From Homestead to a Growing Farm Business
In this week's episode, Janelle talks with Rachel Shenk of Shenk Family Farm. Shenk Family Farm in North Carolina began their protein operation in 2016, turning it into a business the next year. With the help of automated software, successful marketing efforts and convenient, local fulfillments, the Farm has scaled to a 6-figure operation.
To find more Farm resources, check out: https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Check out the new blog:
-
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn2Door offers an all in one business solution for farmers selling direct, online and in person. In today's conversation, we'll get into the [00:01:00] transition into farming and how this newer farm has found success.
Today, I'm happy to welcome back Rachel Shenk of Shenk Family Farm in North Carolina. Rachel is part of our Farm Advisor Network and has worked with us for almost four years now. And since becoming an advisor last year, she shared advice with farmers across the country looking to grow their business.
I'm excited to talk to Rachel about the process of starting a new farm with her husband Joe, the hardships, and what she would tell herself looking back on the past couple of years since starting the farm in 2017. We always love the retrospective, don't we? Well, welcome Rachel.
Rachel Shenk: It's easy to get in the weeds, but it's good to reflect.
Janelle Maiocco: It is. It is. It's good to pull back and be like, What have I learned? What would I do different? And all those things. And of course, all the best advice is that retrospective hindsight, I think.
Rachel Shenk: For sure.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good. Well, just so the listeners are aware, can you please share with us, tell us about your farm.
We said it was North Carolina. So, beyond that, just give us a good [00:02:00] sense of your farm, what you do farm, the size of your farm, who you generally serve as customers, and we can take it from there.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, totally. Thanks so much for having us, Janelle. So like you said, yeah, we're in eastern North Carolina, so we're just about half an hour from the beach, and we're on a pasture based livestock farm, which has been interesting because land here is getting bought up for developments because we're so close to the beach.
We were able to find a few acres to lease from, it's actually his grandpa's land. He farmed it, and so he wanted to keep it for farming, and so we were lucky enough to be able to lease it long term, so that's been...
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, that's awesome. I'm so happy to hear that. The land grab is real, so I appreciate that.
Rachel Shenk: It is. The struggle, yeah, took us a couple years to find it. But yeah, so we do chicken, pork, we do beef from a partner farm, but we are going to have our own beef next year. We do Thanksgiving turkeys, fresh eggs, and various products made with our lard. So some soaps, balms, candles. And my husband manages the day to day at the farm.
So, he cares for the animals, the land, and [00:03:00] I'm mostly responsible, well, for the kids. But then also the sales and marketing side of the business. We got Mason, he's six. We just started homeschooling this year. And Daisy, she's two. And we really started the farm for them. They weren't born yet when we started thinking about the farm, but it was back in 2016.
We'd been married about four years. We started to consider what raising a family would look like, how we wanted to raise a family, and my husband Joe just felt really strongly he didn't want to work full time away from home. He grew up on his uncle's farm, and some other farms. He loved the lifestyle, being outside, doing hard, purposeful work, getting to feed people.
So, we kind of started just on a super small scale in our backyard, we were on half an acre. But yeah, we really just wanted something that we could bring our kids alongside us. to do to work together as a family, providing food for people. We had no idea in the beginning that it would become a whole business.
That's how it started. We had 40 meat birds and five laying hens in the backyard, we gave it away to friends and family. They were like, this is amazing. Y'all should start a business. And we [00:04:00] were like, ah, that's terrifying. So it took us a few years, but we started. So it was, that was in the fall of 2016.
Janelle Maiocco: Of 2016, okay. That was the fall of 2016.
Rachel Shenk: And then in the winter of 2017, the beginning of that year, is when we established it as a business.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. So that's not too much time later. Like you did it because lifestyle, how you wanted to raise your kids as a family. But at that time you were just like, we just want this experience.
You weren't thinking business.
Rachel Shenk: Yes. Yep.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, interesting. And so then you're like, wait a minute, we could do this. Did you both work off farm, like off farm jobs?
Rachel Shenk: Yep, so my husband did construction, and then I worked at our church office doing administrative stuff. Just anything and everything.
So I was only about 30 hours a week, and he was regular full time, like 40 hours a week. So, we were just doing it on the side, and then right after we established the business, I found out I was pregnant with our first kiddo, Mason, and I knew that once he was born, I didn't want to keep [00:05:00] working.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes.
Rachel Shenk: And so, so yeah, it kind of worked out perfect that I could kind of step back from my job there and focus on the farm.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, honestly, that's a myth. When you have kids, you work more. You're just not paid for it.
Rachel Shenk: You're just not paid for it.
Janelle Maiocco: Like, um, it's, it's 24 seven. It's worth every minute of it. Yep.
Rachel Shenk: Oh, it is. It's been such a joy. So, our farm has always been on leased land away from our home. And so, I remember taking them in the car seat to do like farm tours when Joe was still at work and he just tagged along for the ride. It was a lot easier before we started walking.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes, I definitely can see how that would be true, and yet fortunately out on a farm can be a great place once they do start walking, frankly.
Rachel Shenk: Oh, for sure.
Janelle Maiocco: That is fantastic. So, when Mason was born, were you then really quote unquote full time farming?
And of course full time parenting?
Rachel Shenk: So I was, but my husband continued to work until [00:06:00] 2020. So, we just did chicken and eggs for the first three years. We doubled production every year. And then 2020, COVID happened, we started working with y'all cause we needed an online store presence.
That's when my husband was able to step away from construction. So, we were both on a full on farm. We also added pastured pork that year too. So that was perfect timing with the COVID stuff. And that's when we really started to lean into subscriptions, which Barn2Door was instrumental for.
Subscriptions has always been kind of the backbone. So, when we started literally, we would just ask people, how many chickens do you want per month? How many eggs? And that was our subscription. But yeah, and then in 2021, we started partnering with a local grass fed beef farm because we knew we could raise our own beef, but that was a huge undertaking that we weren't ready for.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, good, you're kind of learning with somebody else like right in front of you before you take it on yourself, I suspect.
Rachel Shenk: So, we learned a lot from him and from some other farmers. And yeah, we had someone else tell us another farm that was like, if you can get [00:07:00] a product that's ready to sell and learn how to market, that will be a way to ease into a new enterprise instead of all of a sudden you're like managing the animals and managing the marketing and the sales like all at once.
So that was really, really good advice. That served our business well.
Janelle Maiocco: I'm writing that down because we're going to repeat that one at the end. That one's just too good. And now people are like, what did you just say? You have to wait till the end to hear it again. Okay. Okay. So I love that you actually layered, well layered, now I'm really pushing on the puns, aren't I? Layered in, obviously starting with chicken layers for all the people who didn't catch that maybe not obvious pun. So, you started with the chickens and the eggs.
Rachel Shenk: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: And you started it as a hobby and you're like, wow, this works. People like it. And then a couple years later, you really started pork at the same time your husband was coming full time to the farm.
Okay. And then now we're talking two, three years later, you're thinking it's almost time to add the beef. I would suspect you might do it that way again. [00:08:00] Instead of all at once? Or what, would you change anything about how you added in products at all? This is the advice moment for you on anybody thinking about these things.
Rachel Shenk: I would not, I would not change that. I think that our approach was very sustainable. Like we definitely had our points of overwhelm and burnout and all those things, but it was never to the point where we're like, we're quitting the farm, because we see a lot of farms do that. Like they go all in all at once, and then they're trying to manage like 10 different enterprises and obviously when you're starting something new, it takes a while to work out the kinks.
And so it's really, it's easy to get overwhelmed fast. So, it was really nice to start small and get really good at something before we added something new.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Rachel Shenk: I know that's not everyone's story, but for us, I would not change that at all.
Janelle Maiocco: Honestly, it might not be everyone's story, but I've heard that overwhelmingly from farmers that we've talked to and I talked to about starting a farm, and even expanding a farm really, but it is get good at something or get [00:09:00] good at as much as you can handle first before, because the learning curve takes more time and mistakes and learning.
But once you get it down, and it's like routine to do, you've got some experience under your belt, you have to maybe think about it a little less, it's sort of like learning to make bread from scratch, but, once you've done it enough times, you know, at that point , it's almost just therapeutic, you just know how to do those things, it's not always like that, you have to learn, learn, learn at the front end.
Rachel Shenk: I don't think I realized the learning curve was so high. And we'd never anticipated, we never said, we never had a perfect plan. Like, okay, we're going to do this enterprise for this many years. And, you know, it just kind of, that's the way it worked out. We didn't realize the learning curve, not only for raising the animals, but also like, Marketing everything, like that was a whole other thing that like we didn't really consider when we first started.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, it's fun when things go right, like that really went right for you in terms of getting good at something, adding more, getting good at something, adding more. And you ended up, probably thanks to Mason, you ended up starting, [00:10:00] like, you're full time first, and then eventually your husband was able to join you at the right time.
That sounds like a lot went right.
Rachel Shenk: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: So, on the other side of it, what went wrong?
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, yeah, um, so many things...
Janelle Maiocco: That's not even fair. That's too big of a question. Let me back up.
Rachel Shenk: I mean, I have a good answer.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. Well, let's start with your good answer.
Rachel Shenk: That came to mind. So, so yeah, like, because Marketing was just not even on our radar like so many people tell us like oh my gosh your stuff is just gonna, it's gonna sell itself.
Just show up to the Farmers market, bring everything you have you'll sell out. So, we took their advice and we showed up to the farmers market with 80 fresh whole chickens, and we sold 2.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh no! You're probably making a lot of people feel really good right now. Like, okay, they've made it, they're a legitimate Farm as a business, and they started with selling two of 80.
[00:11:00] Okay, we can do this too.
Rachel Shenk: Like, I forgot a price sign. We weren't on social media. We didn't have an email list. I think the only people that knew we were gonna be there were, like, two friends and my mom and dad. We were naive. We didn't know what we're doing.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. So you're sort of saying if you just show up, that's probably not enough. You actually have to do the exercise of marketing. And if you were to identify I would say three or four sort of top things you would recommend, if you're going to do marketing, here's what you need to do. What would those three or four things be?
Rachel Shenk: Yeah. So you mean like before you're actually ready to sell the product, as you're preparing for that.
Janelle Maiocco: I will take both answers.
Rachel Shenk: I think like the moment we got the baby chicks, I would have started a social media page, been sharing about that, sharing about our farm journey, building an email list, maybe going to local CrossFit gyms to share about our farm and share what we will have eventually.
Just [00:12:00] like starting to build those relationships, getting the word out. Yeah, definitely email lists. Because, I didn't feel like it was necessary because I'm like, I don't have anything to sell. Even just like, if it was once a month just to say, here's where we are for the farm. Here's what we're working on this week.
Here's what we're excited for in the months ahead. This is when we think we'll have chicken available. And just like bringing people into the farm journey before we had anything, I think that would have been huge. And I think maybe we would have sold out our first farmer's market. I don't know.
Janelle Maiocco: But maybe you would have. I love that. It's not like you can just show up and say, we're ready. And everybody's like, what? Or they forgot to show up cause they didn't know. So you're saying, Hey, I'm going to tell you a lot of times ahead of time. Like we just got the chicks. The chicks are growing, look at these beautiful eggs, or maybe you have meat birds too, etc.
But you're sort of giving them multiple reminders well in advance. That's really, that's really a good idea.
Rachel Shenk: Yep, yep. Yeah, I think that would have helped.
Janelle Maiocco: And then email list, you said. That was a big one. You said social [00:13:00] media and email list. Is there anything else?
Rachel Shenk: I think those are the big things.
Yeah. At least we're in like a small town and I think the in person word of mouth is huge as well. So going to like a homeschool co op or crossfit gym, somewhere where our ideal customer would be. Even if they weren't there, like they at least would know about us. And then they could share with their friends that they might think would be interested.
Cause I think in person, at least in our area goes a long way because also with meat, I think with produce, you get to display your beautiful produce and people look at it and they're like, it's beautiful. Yes. I want that. But with meat, I feel like people need to know you because...
Janelle Maiocco: Because meat's not pretty.
Rachel Shenk: Meat's not pretty. It's in like a cooler and it's frozen and it's not like beautiful to look at. So we really had to build that trust with people before they, you know, spend $30 on a chicken. So.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yes. So relationship building, that's a big, big one.
And social media, email and in person are sort of the [00:14:00] trifecta, it sounds like, to get that done. How often do you email? I'm just always curious, cause I'm hearing trends on this one.
Rachel Shenk: So in the beginning, just once a month, maybe, but now we try and do at least once a week. Um, and I try and do 75 percent of those strictly relationship building.
So like sharing recipes, sharing farm stories, sharing education, what do all the egg labels at the store mean? Those kinds of things that our customers would be interested in. And I always have a link to the online store and I always have our schedule, but I try not to just send emails like that are salesy because I feel like those are easy for people to just delete and not read.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Rachel Shenk: So so yeah, we're once a week has been our sweet spot because we're year round, most of our products are year round and we sell every week and so...
Janelle Maiocco: Amazing.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Amazing. Okay. That is very helpful. I appreciate that. The other thing is, as you mentioned in person, a lot of farmers probably would think, Oh, in person, it's a farmer's market.
[00:15:00] But you mentioned, I think, a CrossFit gym and a homeschool co op, which are probably great ideas. So, if I'm a farmer listening to this, thinking about getting started, ideally there are small towns near most farmers, frankly. If they were to do that, are they going to call them? Are they going to email?
Are they using them as a pickup location? Or are they doing a prezo or putting up flyers? How do you go about doing that if you're a new farmer?
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, I think every farmer has their sweet spot. Their way of doing things. What worked for us is I would either go in person or do a phone call and just say, hey, we'd love to share about our farm, whether you'd be interested in being a pickup location or not, we think that our farm could serve your people well, we'd love to give you product for your family to share and enjoy for free.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, that's nice.
Rachel Shenk: And then, yeah, we'd love to just be able to share with your people for like 10 minutes during your CrossFit open gym or whatever, you know.
And that was great to just start. We never used them as a pickup location. It just didn't [00:16:00] work out like with the frozen meat.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Rachel Shenk: Weren't coming to the gym every day.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Rachel Shenk: But we had a pickup that was like two minutes from their gym, and so it was perfect. And we could say, Hey, we deliver every month or every week on this day at this time to this location.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Rachel Shenk: And yeah, try to make it really easy and convenient for people. So, we still don't offer home delivery. That's something that we are considering doing in the future, but we have been able to sell everything we need to doing just pickup locations, farmers markets. So, we haven't added that yet.
But, I think that that could be another huge thing. I mean, our farm is not in the middle of nowhere. We're like 20 minutes from a couple, like...
Janelle Maiocco: Lovely.
Rachel Shenk: I mean, not big towns, but bigger than we're in.
Janelle Maiocco: There's enough people that eat meat.
Rachel Shenk: There's enough people , but if you're in the middle of nowhere, I think home delivery would be, I mean people love that convenience for sure.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. And it, it's more efficient than people realize sometimes, honestly. We have some farmers that are just like, boom, boom, boom. And it goes pretty quick because they're focused geographically.
So, your pickup locations [00:17:00] are always at Farmer Market or is it some other locations as well? Do you have other partner businesses?
Rachel Shenk: Yes, so we do pickups at farmers markets, and then, we have a mobile farm store, so we got a grant for a trailer that we have chest freezers in. We set that up during the week at two different same day, same time, every day.
Janelle Maiocco: So like, it's almost like a meetup pickup.
Rachel Shenk: Yes, and it's...
Janelle Maiocco: No pun intended, that's another pun.
Rachel Shenk: So people can shop in person or that's like a pickup location. We just set it up for two hours. We have a local shop that we partner with every Thursday at five, we deliver orders to them. And people pick up just from us in the parking lot. We don't take it into the store or anything. And then, we have a self serve freezer at our home.
So in our garage, we have it set up that it's labeled by their name, the eggs are in the bottom, and they can just come at their convenience on a few days a week, and pick up. That's actually our most popular one, just because people's lives are crazy, and we are kind [00:18:00] of in the middle of lots of people's commutes to and from work.
Janelle Maiocco: Traffic pattern. Love it. Yes. If they can make that part of their routine, that's a big deal. That's fabulous.
Rachel Shenk: I used to man those hours, but then, like you'd talk to someone for half an hour and it's like, I've got to go make dinner.
And other Farm things... We're like, okay, I can't have relationship in person with every single customer. Like we've got to streamline this with our email list and yes, I'm going to do in person stuff, but I didn't have the capacity to stop and talk to every person picking up...
Janelle Maiocco: I know, that's so sweet. No, that's good. You even have to streamline and consolidate the relationship building, which is fair when you're also trying to run a farm and a family and everything else in between.
And that makes a ton of sense.
Rachel Shenk: I didn't like it in the beginning, but as a business and then like we wanted to scale, it was necessary and I just had to come to terms with that and set boundaries for myself.
Janelle Maiocco: And that's actually, I'm so excited that you just used the word scale, because literally that's on my short list of things to ask you [00:19:00] about.
So scaling the farm, because obviously when it's sort of a hobby at the very, very beginning, or if you're just asking, like you said at the beginning, you're just like, hey, how many chickens do you want? You know, and you could manage that in that way, but if you need to grow it as a business and get to a certain scale where you're making enough money to pay the bills and have it make sense and not, and have it be a full time enterprise, not without off farm jobs, you need to build in efficiencies into your operations in order to raise and grow enough to sell and make that make sense.
Did you make any mistakes on the scaling, let's talk about that first, and then we'll flip it and talk about some of the successful things you've done to scale.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, yeah. So I think in the beginning, I wanted to please everybody. I was like, Oh, she's got four kids, I need to make sure her chicken's like really big or this person, they have a big family, so they're chuck roast I need to make sure is on the bigger side. I was trying to customize everybody's order. It was not sustainable [00:20:00] and I would get frustrated and resentful and like all those things and I just had to let it go.
And so, at this point, our subscriptions are all farmer's choice and they are not customizable. The only thing we'll do is if you don't like spicy sausage, we will just do mild. Like we can do that, but everything else, I had someone that's like, I just want bacon and boneless chicken breast and I'm like, I can't do that.
We have a great online store where you can order a la carte. That, I think, is going to serve you well. And I just got confident telling people that. Because in the beginning, I tried to make the subscriptions fit everyone. And our subscriptions are honestly not for everyone. So, I just had to be okay with that.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, that's a good, that's a really good point. I've actually heard more and more Farms say that too. Which is, You're not gonna serve 100 out of 100 customers, and you shouldn't try to because you'll be miserable doing so.
Rachel Shenk: What I found when I was customizing, none of those people lasted.
They would be on for like three or four months, and I would bend over backwards to make it work, and then they ended up saying, hey, this isn't working for me [00:21:00] anyway. They were just not an ideal customer for the subscription.
Janelle Maiocco: Correct. And at the end of the day, sometimes the hardest ones to please aren't ones that can ever be pleased, right? And that's okay to let them go. They can go be somebody else's customer, I guess. Yeah, I appreciate that. Most customers and buyers love their farmer's choice subscription, let's go. How often do you do subscriptions?
Because the subscriptions is something that you mentioned at the beginning as a game changer for your business. How often do you do those? What does that look like and why is it such a big deal?
Rachel Shenk: Yeah. So all of our sales, we used to do a little bit wholesale.
Now we just do retail direct to consumer. Like, that's it. We don't do any wholesale, anything like that. We do offer bulk, like half pig and that kind of thing, but really just to families. It gives us peace of mind. So we noticed like with the farmer's markets in particular, after doing them for, yeah, we've been doing them eight years at this point. There's literally no trends. It could be pouring down rain and we'd have a better sales day than like a beautiful sunny day.
[00:22:00] And we would have random really low days and random really high days. We couldn't depend on that to be consistent. And so the subscription has been like the backbone really of the farm. Like it's probably a third of our sales that are guaranteed every month. I plan out the whole year in advance of what's going to be in them.
And so it's just, it's something that is streamlined and it's easy and it's guaranteed. It brings us peace of mind and we can count on it. And so, I would say any new farmer starting out, as soon as you can start subscriptions then start it and don't worry about like, Oh, I'm scared.
I won't have enough. Just start, people have so much grace, just start. And then if you have to adjust and tweak or even cancel it for a couple of months and restart it, people will be totally fine with that. We've had to make so many changes with our farms, the way we sell or which farmer's markets we're going to be at, or whatever it is and people, or even last year, we stepped back from farmer's markets completely for like nine months.
And our sales didn't go down. And so...
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Rachel Shenk: Our customers just [00:23:00] followed us with wherever we were going, cause we had built up that email list, we were clearly communicating, giving them a heads up on things. We had built that trust with them. So they were like, Hey, wherever you go to sell, we'll make it happen.
And so that's been, yeah, huge, realizing there's no one right or wrong way to do it.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. And I love that you said the customers will have grace, right? But I also think job well done in building trustful relationships with those customers, right? I think, if there's a huge takeaway, I just took it was you said, I built up our customer list, your email list with customers and they followed you. If you went to different farmers markets or if you pulled back and said, hey, we're just going to do pickup locations for nine months, they followed you because I mean, I just want to like pause and like think into that because.
I think there's Farmers that are afraid to leave a farmer's market, or afraid to make a change, like what you're saying. And you're saying no, you're going to have to make all the changes, and you should, because you don't want to [00:24:00] get into a situation where you're fatigued, you're frustrated, you're bending over backwards, something's not working also for you as the farmer. But, if you've built those customer relationships through regular email, especially, right? Then they're connected to you. Done. They will follow you if the pickup location change, if the farm market change, if you try door to door delivery, or if you have your stand on the side of the road.
That's very powerful for you as a business owner to know that you have really loyal customers and can do what you need to do to have a successful business too.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah. It's been huge knowing that it's okay to adapt and change as seasons change, as the farm changes, our family changes. It's okay to be flexible as long as you're clearly communicating and you're getting people stuff to eat like... They're going to want to support you with whatever you do.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing. That's awesome. And then back to sort of the scale question, it sounds like subscriptions made a big difference. Are there any other [00:25:00] things that come to mind that worked well for your farm in terms of just scaling, of getting the business bigger, but not overtaxing yourself on the work, like trying to be more efficient so that you could get bigger?
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, I remember at one point just like making a list of everything that stressed me out and trying to address them one at a time. Obviously you're not going to solve all your problems all at once, but, cause I remember I used to think I could do that. If I just write them all down, solve them, like just get them done with, and it doesn't work that way.
But I remember our pickup locations, we would sit there for an hour for people. Cause I was like, Oh, I thought I have to have this long range, you know, people are busy. I need to give people a long range of pickup time. And I realized that I didn't need to do that. So, now I don't even do a range anymore.
Say every Thursday at five, we're going to deliver orders. Some people show up early. Some people show up 15 minutes late. So we're there probably 20, 30 minutes still, but it is so much nicer. Giving them an hour, people still show up early or they [00:26:00] come after the hour. And even an hour and a half. We cut that and we just said a certain time for those pickups, that was huge.
And then just developing systems for things like keeping our freezer organized, having a system for that, putting time on the schedule, after all of our subscriptions are packed and out the freezers are a disaster. And so just putting that on our schedule, like organize freezers for two hours, every single month after subscriptions are out to keep everything organized and efficient, it makes packing orders the next time so much easier.
Making notes of all the things that are stressful or overwhelming and figuring out. You can take small, actionable steps to get it to be less stressful and to get it working more efficiently. That takes time. Yeah, this is our eighth year and sometimes we still don't feel like we know what we're doing for some things.
But we've grown a lot. When we look to where we were and where we are now, we're like, oh, wow, we've come a long way. But then we're like, we still have a long way to go too. So [00:27:00] you never stop learning.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I appreciate that. You started on half an acre.
What does that look like now? You said you had at least 50 acres.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, so now we're on 50. It's about 20 acres of field and 30 acres of woods. When we first started, we were not using all of it, but at this point, yeah, we're, like, especially starting the cattle, and we're just doing grass, we are realizing we're quickly running out of space, so we're probably gonna have to find some more adjacent land, hopefully, here soon to be able to keep growing the herd.
The cows are our favorite. They're so low maintenance.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh.
Rachel Shenk: Compared to all the other animals, they just need, water and minerals and grass, and it's great.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing. You have started cows now, so, because You said you...
Rachel Shenk: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Rachel Shenk: We got breeding stock two falls ago, but the cows weren't born until last May, and these cows take about three years to grow out.
So, yeah, the end of next year, we should have our first beef available from our Farm.
Janelle Maiocco: So exciting. So exciting. That's amazing! [00:28:00] I love hearing that. And then you have little helpers too, right?
Rachel Shenk: Yep. Yep.
Janelle Maiocco: Mason, and then, how old is Daisy?
Rachel Shenk: Mason is six and Daisy is two.
So Mason actually is helpful. He's helped build fence. He helps move chickens. He's helped like label stuff. He helps Joe with whatever. Sometimes he just hangs out with Joe and plays. And then when Joe gets to a point in a project where Mason can help, he'll bring them over to help. And then Daisy, she doesn't really help with a whole lot at this point.
Should we just say she's our comedic relief?
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, I love that. Keeps it real, right?
Rachel Shenk: Yeah. We'll have pigs get out or whatever is stressful that day. And then we'll just look at Daisy, in her own little world, picking dandelions and blowing them, but they're blowing back in her face, and she's trying to get them out of her mouth because they're, like, all stuck to her tongue.
And, it makes you forget about all of the stress. You realize, okay, this is just light and momentary, this is stressful this day, but it's gonna get better. Not every day will be like this.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, you have more important things to worry about like getting dandelion seed out [00:29:00] of your mouth.
I love that. I love that. I think comedic relief's got to be somewhere on the like good advice for farmers list for sure.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, whether it's a kid or just a friend that keeps you laughing that just yeah...
Janelle Maiocco: Even your animals, I suspect, make you giggle. Hello.
Rachel Shenk: Just sit in the field and watch the animals.
And that is so relaxing and funny. Just watching the chickens run has always been funny for me.
Janelle Maiocco: Chickens are fabulous. Well, they all have so many personalities, don't they? It's great. Okay. So farming side of farming, scaling the business, you've learned a ton along the way.
You mentioned the word, sort of the business side of farming at the very beginning of our call. So when you're thinking about scaling and being successful as a farmer, obviously you've been at it, like you said now for eight years, was the business side of farming and what you were in charge of, 'cause you are owning your own business, not just your own farm, it is also your own business.
Was there anything surprising [00:30:00] about that, surprising or any advice that you would have around the business side of farming?
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, we definitely romanticized farming and we thought it would just be like this beautiful picturesque thing, like we get to raise the animals and sell it to our community.
We did not realize how hard running a business was and like knowing your numbers and knowing your costs and tracking everything. We did not do that well for the first probably three or four years. We did track everything for taxes and stuff, but we weren't breaking down how much of the percentage of the cost of the tractor goes to this enterprise and this one.
Tracking our labor and that kind of thing, like once we started doing that and realizing the true cost of our products we were like holy moly, we need to raise our prices because we're actually making negative money. And so, I mean that is a huge thing if we could start over the farm again we would have tracked everything religiously.
We would have tracked our time We would have met with other farmers that were down the road from us to learn from them. Like Barn2Door has been amazing with that. Just the Connect groups and the Connect sessions, being able to ask farmers down the road from you [00:31:00] practical questions, because when you first start, unless you've taken a business course, it's really hard to learn.
And I would suggest that if you have an opportunity to take a business course, that would be awesome. Because we were not skilled in that area. And we had to learn on the fly, which was stressful. We still do our own taxes. My husband enjoys it, I think he's crazy. But now that we like know how to track everything, it makes it simpler.
But yeah, now we can look at everything and know our costs and know what profit margin we have and like where we need to make things more efficient or cut costs or raise our prices or whatever, and be confident in those numbers. Because, in the beginning, we weren't confident in those numbers.
We hope we're charging the right price, but we're not really sure. Knowing your numbers from the beginning is a game changer.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that, because I'm actually technically supposed to ask advice for farmers in their first year of farming, and you just started to crack that already. So, one of those was learn from other farmers.
And you mentioned Connect Sessions, which you host, which is awesome. So in case anybody's [00:32:00] listening and wants to know what the heck we're talking about, Connect Sessions are essentially office hours. Like Rachel, for example, is one of a number of Farms that we work with that hosts office hours for other farmers.
And so, they can come into those office hours and ask a gazillion questions and get advice and shoot around ideas, learn from one another, etc. And I want to get back to that because I'm sure you have some really interesting feedback on some trends you hear there. So, if you don't have somebody down the road, which hopefully you do, right?
Farmers, where can you find them? And in the case of, if you work with Barn2Door, you can find them in office hours. Which can be great, because you can also, hey, I'm in dairy, or I do microgreens, or I do produce, I can maybe talk to the same type of farmer, or to your point, down the road, or at the farmer's market, like talk to other farmers and find them.
And then, the second one was track everything religiously. If somebody's just getting started doing that, how do they do that? I would think that would be overwhelming.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, it was. So we just, we keep it simple. We tried the [00:33:00] self-employed, uh, I can't remember. There was something online that we tried.
Google Sheets has been the best for us.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Rachel Shenk: Because we can make it exactly what we need to. We can break it up by enterprise, break it up by tax, yeah, for the Schedule F that we have to do for being self employed. Everything's there. And I would just say, we actually had another farmer that was gracious enough to share her Excel sheets with us.
So we could kind of like, take it, make a copy of it for what we needed, to be able to track everything. So we have everything broken up by enterprise and by month. And then we also have a overhead. That's all encompassing. So, we look at what percentage of our revenue comes from chicken, pork, beef. And then we have the percentage and we assign like the Barn2Door cost to like that percentage to each of the enterprises. So, that cost is being covered. That's something that would easily be like, well, how do we cover that cost? Like, I don't know.
I just didn't know how numbers worked and I'm still not a numbers person. Joe, my husband is much more skilled in that area, but just [00:34:00] making sure that, yeah, all your costs is covered, like the tractor and the tractor repairs and the seed and all the things that like could be attributed over your whole farm, not just like one enterprise, and making sure it's broken up, so all the costs are covered. Farmers are really generous with their knowledge. We reached out.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing.
Rachel Shenk: On Instagram and just said, Hey, can I have your number? Can I call you for like 20 minutes while you're on the way to the butcher or whatever, just to pick your brain?
I've never been told no, like farmers, yeah, they love to share their knowledge and share their mistakes too, like I've noticed farmers are just really good at being vulnerable, I feel like, about what they did wrong and how you can learn from them.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, such good information and you need to always be gathering that, right? To make good decisions.
I appreciate that. And then, this sounds like such a plug. It's not meant to be, but obviously Barn2Door literally, we build software for farmers to run their business. If you were talking to a newer farmer, what would you tell them early on, [00:35:00] especially, was the most useful parts of using something like Barn2Door to hopefully make business more efficient.
What was the most helpful to you? Was it time savings? Was it tracking certain things?
Rachel Shenk: For sure, time savings. And, if I could go back and get Barn2Door from when we started, I 100 percent would do that, because building a website was part of the cost, and at that point, when we got on with Barn2Door, we already had our website built, but I took, gosh, I don't even know, probably like 30 hours trying to figure out how to build that.
So, it would have been a huge time saver.
Janelle Maiocco: Ah, bless you.
Rachel Shenk: So, time savings, yes. Inventory tracking, keeping track of that, and, as you sell it, it's like real time, the inventory it goes away. So, inventory tracking was a huge, huge time saver. Also taking orders before Barn2Door, I think we may have had a few things on our Squarespace store, but I mean, I would still get so many calls, well, how many wings come in a pack and how much does it weigh?
And there was no variable weight with Squarespace. So, that's what I love about Barn2Door. You can do the [00:36:00] deposit and then you can do the final charge based on the actual weight of the product they receive. But I mean, I would probably would spend hours on the phone every week taking orders and explaining different cuts and how much comes in it.
But with Barn2Door, everything's right there. You can say how many come in the pack, what the size range is, what the price per pound is. And then Barn2Door even gives you the estimated final cost. And then...
Janelle Maiocco: So, your customers get all the information.
Rachel Shenk: Yes, the customer. Yes. It's like a self...
Janelle Maiocco: Self serve ordering.
Yay.
Rachel Shenk: It was amazing. And y'all set up the whole thing for us. I just sent a spreadsheet of everything we had and the information and y'all set it all up with your stock photos and the photos that actually look beautiful. Because I think before I just have pictures of our frozen meat packages, which I mean...
Janelle Maiocco: It's hard to make meat look pretty. It really is.
Rachel Shenk: It is.
Janelle Maiocco: That's the thing. Just make sure you have good relationship with customers and they will buy your meat, even if it's ugly. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. [00:37:00] I love it. That's great. No, it's good. I mean, there's just, I think, any way that you can save time.
It's interesting because you said you wrote a list of all the things that were stressful and then you slowly started to solve them. It's interesting because sometimes when I'm talking to farmers asking, hey, what can we build for you next? Because to your point, we obviously help farmers with an online store, like you said, a website and a store and the ability to use a POS in person, etc.
But we're thinking about farmers the whole time. And so when I'm talking to farmers, I'm like, okay, where do you spend a lot of time, and I don't mean I'm harvesting or working the soil or something, I actually mean on the business side, where are you spending, not just so much time, but repeat time, and to your point, if you're having to explain for hours every week on the phone the same cuts of meat or the same description to customers over and over again, that's a red flag for inefficiency.
And so then we take that and we're like, okay, how can we make that? That's why there's all the descriptions and the estimated weights and everything else because we're like, okay, that's a way that we can save [00:38:00] farmers time because farmers don't have extra time. And so then they can spend it on the things that are more important than repeating the things that you're like, why do I keep saying this and now it's in my sleep and I'm dreaming this and yeah.
So anyway, red flag if you're repeating the same thing over and over again that could be solved in a different way.
Rachel Shenk: Absolutely.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, so interesting. Fabulous. Okay, let's talk about the future goals of your farm. Where are you headed?
Rachel Shenk: Ah, yeah, so this year we're planning to go back to one of our farmer's markets, and to be able to do that well, I needed to hire help to help with our mobile farmer's store.
So, we're working on that. So, we have hired people to help us and when I say hire people it's really just like friends that we either pay by meat or just do like an independent contract. Never like...
Janelle Maiocco: I've heard that that works well.
Rachel Shenk: It has worked well for us. I mean, they can get sticky if like they don't do a good job, and then you have to be like uhhh. You have to have that hard conversation with a friend.
But for us, yeah, the [00:39:00] two ladies that are going to take over the mobile farm store for me, we know them and have a good relationship with them. We have kind of trusted them to take that on, so I can go back to the market. Cause I knew I couldn't do all of it. Yeah, so that's one thing. And we're also going to be harvesting our first lamb this year, and then the beef next year, and then another big thing, which I didn't talk about at all, is farm tours.
So, that's another thing that we have loved doing, just to offer that transparency, because people are always like, well, how do you label your meat? And I'm like, well, we consider it pasture raised. But really we think a relationship with your farmer and actually setting foot on the farm goes above and beyond that.
So, we offer spring and fall farm tours just for our customers. It's very simple. They just walk the farm and they can ask questions. We see the animals. And we're really trying to grow that this year.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Rachel Shenk: And also gear some more towards students, because we've had a lot of homeschool co ops and stuff reach out to us, wanting to bring their families out to the farm on a more educational [00:40:00] level, so we're trying to look more into that and how we can just bring people out to the farm and educate and show them where their food comes from and hopefully gain some more customers as well through that, just getting to know people. I think I read a statistic that said like 2 percent of people actually attend the farmers market.
Janelle Maiocco: Arguably even less. So, to your point get the word out. Yes.
Rachel Shenk: If we can meet more people and get them on the farm and build that system and have our farm trailer there that they can buy from at the end if they want to be able to try the meat.
Janelle Maiocco: You just need to keep inserting yourself in, in person and online. I think sometimes word of mouth in person is really important, especially if you're really intentional about it. Like you said, farm tours is brilliant, or injecting yourself in different school events or different things like that.
But you can insert yourself online too for word of mouth. And thinking about both of those separately, whether it's social media or newsletters, do you have any other advice for that?
Rachel Shenk: I would say I'm not the strongest on social media.
I'm really good at [00:41:00] stories. So I'll just take random videos throughout the day at the farm, whatever, if I'm making food, and just share them to our stories. But as far as making posts and learning the algorithm and all that, I'm not great at that. But I...
Janelle Maiocco: You don't have spare time for that?
Rachel Shenk: Nope.
So I would say, yeah, that's something I don't have down to a system. I just honestly do it when I think about it. And it's something that I can easily, yeah, fit into my day. I take the videos during the day, then once the kids are in bed, I upload everything . It takes me five or 10 minutes. It creates conversations.
People ask questions. They're like, Oh, that's so cute. And then they're like, Oh, my kids that age. And they're like, Oh, actually I've been following your farm for three years. I still haven't tried your meat. This is where I live. So, sometimes people follow you for years and they finally are ready to take the leap.
Janelle Maiocco: A lot of our Farms do email and social media. Not all of them do social media as heavily, but they definitely do email heavily. Just in terms of making sure to maintain and be building that relationship. I don't know. Would you agree with that?
Rachel Shenk: 100 percent because whenever you post something on social [00:42:00] media, only a very small percentage of your followers actually see it. But when you send an email, I think at this point our open rate's like 50, 55%. So it's like...
Janelle Maiocco: That's miraculous.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah, that that many people are actually seeing it, whether they read the whole email or not, at least they're seeing our farm name and they're being reminded, oh yeah, I need to place my order.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I think social media is a great echo to building the trust and the relationships, but the email is kind of cutting to the chase and obviously in person, you can be gathering those emails too, to keep building those relationships. It's really powerful.
Rachel Shenk: Oh, you have to have an email signup.
And then also with social media, I try and every so often point people to the email list, like, Hey, this is what I shared, this recipe I shared this in our weekly newsletter, like click here if you want to join the email list.
Janelle Maiocco: That's a great idea. Use social media to point them back to the newsletter and the email list.
Brilliant.
Rachel Shenk: I love the MailChimp partnership with Barn2Door, how I can see each email generates a certain amount of income. I can see that. Anytime someone places an order, they get asked if they want to join the [00:43:00] email list. And I just love that partnership.
It's made it really easy for us to grow our email list.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome. We love it when you're growing your email list. Well, so do you, right? Okay, so now I have to recap because there were some really good points and I'm going to miss some. Basically, somebody needs to listen to the whole podcast to get all the juicy ideas.
But I wrote down a couple of your zingers. And then, after I read them, I want you to think about if there's any last bits of advice for folks that are starting their Farm, what advice you would give them, and that we maybe didn't get a chance to discuss today. One of the ones was, I love this, you start learning to sell and market items, even before it becomes your own enterprise. The way you did it with beef, you partnered with a farm, you figured out how to market it, and then you took on the enterprise and you already had that down, which was really powerful, I thought.
And then, I loved the adding enterprises slowly. You did that one kind of accidentally on purpose, which was poetic. You always take the things that come your way because you're always learning all the other things the hard way, [00:44:00] right? But, starting with chickens and then a couple years later adding in pork and then a couple years later adding in cows and just getting good at each one before moving on to the next.
Brilliant. And then, I love the start marketing before you're selling. You were saying, hey, I don't have anything to sell, but I can sure start talking about the chicks and I can start building relationships. And just keeping people informed. Super powerful.
Subscriptions, you said. I don't always do a recap, but you had so many good ones, I couldn't help it, Rachel. Subscriptions, you said that's your backbone. Like, that's just recurring sales. You said about 30 percent guaranteed sales, which is just, brilliant and miraculous, right?
And you said, do it as soon as you can just start right away.
Rachel Shenk: It doesn't have to be perfect.
Janelle Maiocco: And I love, that's another piece. Like it doesn't have to be perfect. You can adjust and your customers will be gracious with you, which is amazing. And that's the other one, which is build up your email list, be emailing your customers, build that trust, and they will follow you even as you adjust your business, which is so great.
And then I [00:45:00] also loved, I'm going to use this one, by the way, make a list of the stressful things and then slowly tackle them one at a time. And it's just like you saw them in different ways. I think you said putting a time slot to organize your freezers. How brilliant is that? So all the good advice, all the good advice.
And I'm sure you have so much more, but we have just a minute or two left. So, what other bits of advice would you give before we put a pause on this podcast and we'll have to schedule another one?
Rachel Shenk: The thing that comes to mind is just, again, the grace. Give yourself lots of grace. Like you could have all the knowledge, you could read all the books, all the right people to learn from, do all the right things, and you still might not succeed in the way that you wanted to or the way you pictured it in your mind.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Rachel Shenk: But, I think that's just part of the process. I was so hard on myself. And my husband, he deals with this too, losing animals here and there, like we can hard on ourselves, but I think we all do the best we can with what we're given, and that's enough. Learn from those times and you try and do better the next time.
We all have [00:46:00] to do that. We could do all the right things and still mess up, but that's just part of the process. So I had to get real comfortable failing and failing and failing and then succeeding a little bit and then failing, failing, failing, and then succeeding, you know, you just have to learn to adjust and try new things and get out of your comfort zone.
If you want to really build something that is going to last for decades to come, which is what we're trying to do, we want this to be our lifetime career and we would love our kids to take it over one day if they choose to do that. So we're trying to build something amazing and like that takes time and it takes hard work and you've got to push yourself and I don't like to do that.
I like to be comfortable and I like only committing to things that I know I'm capable of, but you'll surprise yourself , sometimes I've been forced into those situations and I really grow on accident because of just the circumstances.
Cause farming is not cookie cutter. I think too, I was not confident. And so I tried to do what I saw other farmers doing and it just never felt right or it never worked well. And so I just had to take little [00:47:00] nuggets from everybody and figure out what worked for us in our climate, in our farm, with our family, in our region.
And that takes time again to just figure out what's going to serve your customer well. And then, seasons change and you've got to change and you've got to be flexible.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I appreciate that. Oh wow, I'm gonna like go back and look at the script of everything you just said because it made me have like 20 more questions. Like in a good way.
Rachel Shenk: I just had one more that came to my mind, too. Taking advantage of opportunities, obviously, once you start building your farm and you get a few years down the road, you're going to have so many people asking things of you, and there's going to be things that you need to say no to.
But I think really considering, like, we had so many people that reached out and were just like, hey, so for instance, we had this lady that her husband was getting ready to deploy. They had just had their first child and she was away from teaching and she's like I have all the time in the world.
I have a baby, so there's not much I can do, but if there is something I can do, can I just come volunteer my time and help you? I think [00:48:00] initially I would, be like, oh, like, I don't know. That's kinda weird. I don't know you, but I ended up saying yes. And like she has become the biggest blessing and one of my best friends.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Rachel Shenk: And she comes still weekly and helps us and she just takes some meat and eggs. And she's just happy to be a part of what we're doing. Like there's gonna be so many people...
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Rachel Shenk: That either want a homestead or maybe have their own farm one day or just want healthy food and they just want to be a part of what you're doing, in a very small way and just give those people the opportunities.
Maybe it's just packaging eggs for you, maybe it's filling in for the farmer's market for you, or maybe it's helping butcher chickens, and just giving them an opportunity, get to know them, hey, is this person not crazy? Okay, cool. Then you can give them more opportunities. We've said yes to some of those things that felt crazy at the time, like, I'm inviting this stranger into my home to help package eggs in my kitchen.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Rachel Shenk: But they've ended up being big blessings because those people believed in what we're doing, and they could never do what we're doing. They were not in a position to do that. And so, just being a part of what we're doing was a blessing for them, and it [00:49:00] was a blessing for us. And, yeah, it was weird and strange to do that, to say yes to random people that just want to come help, but it ended up working out really well.
And maybe one day we'll have a full time employee that can do all the things, but right now it's a bunch of puzzle pieces that just kind of fit together and we have lots of hands.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that and you're just building community.
Rachel Shenk: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: And to your point, people get to be part of something important.
That feels good. That's amazing. Oh, well, thank you so much for all of the great advice and your time. So much more to talk about always, but thank you for the time you did give today. Before we tap you on the shoulder again, but it's great to learn from you and what you've done and what's worked.
And so many good ideas on scaling a business, growing a farm, being flexible, showing grace to yourself. I really love that one. That one we could talk about forever, I'm sure, but really appreciate your time today, so much. I want to extend my thanks to Rachel for joining us on this week's podcast episode.
You can check out more of [00:50:00] Rachel and their farm on their Instagram handle. It's instagram.com/ShenkFamilyFarm, right? And that's S H E N K. Family farm, just FYI. At Barn2Door we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services and tools to help farmers access more customers, increase sales, and save time for their business.
If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started or transitioning to sell and direct, or if you've been at a while and want to simplify your business management, please visit barn2door.com/learn-more. It's great because there's Connect sessions with great farmers like Rachel and you can ask her a thousand more questions that are even more probably detailed and specific, that you can take away for your farm.
Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about [00:51:00] empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door.com/resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.