Expressing Gratitude with a list of Free Resources

I spent the Thanksgiving break at one of my favorite places… at Even’ Star Farm in southern Maryland… and home of my dear friends Brett and Chris. You may have already heard the story of how we met – Brett and I worked together over 25 years ago at one of the first farm-to-table restaurants. We bonded over a love of fresh, organic foods prepared with reverence to the ingredients.

To this day, we both share that passion – Brett cultivates varieties of produce bred for flavor and texture… whether it’s Japanese purple skinned sweet potato, Chinese thick stem mustard, or peachy mama peppers. If it has superior flavor and he can grow it profitably… he grows it!  And I love cooking with it and of course eating it!

It’s no wonder I love visiting his farm.

On Thanksgiving morning, I was geeking out on how fresh our ingredients could be.  Brett sent me off to the barn to find a shovel and pointed me towards the potato fields. I dug potatoes for latkes and mashers. We gathered still warm, freshly laid eggs for the pies.

I know you know – digging potatoes is literally back-breaking, albeit rewarding, work. And it reminded me of my deep gratitude to farmers who do this work. It’s farmers like you and like Brett who ensure we have delicious food grown in a way that is ecologically sound. I renewed my commitment to support farmers to ensure their financial sustainability.

What does that mean?

• Giving you the tools to work smarter not harder
• Developing systems that help you efficiently manage the back-office
• Sharing resources that help you improve your operations
• Finding the balance between selling profitability and ensuring all people have access to healthy clean food

It is with this gratitude; I offer the following free tools and resources to help you sustain your business:

Tools to help you work smarter

All the templates on my website we’re developed because a client had a question.  Many of the templates ended up in my book, but as I get new questions, I create new templates. The most recent one was designed to answer the question:

“How do I decide whether it makes more sense to sell at the farmers’ market or wholesale?” 

If you want to work smarter, you know that it’s not the top-line revenue that’s important(did you generate $1,000 in sales at the farmers market vs. $800 selling wholesale for the same product). The question is: what’s left over after your production and selling costs? And how much time did it take to generate that sale?

The opportunity assessment tool helps you answer that question and it’s available for free downloaded on my website.

Resources that Improve Operations

Speaking of my friend Brett – he often complained that customers asking for cooking tips slowed him down at the farmers’ market. As a former chef he has hundreds of great recipes to share. But when he has customers waiting to pay, he doesn’t want to hold up the line for one person. Ever committed to customer service, we created our cookbook to answer the perennial question: how do I cook this?

Of course, I’m always happy for you to share our recipes (with credit!). And to  make it a little easier, we created recipe cards that you can download and print to share with your customers.  Here’s the full list of recipe cards you can download from my website.

Find the balance between profitability and accessibility

I’ve seen many examples of farmers subsidizing the cost of their products to ensure people of all incomes can afford their food.  One of the more popular options is to accept the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

If you are ready to take the next step in accepting SNAP and/or accepting electronic payments, consider contacting MarketLink for assistance. MarketLink is a program created by the National Association of Farmers’ Market Nutrition Programs partnership with the US Department of Agriculture to expand the use of SNAP.

To be eligible for their program, farmers markets and direct-marketing farmers must become SNAP authorized, and MarketLink can assist with the application, even submitting it on your behalf if you choose. Becoming SNAP authorized will expand your customer base, increase your profitability, and increase local food accessibility in your community. Since 2020, many states have expanded their SNAP benefits to food-insecure households through funding such as the Pandemic-EBT and the most recent Build Back Better Bill which includes up to $500 million to support emergency food assistance.

If you qualify for MarketLink’s program, you will receive the following services:

• Assistance with the SNAP Retailer Application
• 1-year free use of the TotilPay Go App
• Free SNAP/EBT Card Reader
• No per-transaction SNAP/EBT processing fees
• Ability to integrate Square for credit and debit processing

You can apply to the program and reach out to MarketLink’s Regional Representatives with any questions here.

Systems to Improve Back-Office Management

One of the best ways you can improve your farm management is by having a system for tracking your cash flows (sales, expenses, debt and improvements) and then reviewing them with a critical eye so you know how the cash flows and what adjustments you need to make.

All of the videos on my website help you create and utilize your systems, from setting up QuickBooks to creating a cash flow budget.

For December 2021 only, I’m making the cash flow budget tutorials available to all members (usually, it’s only available for the All-Access members). I want you to set out in the new year on the right foot… and no better way than having a plan to stay cash positive.

Once you have a cash flow budget, you can check your project throughout the year to make sure you stay on track. In partnership with The Carrot Project, I created this video to demonstrate the process of comparing your budget to actuals.

As a reminder, I offer 4 types of membership to The Farmer’s Office.

• All Access can watch all the videos and attend office hours – where you get direct access to me to ask all your questions.
• FSA gets all the benefits of All-Access, plus the final quiz to fulfill the FSA Borrow Training Requirement
• QuickBooks Only get access to the basic accounting courses PLUS 3 courses on setting up and utilizing QuickBooks
• Basic gets access to a limited number of videos… and for December only, they also get free access to the Creating Cash Flow Budgets