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Farmers' Market, Online Market & CSAs

2/24/2022

It has been two years since the world was turned upside down and this has certainly altered how we have done business. Our focus turned to making sure the CSA stayed stable by really trying to meet more individuals' needs in a sustainable way and mostly dropping the in-person Saturday Wolfville Farmers Market to meet demands of the online orders of WFM2go. There was so much consideration that went into these decisions that I think it would be great to talk about!

We will not be returning to the in-person Saturday Wolfville Farmers Market in 2022 after attending them casually for the last two years. We consistently had some of our worst sales days ever during this time period and unfortunately we don’t have the personality to say “you gotta lose some to win some” for us it is bittering not because we think we are the best or we think people should do things that make the feel unsafe but because we grow food. Food that could go somewhere to someone and not waste away on a table. As we looked around the market and saw others struggling it seemed like the little bit of sales we were making would be better if it went to those who were really wanting to make a go of the market situation. Now of course this wasn’t a selfless decision but rather a personal and somewhat logical one.

Our online WFM2go sales were booming and if we invested now into this stream when all this craziness ended we would have hopefully built a long lasting connection with those customers that they would at least continue to return at a level that was comparable to our market days. We also had no issue with the 25% cut that WFM2go had to maintain operations and staff but for others that was harder to accept than slow days at the market. What I am trying to say is that there are different sacrifices that work for different people and these differences are really part of the strength. We were able to happily sell away on wfm2go and others were happily selling away at the market but these two streams were supporting each other. The market provided the credentials and customer base for WFM2go to exist and WFM2go was keeping sales flowing when the market was down.

We may have never made the decisions to cut the market if it didn’t experience this downturn, but because it did we used this as an opportunity to learn the ropes of having employees, and expand our perennial fruit plants which will be a backbone for a more sustainable future for the farm in every sense of the word. I was also able to devote more positive energy to the CSA which was always a goal of mine. I have always loved the communication side of the CSA, but sometimes I didn’t have time or extra energy to do that, which meant I needed more time devoted to this instead of squeezing it in as an extra thing to do and with employees I was able to accomplish that!

We also got to experience selling during the winter months because of WFM2go. Selling at markets in the winter means you need lots of variety to really draw people in, which wasn’t something that we were interested in pursuing, but with WFM2go providing variety we could sell in the winter in a very focused way. It even led to running a winter CSA with Emily Tebogt this year which we will now do together every year going forward. The only reason I even kept winter selling on the table for our farm was because Emily always talked about how important it was and now it was the perfect time to venture out into it because I could see how to make it work for our farm!

Our farm’s biggest strength was in maintaining the farm instead of growing it. We decided we wanted growth to be a by-product and not the goal. I mean after all a goal post based on growth never stops moving and seems to have far more consequences than gains in long term scenarios. It also allowed us to make decisions we wouldn’t have made otherwise only to find that our business did end up growing. Isn’t that funny?! The hope for our farm is just to live and to feed people, nothing extravagant because extravagant things require a lot of work and well, we’ve got enough on our plates, after all we are farmers! Haha!

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Gratefulness & What your support creates

2/21/2022

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Supporting small farms and small businesses is an incredible thing. As small-scale farmers, we know that when you choose to buy veggies from us it is a conscious choice since it is simpler to just go to a grocery store to get everything you need. We understand that with your purchase comes the gift of a subtle encouragement, something like: “we like what you’re doing and we want you to keep doing it”. We understand this because we do it too! We’ve found so much to love about small local businesses, from discovering completely new-to-us foods like fermented veggies from Seven Acres Farm or finding how absolutely delicious something very familiar like apple cider can be when it's from Suprima Farm. There’s something so special about people taking the leap to devote their time and energy on something they are so passionate about, and sharing it with others, you can taste it, see it and feel it.

So what has your support meant to us? In a word, everything… We have been able to follow our passion of working with nature and grow tasty, nutritious, and beautiful food in a sustainable ecologically-conscious way for many years. We’ve been able to share this food with so many people over the years, it’s pretty amazing just to think of how many people we’ve fed cultivating our small farm plots. We’ve been able to grow and expand, from beginning with just a weekly veggie CSA to attending farmers markets, working with other farmers, adding fruits, herbs and sprouts, transplants, seeds and herbal teas to our offerings as well as many unique and unusual veggie varieties that inspire the imagination. Your support shows us that we are not the only ones that care about growing food in a natural way with respect for mother nature. You give us the motivation and the means to continue doing what we’re doing. And you give us the opportunity to support other small businesses and farms too! In this way the conscious choice you make invigorates a whole community of small family businesses working in reciprocal ways. It also helps the wild community on our farm so we can make conscious choices as well, such as leaving this dead tree for the woodpeckers, or letting those milkweeds grow for the butterflies, or not planting in this spot because there’s some salamanders burrowed there. By empowering us we can help protect these little patches of wonder and magic, and even though these actions seem small they are so significant in a world that is in a vulnerable state. In return we can provide you with the best food we can grow, just what nature intended with no sprays or other funny stuff added, and it just tastes better!

Your support has given us meaning and purpose in a world where young people are hungry for it, we are not quite as young anymore but when we started farming we were in our early 20s and it gave us a direction and stability we really needed. We hope to return the favour in the coming years by helping more young people learn about all the amazingness of sustainable farming and food, because we understand that this is the only way forward to the future. In farming we’ve learned so many new things from other people and through our own experience. We’ve learned about under-utilized crops like sunchokes and burdock root that can feed more people with less inputs, and that growing clover in a field for a year will increase nitrogen in the soil. We’ve learned apples and potatoes can still be grown without pesticides, contrary to what many say. We’ve learned peas don’t like our soil as much as beans do, pheasants like tomatoes and deer like carrot tops and radicchio. We’ve learned that you can add kale into almost any dish one can think of, we’ve learned about kale chips and borenkool. And that butternut squash is a great substitute for tomato sauce on pizza. And that sunchokes can last 2 years in the fridge!

So much has grown out of the support we’ve received over the years, from a small seed of possibility we started farming in 2011 with only a vague sense of what we were doing, and from there it has grown into a tree bearing more fruits than we ever imagined. And there’s so much more to come!

So thank you so much to everyone who’s helped us in small or big ways or ways you didn’t even know, we are eternally grateful and filled with hope for the future because no matter what happens we feel your support and we know that we’re all in this together, people, nature and the world.

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Why care about spray-free veggies? How do they benefit you?

2/2/2022

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Why Care About Spray-Free Vegetables? How do they Benefit You?

Spray-free vegetables are important because they are in their natural state with nothing added. When you buy spray-free broccoli, you are just getting broccoli. This is how people have eaten for most of our history, until pesticide use became widespread only in the 1950s. Pesticides are poisons that can affect far more than just the pest they are intended to, and even though they are legal does not make them safe. They are affecting our bee populations, micro-organisms in the soil, life in waterways, and are harmful to the health of humans too, including causing cancer. When you purchase and eat spray-free veggies you are benefiting your own health and the health of the environment. You are also supporting small-scale farmers who are taking care of their land and keeping it fertile for future generations to feed themselves with. It is in everyone’s interest to keep the environment healthy since it is what we all have in common. Buying from a local spray-free producer also has other pluses: the food is fresher, more nutritious, lasts longer and tastes better! Every dollar you spend on spray-free vegetables lets farmers continue to produce them; you are casting a vote for the world you want!

About Our Farm: Our farm is small and enable us to take the risks necessary to operate a spray-free farm. We have few employees that depend on us so we are able to adapt to crop losses as needed. Our insurance lies within the diversity of our farm crops making us stronger against weather’s adverse and unpredictable conditions . Our farm allows nature to dictate production, as it should be. As a species we like to take “control” by overtaking natural systems as though they are irrelevant but they aren’t - nature knows balance best!

About Our Health: The natural world is mirroring what is happening within our bodies, what is done to it is done to us. The poison we give is also the poison we take. We are allowed to carry on this way because over the counter drugs makes it very easy for us to abuse our bodies and remedy the discomfort but not the sickness. This sickness is allowed to fester relatively unnoticed . As long as we view ourselves (humans) as something separate from the natural world we will never be able to access a holistic and healing life force. So much faith is put into the “regulatory systems” to protect us (from harmful chemicals) but these systems are for big business, not for you and me. Misplaced faith is a dangerous game. Choosing local is the safest bet by far!

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Be Stubborn, Farm On!

Farmers' Market, Online Market & CSAs

Gratefulness & What your support creates

Why care about spray-free veggies? How do they benefit you?

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