Favorite FAN Feature: Old Rich Valley Farm
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Rory: 0:26
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Rory, your host for today's episode. We've got a great conversation for you today with two members of our farm advisor network, Amy and Will Campbell of Old Rich Valley Farm located in Western Virginia. Welcome Amy and Will it's great to have you guys back. It's been awhile since you've been on the podcast.
Amy & Will: 0:45
Hey yeah, we're glad to be here. Yeah appreciate you having us.
Rory: 0:48
Maybe to start since it has been a little bit, could you guys tell us a little bit about your farm and what you produce?
Amy & Will: 0:54
We farm here in Southwest Virginia and uh we raised pasture raise beef, chicken, and pork and try to sell it locally. Our farm is kind of in the mountains and we you know, what, probably two thirds of our farm is mountains or Woodland. And, our pasture is kind of rolling. And so there's some, you know, it's steep and rocky, but it produces a lot of grass naturally. And so we were kind of letting nature do its thing and uh, you know, we, we can't eat grass, but our cows, pigs and chickens can, and they can turn that into good, healthy protein. And so that's kind of what we're trying to do.
Rory: 1:28
Awesome. What kind of got you guys into farming and specifically doing that by owning your own farm business?
Amy & Will: 1:35
Well, I grew up, on a farm and always had the dream of farming, but didn't really see it as a super realistic, I guess. Amy grew up in Knoxville and so, this is all new to me. But yeah she's jumped right in and we've moved in, been a team from the beginning. We got our three kids and another one on the way, and they're a big part of, what we do and why we do it.
Rory: 1:55
What would be like two pieces of advice you would give to somebody that's just starting up their farm?
Amy & Will: 2:00
Read a lot look at what other people are doing and learn from their mistakes as best you can before you make the mistake, yourself but also you're going to make a lot of mistakes. We definitely have, and we've changed, the way we farm and how we do stuff. I mean we change every year just based on learning from our mistakes. And I think just not to get discouraged when you start out kind of slow, you know, like we just started and we're not a huge operation, but we just started at the farmer's markets and some days we didn't hardly sell anything and it was very discouraging. now we have built up that customer base and we have some customers. We know are going to come back and purchase more meat. And so yeah, just not to get discouraged when you're not growing really quickly, I guess.
Rory: 2:44
Yeah. Awesome. Well, you guys actually signed up, I noticed with Barn2Door back in 2019. So what were kind of some of the primary reasons for you choosing to use Barn2Door at that time? And what were some of the main reasons you guys came over to the platform?
Amy & Will: 2:58
Well, neither one of us are very tech savvy by any means. And so I had actually tried for probably two years to create our website. You know, I just got Squarespace and just tried to even just build a basic website with information about our farm and we just couldn't do it. And so, when we found out about Barn2Door and how they would not only help us by creating this beautiful website, but also the farm store feature it just made so much sense. Before that we were kind of getting orders through Facebook comments, through messenger, through texts, through emails, through calls. I mean, they were just, orders were coming in from every direction and it was hard to keep up with. And so, that is one thing that I am truly thankful for with Barn2Door is that the orders, I can just send everyone to the website and just the orders are a lot more organized now.
Rory: 3:50
That's great to hear. Well, what was kind of that initial setup period like? Obviously there's, you have to build out the website with the Barn2Door team and then the entire online store side of things. So how did that kind of initial setup go, and what was that like for both of you.
Amy & Will: 4:05
Well, I kind of had to talk him into it because he kept thinking we could do it on our own. Well, I knew it was something that we needed to do, but I kept thinking there's a better time, like maybe in the fall when things slow down or the winter and, you know, but things never really slowed down and she was like, we just need to go ahead and just do it now. And it was good advice. And it it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be to you know, we came up with our missions, which we already kind of had our mission statement type thing and just information about us. Yeah. They just went in and created everything for us. And it was so much better than I ever could have done, but even thought it would look so.
Rory: 4:44
That's great. That's always the goal with every farm. After some time using Barn2Door, you guys came on to our farm advisor network and joined that team in the last year. So what that kind of experience been like and what are your favorite parts about that role?
Amy & Will: 4:58
First of all, it's one of those things where we didn't really feel qualified enough to, we need to be advised more than we, but we tell people we could write a book on how not to do things, but there's value in that too. You know, because like Amy said, we can learn a lot from other people's mistakes, and we don't mind sharing our mistakes and hopefully prevent other people from making some of the lessons that we've learned the hard way. But it has been good, and I know that we've gotten probably as much or more out of it as, as the people, you know, that we're trying to help, I guess. So it's been a good, you know, learning experience. I mean, At the end of the day, we're all the better working together and helping each we are trying to figure out everything on our own and so it's been it's been good. Anytime we can help give advice or kind of encourage them to take the next step that's exciting for us.
Rory: 5:45
So a series that we've recently started, this is actually going to be the second episode in this series with our farm advisor network highlighting your guys' favorite features on the Barn2Door platform. And so obviously there's a range of features on Barn2Door are all kind of built specifically to meet the needs of farmers. What would that favorite feature be for you guys?
Amy & Will: 6:07
Yeah. So the uh, subscriptions has been a game-changer for us and our farm not just cause it's been good for us, but it's good for the subscribers for our customers we started doing that, you know, with COVID whenever it was you know, the meat shortage and, you know, a lot of people were looking for meat and all the local processors where we're booked for months and months. You know, right now with our process and have to schedule dates you know, over a year in advance and that's hard to predict, you know, what your sales are going to be like over a year from now, but that's kind of the game that you have to play right now. And the herd shares or subscriptions it helps us plan on that. And not only that, but it helps the customers know that they're going to have meat for the next year. You know, every month they can count on it and not have to worry about, what it's going to cost because that's already agreed to uh, a year, a monthly subscription and, so they know they're going to get their meat and what it's going to cost to get an a, you know, roughly what they're going to get. And and so, subscriptions has really really helped.
Rory: 7:03
If you could explain to everybody what kind of, what is like the base structure of your subscriptions how have you kind of set up your subscriptions?
Amy & Will: 7:10
Our subscriptions are are monthly and the idea behind it for us was trying to move whole animals. One of the challenges with selling, you know, beef or pork in particular is, you know, you've got lots of different cuts and you need to try to move all of those you know, together. So you don't get backed up on too much ground beef for too much of this or that or whatever. And so we're trying to figure out a way to, you know, move the whole animal consistently. The generally the way the herd shares works is people can sign up for either a half a beef share or a quarter beef share or a whole log share or half hog share. so basically they'll pay monthly and they'll have that half a beef divided up over 12 months or whatever they subscribed to. And so, yeah that's basically how it works. We take animals to the processor every month. And then, so whenever we get that meat back our herd shares get priority. You know, we fill our herd shares whenever we're getting the meat back. then if we have some left after that, then we'll put it on our farm store and people can order it or take it to the farmer's markets or whatever. That's in a nutshell how it works.
Rory: 8:11
Were you guys able to offer subscriptions before you were on Barn2Door?
Amy & Will: 8:16
We really never even thought about subscriptions much before we did have like bulk boxes that we offered. But again, somebody might buy a bulk box once or twice a year. And so they're not always coming back frequently. So with this subscriptions, you know, it is monthly. And so they pick up monthly, their payment comes out automatically monthly. They don't only have to think about it. And so, they just keep coming back to get more meat. So Yeah. before that it would be a lot harder. If people were having to pay cash, or write a check, or swipe a card and every pickup. So, I don't know that we would be as successful with retaining customers if they weren't signed up online, where it just came out automatically without them having to think about it, you know? Yeah, it would be a lot to keep up with and it would be more hassle on there part as well. When I first saw the subscription feature on Barn2Door, I even thought, well, that's just for CSA. That's not for protein farmers, you know? That's not for us. And so we really didn't start it when I first even read about the subscriptions and then we really got to think about it and we're like, yeah that works for us too. We can do monthly boxes. Yeah, really. I mean, it really it we didn't realize that was an option, or even how to incorporate it. We kind of just had the herd share idea or plan with the, you know, with, we didn't know how to implement that, but it just turned out with subscriptions was the perfect way to, to incorporate herd shares into our sales.
Rory: 9:44
What were some of like the main reasons that you chose to go that route and start offering subscriptions?
Amy & Will: 9:49
Well, one was returning customers. If we could get them to pick up every month then we know that they're going to be a customer for a full year instead of just. At the farmer's market, you know, it's great they come and buy there. But you never know what they want. And usually you don't even have, you didn't bring everything you should have of what cuts they want that day. But honestly just the the idea of moving, like Will said earlier, of moving a whole animal. We know if we have so many people will sign up for a half beef share, then that's an entire cow that we can get processed and move every single month. Just as far as the production and the sales standpoint, that was a big selling point for us. Yeah, It really, it helps plan our production just cause our farm has a lot of potential. Right. But we, I mean, we can produce lots of beef, pork, and chicken, but it's not really worth anything if we don't have somebody else that sees the value in it to buy it, right. But like we said earlier that's hard to predict and hard to guests at, but the more subscriptions we have and the more we know how much to produce.
Rory: 10:52
Yeah that's a great added benefit of that. Did you guys see any kind of immediate impacts when you started offering subscriptions in the store and out of how were those received by customers when you first put them in there?
Amy & Will: 11:03
Well, one of the things that we both noticed was I mean, we were you know, some people to sign up, but a lot of the people joined our herd shares were not existing customers. A lot of them were new customers, you know? So there are a lot of people that come to the farmer's markets or that order on online, they know kind of what they want and they get it. But this kind of was, it was appealing to kind of a new set of customer base that, you know, kind of had a budget in mind, you know, and they kind of knew how much meat that they wanted and could expect, and like Amy said, they don't really have to worry with how much of this do I want and how much can I budget? You know, like it's just kind of what we noticed was that it was appealing to do a new set of customers.
Rory: 11:42
What has kind of been the shift towards subscriptions? Like if you guys had to give a percentage wise of how many customers have shifted over to just signing up with the subscription and going that route?
Amy & Will: 11:51
Well, yeah, before COVID we weren't doing any herd shares or subscriptions. And then right now I would say that definitely over half of our sales are through subscription herd shares.
Rory: 12:02
Wow. So it's a really significant portion.
Amy & Will: 12:05
I guess, like he said, a lot of them were new customers. So it didn't take away from our existing customers to just added new customers. And then some of our existing customers did actually switch over to subscriptions because they realize we're going to fill those herd share orders, the subscriptions first, and then whatever's left is what we have to sell. And so sometimes we didn't have anything extra to sell or not a whole lot. So they realized kind of that scarcity mentality of, oh, I better join the subscription if I want some meat. So that helped.
Rory: 12:38
That's a great tactic for sure. And I know a lot of times the worry with people doing a herd share or something like that is freezer space. So how do you guys kind of utilize subscriptions to make your products accessible and more convenient for customers?
Amy & Will: 12:51
Well, one thing from the customer end is the way our herd shares are set a half of beef or a whole hog or like we said, quarter hog or half hog. But if we have a lot of customers that want half a beef, but they don't have a big chest freezer or they don't have whatever it costs to the cashflow pay for a half a beef at one time. And so this way they're getting a half a beef by the end of the year. But they don't have to have a chest freezer. They don't want to have to make that investment. So from the customer standpoint they appreciate the ability to pick up monthly and pay monthly and then from our standpoint. It does actually take a little more freezer space cause we have to hold on to their shares. We get the meat back from the processor, then we fill all of our share orders. So they go back into our freezer until their delivery date for that month. So that is kind of, I guess, one downside for us is that we are holding onto their meat. We try to stay a month ahead just to give us a little wiggle room. You know, some sometimes like if the if we're a week later getting our meat back or, we just want to make sure that we can feel all of fill subscriptions and give them what they're expecting and what they're paying for. It does take freezer space. , that's definitely part of the equation, but the alternative is having you know, a freezer full of meat. Yeah, that you're just hoping people order from, you know, so now at least we're putting meat into the freezer that people have signed up for to get for the next several months, as opposed to just putting it in there and then hope that people show up at the farmer's market and wanting to buy whatever you take. Yeah.
Rory: 14:23
That's huge. I got that great point of having that certainty, that, that meat is already sold. That, you know, it's actually going somewhere. You don't have to worry about. Tons and tons of pounds of ground beef or something, just sitting in the freezer.
Amy & Will: 14:34
Right.
Rory: 14:36
What kind of pricing options do you guys give your customers? And how does that just make managing those subscriptions easier for you?
Amy & Will: 14:42
So we do offer you know, the, variety of options, just like you mentioned, and we kind of give them the choice of whatever works for them. Most do the monthly subscriptions where it just comes out automatically because easier for them. And that's easier for us too, but there have been some that had opted to pay in full from the get-go, but in some you know, we would prefer to just, you know, write a check every time they pick it up. And so we're flexible with that, but we have noticed that most prefer, know, just to, to have it come out automatically.
Rory: 15:10
Farmers can sometimes be like suspicious or nervous about kind of starting subscriptions. Cause a lot of times I think it's the impression of, oh man, I'm going to have this whole program to organize and manage. So what would kind of be your advice or maybe like your personal testimony, about how you can gain some recurring revenue and kind of lock in those sales and how that can kind of be helpful for your farm business.
Amy & Will: 15:30
I think the best part of the subscription is knowing like, I can look ahead at the end of the year and now it's actually how much money we're going to make from the subscriptions. And I can't do that for the rest of ourselves. I can a guess based on what we sold last year or something. But as far as our monthly deliveries, I know for sure that I have sold this much meat at these certain pickup locations. So that really helps me. I think any time you're transitioning to something new starting small seems to make sense. And so, it may be maybe not. I don't know, but I think just thinking it through is important and. But I think if you like you make small mistakes it's a better than making big mistakes, but I think the more, you just kinda have to jump into it and then you'll figure it out. You know, we, we kind of had a vision of what we thought it might look like, and I think yeah, as in starting small, if you know, you're going to have one beef process every single month. Then how many shares do you know you can fill out of that beef and just offer those 20 shares or 30, whatever it is and make sure you're not over offering because with a subscription. You always want to make sure you can fill that subscription. It would be bad to say, Hey, sorry. I know you paid. So I would definitely shoot under what you know, you're going to get back, I guess, and just offer that number. But I have talked to a couple people just interested in Barn2Door and interested in the subscriptions and stuff. And it is really difficult right now with the processors still being kind of out of whack. That's one thing with the subscriptions, meat subscriptions, , you have to know that you've got a spot if you're doing weekly or monthly or whatever it is. You've got to know that you're going to get that meat back weekly or monthly. For sure. So that's one thing to consider before you just jump into a subscription too, and also, and that's one of the benefits to the herd shares too. Is that the main bottleneck is through the USDA inspected facilities. But with herd shares, just with the raw milk it gives the opportunity to, to use custom facilities because you know, technically they own, you know, part of the herd, you know, like if you, if we take our account to the. You know, we can take it to a custom processor and get that meat back and so same way for somebody to get in a half or a quarter or a share. that, does add another another option that I think is good, as long as the, you know, the farmers are being transparent, and interest in the process.
Rory: 17:56
Well, and I think kind of what I keep hearing from you guys too, is just how helpful the subscriptions are for that planning ahead, whether that's with processors or knowing how many beef you want to slaughter that month or that year, or how many you should be raising so could you maybe speak to that too? Just like how does that work in terms of just being able to plan ahead and have a little more certainty around all those variables?
Amy & Will: 18:19
Yeah. Yeah. It makes a huge difference. Yeah. So like I said our farm has has lots of potential, you know, we can produce lots of beef, pork, and chicken. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's we have to figure out how much to produce and how many dates we need to schedule, you know, a year in advanced. And these are just these subscriptions just really help us plan how much of what to produce.
Rory: 18:40
What are maybe some of the ways you guys could see yourselves expanding on the subscriptions feature in the future and kind of that out and getting more customers to kind of purchase from you that way?
Amy & Will: 18:50
Yeah. So we, we have I mean, honestly, as far as our long-term goals we love herd shares and would love to just continue to grow the herd shares, more and more. We have talked about incorporating other things into our subscriptions, just like maybe a ground beef subscription or a sausage subscription, or if we get to the point where we feel. You know, feel good about our egg production throughout the course of the year. We thought about adding on, you know, eggs subscriptions. Our only thing is, again we thoroughly enjoy using the herd share subscription to make sure we're moving a whole animal. So if we branch out of that, then we just have to make sure what we're putting in the box is also helping us move the whole animals and not just you know, everybody would love a box that has filets and chicken breasts in it, but that's not really going to help us that much. But there are people that, that do have beef and pork and whole chicken subscriptions.
Rory: 19:45
Yeah, no, definitely. Amy, that's a great point too, about you, you know, everybody wants steaks, but how did you guys kind of manage that? And is there anything you have to do to kind of like almost teach people how to use certain cuts of meat that they ended up getting from you guys, whether that's a roast or what what they, when they don't know what to do with all that ground beef?
Amy & Will: 20:03
Um, So we kind of have to stagger our boxes and make sure that not everybody's getting ribeyes but some people are getting strips and stuff like that. And then definitely as far as the cuts go one thing that we've tried to do each month or each week, really, when we send out our newsletters is to send out recipes they're getting a lot of ground beef every month. And some people request more, some people use a lot of ground beef. Some people are like drowning in ground beef, saying what do I do with all this ground beef? So sending out just different recipes for how to cook your roast or different ground beef recipes, or some people have never seen a flank steak before. And so they don't know what to do with that. But giving out recipes has also been a huge bonus, I think, in and helped people utilize all their cuts of meat. We pretty much say here's pretty much what you can expect for the half a beef. if there's some of these cuts that you don't prefer, we can have you, you can get ground beef instead of a chuck roast. If they don't want chuck roast or instead of brisket.
Rory: 21:04
Yeah. Well, and that's nice. I think that also being able to almost like sprinkled those more high dollar items out throughout the year kind of incentivizes that subscription purchase as well, which is awesome. I guess as kind of a final question what would maybe be your guys's and I guess you could do these together, or if you both have three then awesome. But what would kind of be your three things you think all farmers should kind of be keeping in mind as they're setting up or maybe just reassessing how they go about subscriptions within Barn2Door?
Amy & Will: 21:33
Yeah. So, so for one. I would just reiterate knowing whatever subscription it is, just knowing what it costs to produce, whatever it is, your producing and that you have, you know, some profit built in there. So I guess that's one thing I would reiterate. And then also just the like Amy mentioned the importance of patience. And being, you know, being willing to grow slow. And then I guess this isn't necessarily related to subscriptions, but just related to us as farmers is you just the importance of communicating our values as farmers and caretakers, because, you know, I have to subscribing to a year long, that's a big a big commitment on, on their end. You know, that's a lot of trust that they're putting into it. And they're not just going to do that randomly, or, you know, or for another reason, and so. One thing, I don't think that we, um, hit on. that's also important when you're setting up your subscriptions, you have to say where your delivery sites are going to be. So thinking through where are you going to deliver? So we have like six options, I think every month, no matter what I will be delivering to these six options. And so when the. Are signing up for their subscription. They choose which location is closest or most convenient for them. and then the same way not just the subscriptions, but anybody that orders on our website, those are only six options. And so I know for sure that I have to deliver my subscriptions. And then if I sell any extra stuff, that's just kind of a bonus. So yeah, kind of nailing down your delivery sites. What's gonna be. A good location for them to pick up and then a good location for you to schedule in each month. And then not sure you don't over commit, like we talked about before that, if you think that you're going to have one cow available every month, make sure you only do a certain number of subscriptions and not over commit. And then hopefully you can continue to grow and maybe you'll have two cows available every month as your subscriptions grow, you know?
Rory: 23:31
I want to extend my, thanks to Amy and Will for joining us on this week's podcast episode here at Barn2Door we're to support thousands of farms across the country, including farmers like Amy and Will who implements sustainable agricultural practices and support their local community. If you would like to ask Amy and Will any questions directly, you can meet them and other farm advisors in connect to learn more and register to attend. Go to Barn2Door.com/connect sessions occur weekly. For more information on Valley Farm visit OldRichValleyFarm.com and to learn more about Barn2Door including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm. Go to Barn2Door.com/resources. you for tuning in and we'll week.