Well, this past week was a pretty brutal end of August for your farmers! It was really, really hot out there! We are hoping and praying for a nice September. Given that one of our star employees and our own kids (who are also star employees) are back to school, we are trying to navigate everyone's schedule along with our own schedule of farm activities. So far, we're keeping our heads above water, but just barely! This Labor Day will be a nice help because school is cancelled and we'll have most of them back on the farm to labor (what else do you do on Labor Day, isn't it for laboring?). Anyway, this week should be better given an extra day of help on the farm and the projected cooler forecast. If Sheri and I looked haggard this week, this is why.
Increased prices on many items especially slow to harvest items
Given our labor shortage, we are needing to make some pricing changes on a couple of items that we know you love but which sap so much of our time each week harvesting. Okra and Green beans are a real favorite for you guys but we just can't cost effectively harvest them and get everything else done around the farm. How do they sell green beans so cheaply at the store? They grow bush bean varieties that aren't bred for flavor, they are bred to withstand machine harvesting and they grow acres of them at a time and harvest with a mechanical harvester behind a big tractor. Not us, we grow amazing varieties bred for good flavor not toughness and we pick each one of those beans one at a time. Josiah, our record-breaking bean picker is back to college now and none of the rest of us can cost effectively harvest. Even at Josiah's break-neck harvesting speed, we were barely profitable on green beans, but now that mere mortals have to harvest them, we are spending a depressingly long amount of time each week harvesting for a relatively small proportion of our overall revenue. All this work is keeping us from other important farm tasks.
We thought about just not offering these especially time-consuming items anymore but we know you like them because they are fantastic. Our best option is to fairly significantly raise the price per unit on the okra and beans. We understand that the price isn't at all competitive with grocery store mechanically harvested beans, but we have to do the math on our business and the money it takes to pay extra workers extra hours to harvest those beans (now that we've lost our superhuman harvester to college). Believe us when we tell you that we are not sitting back sipping iced tea while the dollars roll in. This is really, really hard work. We love it, but it is really hard! For some items it's just really hard to compete with the industrial food complex on a dollar per pound basis. We hope you understand that the produce you receive from us is fundamentally different than the shipped-in-from-overseas, hydroponically grown or monocropped and most likely not organic (at least in the way you expect it would be) produce form the grocery store. We are doing our best to stay financially viable without working constantly to keep going for the long term. So we're still offering these particular items but if you think the price is too high, you are welcome to switch to more cost competitive items. The idea is, if the price seems too high to you, you can swap to more cost competitive items which will allow us to spend less time harvesting these time-suck items. And if you decide to go ahead and purchase the beans and okra because you love them so much and don't mind paying a premium for the items, then we'll still devote a lot of time to harvesting them but we can afford to hire some mere mortals to replace what Josiah used to harvest. We'll need two or three man hours to every one of his unless someone develops his same superpower.
So don't hear me say, "please don't order any more beans or okra". At these new prices, we can continue to produce and pack as much as we have been. The labor costs can be covered by these prices. We just want to be fully transparent with you so you understand the "why" behind this. As a result of these price increases on individual items, you may find one or two fewer items in your share each week (to still fit under your allowed share price amount). Part of this is the inflation we are all dealing with in life right now and the fact that we need to pay our employees more per hour for the work they do, but part of it is we've lost some of our especially skilled labor who can do so much per hour. Thanks for your understanding.
Honey is back
We are restocked with our raw honey. Our beekeper (we no longer keep our bees ourselves but we sold our hives to another beekeeper who is continuing to keep our bees on the property) just delivered 100 pounds of honey. We had him bottle it in 1 lb jars only this year so they can go farther. He hopes to do some more harvesting soon so we should have more in future weeks but we're starting with this quantity for now. Enjoy!
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market Great Grains Sliced Bread
Hemme Brothers Garlic Herb curds
Thanks so much for your support of a local family farm. What we all do each week sharing the harvest with one another and our community through the Abundant Life Food Pantries is really special and only possible because of your membership. We appreciate you so much and we pray that you are blessed by our unusual connection and the fact that you actually know your farmer. We're so glad to know our eaters!
Yorur farmers,
Dave and Sheri
