are very tough questions to answer, but the one that I want to focus on today is.... how do we decide what we will offer farm share members each week?
As you know most of the crops that you received are harvested, washed and delivered to you within 24-36 hours. There are some crops like sweet potatoes, potatoes, canned goods and items like that that are harvested, stored, and utilized for many deliveries to come.
But lets take a look at cucumbers- which I royally goofed up on this week. So- Step...
- I go take a look at the cucumber patch and think... based off the last harvest, how the plants are looking, and how much the guys have been harvesting each time I make a note and say- I think we should easily be able to harvest X lbs of cucumbers for Tuesday delivery.
- I enter that X lbs of cucumbers into the Harvie Software system Friday or Saturday so I can give you plenty of time to customize your share.
- Monday morning the Harvie system crunches all the numbers and it tells me that every single person that could get a cucumber wanted one. In other words, the estimated amount of lbs that I thought I had in the field is all used up. Every person wants cucumbers.
- I send the guys out to the field to harvest that specific lbs of cucumbers
- They come back and tell me....we were not able to harvest all that you needed. We were 20 lbs short.
- I freak out. If I'm calm enough I send out an email to everyone that might be effected and ask them to accept my apology and that we will be substituting with a different item.
- I send the guys out to harvest a substitute item
- Once we run out of cucumbers, we start packing your shares with the substitute.
How often does this happen? Fortunately not too often, but it does happen.
How do you the customer respond when this happens to you? How do I the farmer prevent this from happening again? So many questions. Please know that we do greatly value your support and that we try very hard to make your farm share experience wonderful. We will give you our 110% effort.
Thank you so much
Ford
