The Whole Truth

I was recently questioned why I post some of our negative experiences on our blog.  It sort of caught me off guard.  Was it being implied that I am a whiner?  Because that certainly hasn't been my intention.  Was it out of concern that it may not be good for business?...something I hadn't considered.  Was the blog perceived as being negative?  All of these questions danced around in my head.

The reason I post some of our negative experiences is because I want to be honest.  I want people to have a well rounded idea of our farm life.  Of course we enjoy sharing our positive stories and at the same time we aren't afraid to share our negative experiences.  Raising animals is something our family enjoys.  But animals are living creatures and susceptible to predators, weather, sickness, their own mischief etc... To present ourselves as a perfect farm where nothing goes wrong would be far from the truth.  We want our customers to have a real sense of where their food comes from.  To use the trendy term, we want to be transparent.  Our hope is that we offer the opportunity for people to connect to their food and even us as the farmer, if that is their desire. 

Some of our failures have been from our lack of experience.  We enjoy acquiring our experience.  We were not born into this lifestyle.  Well, Hollie grew up raising apples.  But I think most would agree that is different from raising pigs! : )  There are times I wish I did grow up on a farm.  It would likely mean that I would have inherited the farm or at least have access to it.  That really would have made things easier.  Think about it, little or no mortgage to pay, plenty of equipment, many more years of experience, good sources and contacts, good established farm ground, and family familiar with our operations that could lend a hand when needed.  But at the same time, I know I wouldn't appreciate what we have like I do now.  I also would likely do things the same way my dad had done things which is the way his dad did things.  This is good and bad because I would likely have continued to make the same progress as well as the same mistakes that had been done for generations.  Instead we have tried (or rather been forced) to take a fresh approach.

Some of our success stems from our non agricultural experience.  For example, Hollie has a degree in Business and has worked for several years as an office manager.  This is critical in keeping track of our growing list of customers and our accounting needs.  I have been employed as a business manager for 10 years.  This has given me lots of experience in marketing, customer interaction, dealing with vendors and so forth.

Other failures we have experienced are just part of life.  Even the most experienced professionals encounter new obstacles or are subject to the ever active and evolving world of biology.  Our little farm has its own unique ecosystem that we learn more about every day.  We prepare the best we can and make every effort to learn from past experiences.  It is a journey.  We hope to have more success than failure.  And hopefully sharing this journey with others will contribute to our success as well as the success of others.

As we share bits and pieces of our farm life, keep in mind that what we share is the truth.  How would we be any different from the large factory farms if all we did was portray this mythical nirvana of a farm?  We would be trying to pretend that we were something other than what we are.  We will continue to share our farm experiences both positive and negative.  We will present our farm exactly as it is.  No rose colored glasses, no fluff, and no sugar coating.  Who wants to connect to that?  From us you can expect the whole truth and nothing less.      

Defining Ourselves

As the word spreads about our little farm, it is interesting to see who contacts us.  We get all sorts of questions and requests from people.  If I get a call from somebody wanting to order a pig, I will always ask how they would like the pig processed.  (Cured or fresh ham etc...) Once in a while, before I have a chance to explain their options, a customer will eagerly give me their order.
"I would like 100 lbs of bacon, 12 pork chops, and the rest ham."

While this may seem humorous to those who understand a little bit about the various cuts of meat, it is somewhat reflective of how disconnected from our food our general population has become.  If I could grow a pig that would yield 100 lbs of bacon, I would be a rich! : )  I don’t want anybody to feel bad if they are one of the customers who tried to place an order like the one above.  We welcome all questions and want to be perceived as approachable.  I just offer it as an illustration that part of our role as the farmer is to help educate our customers about their food.  This is not something we foresaw when we decided to offer the food we were growing for ourselves to others.

Because the supermarkets have their meat processed a little different than what we offer, some customers don’t always know what to do with certain cuts.  The frequently asked questions we get are what do you do with a ham hock?  (Hollie will be posting a delicious ham and bean soup recipe soon.) What do you do with a beef soup bone?  What is the difference between cured ham and bacon and fresh ham and bacon? (Another post coming soon.)

Side Note: We are working on improving our website with a FAQ section and adding recipes, ideally at least a couple for each type of cut.

It is actually fun and rewarding for us to share a little bit of what we know with others.  We always try to remember to offer the disclaimer that we are not chefs!

Speaking of chefs, we have had a quite a few restaurants contact us wanting to buy our meats.  As a small farm this can be exciting and overwhelming.  For example, we have had companies like Creminelli Fine Meat and Café Rio who could potentially purchase thousands of animals per year express interest in purchasing from us.  We have also had smaller local restaurants contact us and inquire about our meats.  In these instances we have had to decide who we are as a farm and where we want to go.  We love getting out and meeting with our customers on a Saturday morning.  However, from a business perspective, having customers like Creminelli and Café Rio could offer some big opportunities.  It pleases us that companies are starting to show interest in buying local, humane, and natural meats from sustainable family farms.  (I hope I don’t get in trouble for posting this, but we have decided to supply Creminelli with a very small supply of pork as they test the market with delicious sausage and salami made from heritage breed pork.  Look for it this holiday season.) 

At this time we really aren’t interested in supplying the bigger customers with all of their meat needs.  For one, we don’t have the resources.  There isn’t a processing facility in Utah that could handle the quantities.  It would require thousands of acres of land and gobs of money.  In principle, we would like to see Utah be able to raise all of its own food which will require more farms and certainly farms bigger than ours.  It would be good for the economy, residents, environment, and animals, and it reduces dependency on one source which reduces vulnerabilities.

Working with restaurants can be a little tricky.  Chefs are used to ordering by the cut and getting terms on their purchase.  We try and carefully explain that we are a farm and not a processing/distribution facility nor are we a bank.  I could be wrong, but it seems that some chefs want to be able to offer buzz words like “local, natural, humane, family farm” on their menus but don’t understand what it means to work with and buy from a local family farm.  For us, these aren’t just buzz words but rather principles that we live and work by.  As a small family farm, we can’t just sell one cut from an animal.  What would we do with the rest of it?  We don’t have the time to go and find a home for each cut of meat.  Unfortunately, some of the local restaurants don’t care to work with us once they find this out.  (It really isn’t that unfortunate in a business sense, since we can’t keep up with orders as it is; just in principle.)

Other local chefs like Colton Soelberg with Communal Restaurant in Provo have been wonderful to work with.  They understand what it means to buy from local family farms.  They have even adjusted their menus to utilize the entire animal.  We hope to work with more restaurants like these in the future.

Some people contact us pretending to be customers but are actually interested in setting up a farm similar to us.  It is actually really funny when this happens because they will ask a few general questions and then slip in a very specific question that only a farmer would care about.  I usually will just ask if they are interested in farming and if so, what questions specific to farming they have.  We do not view it as competition.  We wouldn’t even be able to raise enough meat to support our little town of Vernon.

All of these people help us define who we are.  They require us to make decisions that we wouldn’t have made otherwise.  I suppose like anything else in life, figuring out who we are as a farm is a journey. We will likely try things that work and others that won’t work.  We are learning to structure ourselves better.  By this I mean having guidelines that we operate by.  We have limits and cannot accommodate every customer’s request.  We try and be flexible but can only do so much.  This year we sold out of turkeys very quickly.  We simply don’t have the room to raise anymore than the number we have offered and it is very difficult to tell our customers that we won’t have any more turkeys this year.  We could put some turkeys on a neighbor’s land, but this would strain our time running back and forth several times a day.  We hope that the land we are trying to buy will work out.  This will allow us to raise a lot more turkeys next year for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We have had several requests to raise guinea fowl, geese, ducks, sheep, goats, etc… While we would love to do more, at this time we are choosing to focus on our current offerings.  We can easily spread ourselves too thin.  We enjoy what we do and want it to stay that way.