Our Farmstead Journey Part 3: Finding a Way to Make it Pay

in #homesteading7 years ago

Less than two months after starting and all our money was gone...

In that time we made the move from Chicago, turned an old general store into a livable cabin, setup irrigation, a greenhouse, and prepped and planted several of our beds, but had yet to make any income. We could only run on credit for so long and this was the crucial moment that would determine if we could make this farming thing a full-time living or if I would have to start looking for work in town. Our backs were to the wall; this was the moment of truth.

It was the middle of May and the weather was just starting to warm up. The beds that we had planted were completely overrun with weeds and the crops were showing signs of nutrient deficiency. Not good. Luckily we had experience growing microgreens, which are basically little seedlings that you harvest before they get their first true leaves. I did a couple flats of pea shoots and sunflowers and set the trays on pallets in the greenhouse. In 10 days I had a sellable crop and the pressure was on.

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Now the previous year taught me that although high-end restaurants have an interest in microgreens, they're often very picky about the size and only tend to take small amounts. Furthermore, the restaurant scene in Asheville is fully-saturated with farmers trying to hustle their crops and microgreens are no longer the niche they were five years ago. Likewise we had been declined by every farmers market in town. However, none of the local grocery stores were carrying micros and so I figured this was the logical place to start.

I ordered some nice professional packaging, as well as some customized stickers from Vistaprint. With a cooler bag full of samples and some business cards, I started down my list of potential buyers. I first targeted mom-and-pop stores where decisions could be made directly by people on the ground floor. Out of the five stores I approached, all of them ended up carrying our product (and one of those stores had two other locations that decided to carry as well). This however did take some persistence.

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Upon my initial pitch they were all very receptive to the idea. They liked the product, thought it was something their customers would enjoy, and felt they could work within my price point. That being said, it took multiple follow-ups to finally get them to place that first order. Sometimes this meant a phone call or an email; other times I would return to the store with a different microgreen sample just to further the point. If I brought them sunflowers the first time, I would bring them pea shoots a week later. Our margins on microgreens aren't huge, but they are a profitable crop and more importantly, it gave us a foothold to begin establishing a long-term relationship.

By the time June rolled around we managed to get our walk-in cooler setup just as our lettuce crop was about ready to harvest. Our microgreens seemed to be doing well in the stores and I was able to convince the produce managers to give our salad mix a try. Some of them already carried a local 'spring mix,' but were willing to take on our 'Greenshine Mix' because it included more than just lettuce. As with our microgreens, I invested in some very professional packaging and a label printer which allowed us to print customized labels at a fraction of the cost of the Vistaprint stickers. We weren't making a ton of money, but we were showing solid incremental growth. I think our first week of sales we did $35. The second week it climbed to $130. The third week we made it to around $300. At the time we were harvesting and delivering twice a week. This was exhausting and led to us falling behind on our field work and other projects around the farm.

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Then one Monday I woke up and went about trying to get my orders in for that day and...nothing. It was crickets on the other end. The stores that did respond said they still had lots of product. My heart sank. I was mentally and physically beat. Working seven days a week, 15-16 hours a day was starting to take its toll. Looking upon my field being overrun with weeds; for the first time in my life, I was sick of farming.

Luckily my wife convinced me to take the rest of the day off and go on a family hike in the mountains. This may seem counter-intuitive, but as I reiterate in Managing the Stress of Entrepreneurship and Avoiding Burnout, it was the best thing I could've done. Just getting away for half a day allowed me to recharge my batteries and reevaluate the way we were doing things. We decided to go down to delivering just once a week. This bought us an extra two days on the farm and none of our stores seemed to mine. If anything it encouraged them to place larger orders and a week later I heard back from a distributor wanting to place an order for 250 clamshells of Greenshine Mix!

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Now I should relay some backstory here. I had been courting this particular distributor since January. That's right, back when we were still in Chicago; before we even had farmland. A month later we were able to set up a meeting in person and I gave them my full pitch. They were interested and asked when we thought we would have product. Overly ambitious, I told them in late April. Fast-forward to late-April and I get a text asking how the lettuce is coming. 'Oh God,' I thought. 'I haven't even planted any.' I told them we were a little behind due to all the infrastructure we were putting in place, etc. I said I would stop by with some microgreen samples in a couple weeks--this too became a promise I failed to keep.

By the time we finally did have lettuce coming off the field I tried reaching out and got no response. I continued to follow up. I texted pictures of our product and apologized for not having it when I thought I would. Still nothing. I figured I had botched it. I had made the grand mistake of over-promising and under-delivering.

Maybe it was coincidence, but two days after taking that hike I heard back from them. We decided to do a smaller order to start with and by landing this one account we doubled our revenue to $600/week. A few weeks later in early July we were able to accommodate their full order and this took us to $800. This was a huge boost for us and brought us into the realm of financial sustainability. We could now breath a little easier and rather than try and take on new accounts, we decided to focus our energy on building our soil and keeping our current clients happy.

Conclusion

I might be making it sound easier than it was. I don't want to lure anybody into the false belief that this was in any way 'easy,' nor do I want to make it seem like we accomplished some big impossible task. What we've been able to do over these past six months anybody can do if they're willing to put in the work. However, we're not out of the woods yet. I think at our worst we had 15K in debt spread over three or four credit cards and although we've arrived at a point in which our revenue exceeds our expenses, we still have a ways to go in paying down the remaining balance.

I think the hardest part of starting a new business is learning to prioritize projects accordingly. For us this meant first creating a livable 'home base' for our family. If you've read Parts 1 and 2 in this series you'll have an idea of what that entailed. Secondly, we had to get crops in the ground. This also meant finding a way to keep them fenced from predators and in the case of microgreens, free from rain. Then once we had a sellable crop it was all about finding someone to buy it. Lastly, came the task of setting up our washing station and walk-in cooler. Although I list the tasks in this order the truth is we worked on a little bit of everything at the same time. This takes immense focus, but if you stay after it the incremental progress will begin to accumulate and the fruits of your labor will become evident.

This is an incredibly fulfilling way to make a living, but it isn't without it's pitfalls. Everything from extreme weather, to deer, to pest and disease can literally destroy next month's income overnight. I think the best strategy is to diversify and cross your fingers. We've been pretty fortunate so far this year, but now are at the point where we need to start thinking about winter and all that entails. That will be part 4 in this series and will be released after I figure out what the heck we're gonna do.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who has been following along, commenting, upvoting, etc. Your support encourages me to continue pushing ahead when things get tough and to create content documenting the ups and downs of it all.

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Your determination is inspiring! I want to know more about that walk in! Looks like you built it from easy materials? Are you using a cool bot and window a/c? I would love to build something like that!

Thank you. Yeah it's pretty easy to put together, especially when utilizing a cool bot. I'm planning on doing an article in the next week or so detailing the whole process.

I would love that article!

I'd love that too. It's so impractical NOT having a cooler of some sort - I've found my fridge really not to be the right temperature for long term storage and the things with greens is you normally need to harvest quite a bundle at one go. Would be interested in reading that article too.

LOVE these articles you've put together. Really inspiring and helpful.

They've got a really good video on getting that cooler going on YouTube. :) I had never seen that done before, really cool.

I can understand your frustration! We have tried to sell our microgreens and veggies to this so-called "farm to table" restaurant and never received a call back after bringing them high quality samples and availability sheets. After putting in so much work it was very disappointing. I was growing about 20 lbs a week of sunflower and pea shoots. We came to find that they're really more of a retail outlet for much larger farms in our state and get most of their product from distributors. We decided to just stock up on mason jars and store our food until we can find a better way to sell our produce.

Interesting. I feel like chefs make you work a little harder for it and that placing orders for produce is the last thing on their minds. Grocery stores have been a good outlet, albeit we get less per unit. They tend to do great at a farmers market, especially when offering free samples

There is a farmer's market about 30 minutes away from us. They charge a fee for the space, but it is fairly reasonable. We may explore this option next year. I'd rather be interacting with the consumer directly than with the bureaucracy of a restaurant. Chances are they'll be out of business sooner than later, especially with their attitude towards real local growers. Between fighting the weather, weeds, and bugs this year it's been a challenge. I'm just glad we've been able to stock our pantry this year and have something to show for the work. We'll be more prepared next yet.

That's a great attitude and you're absolutely right, selling directly to the people that will be consuming your produce is by far the most rewarding. We've had people tell us they're 'addicted' to our greens. Can't tell you how good that made us feel.

As for the restaurants, there's a lot of charlatans out there claiming to be all about farm-to-table and at the end of the day they're buying 99% from the big distributors.

Niche farming is tough. We do it to provide food for our family. As a way to make money we started a trading post in our community to barter locally sourced good/produce. We also help new homesteaders with animal slaughter/processing. Very hard yet very rewarding lifestyle. Keep up the good work!

I like the idea of a trading post. I think something like that would do quite well out here. Lots of artisans and farmers. Your absolutely right about it being a tough road to hoe. At the same time I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I guess the key is to be continually evolving with the market

Fantastic story. Amazing that you were able to hustle your way out of your situation. If you ever want to talk about microgreens, I used to grow and sell them commercially to high end restaurants in San Diego and I still grow them for myself and friends. It's a fantastic business model as the margins are quite high, but that always assumes that you can actually offload all of the product that you grow which is usually the bigger problem!

Yeah and I'm still hustling! As for the micros, just when I think I've got them figured out the weather drops and now it seems as though they're stunted. Guess we'll have to come up with a new strategy for the winter.

Yeah, best temperature is about 70°F, moderate sunlight, decent airflow and ~50% humidity. Mold and either spindly or stretchy growth are the biggest problems with microgreens...I've lost tray after tray to either mold or spindly growth :(.

Also experiment with light positioning, if you're growing under artificial lighting!

Right on. That's what I figured. I think we need to either bring them inside or do some sort of a double greenhouse with heat mats. I'll keep ya posting on what we end up doing.

Definitely do, I am living vicariously through you as my microgreen operation is small right now :)

Everyone's got to start somewhere. The good thing about micros is you can get quite a lot of return off a relatively small space. We're gonna have to move our operation inside for the winter and all our micros will be produced via a tower system. I'll try and do a write-up on it soon.

I have noticed that when it looks bad, just stepping away for a minute makes all the difference in the world. I have to do that from time to time and then things begin to fall in place. Keep up the hard work and it will pay off.

So true. I've tried to make it a rule that we take Sundays off. We might do a little work here and there but for the most part we just have a chill day. I found if we don't do this I end up feeling burnt out come Monday

Thank you for sharing your experiences with getting up and running. The first years are the toughest. We have been at our for 6 years non-stop. And we probably have another 6 years to get everything the way we envision. Keep on working at it. Perseverance and hard work are the keys to success.

Yeah I just try to make a little bit of progress everyday and enjoy the process along the way

That makes me feel tired just reading about all that work you've put in! Well done and good luck!

Ha, me too Kate! Not sure how we got it all done, one step at a time I guess.

What a great read and excellent narratives... You guys never gave up and I know success shall be your own continually....starting new venture is not easy and you guys showed the power of uniting and working together... @greenshiner tks for sharing this with us

Thank you. You've got some pretty good articles yourself.

Wow...am elated to read such from am excellent blogger... Let's keep steeming hot 😋 @greenshiner

Wow...that was amazing,you have a great idea,me i only use recycle bottle for my veggies and pepper seeds. But i think your idea is better! Looking forward to your next post @greenshiner

It's all about making use of what you have. I enjoyed your article on building a fence for your garden. Keep up the good work and best of luck!

Thank you for checking my post @greenshiner, i need to wait another payout to buy some net..i did not forgot the goat but i forgot the chicks...😊

@greenshiner Inspiring account! Thank you for sharing. I'm sure the energy and intention surrounding microgreens will yield bounty in the end :) Much love and support! Namaste

It's all about those good vibes ;)

Yes brother, those good greeeeen verdant vibes :)