Telling Stories
Humans are storytelling animals. Our cultures are defined by the stories they tell themselves. And community is built by the sharing of stories. So, this week, it's story time.
First, it's been a whole year since we started offering home delivery. We've learned a lot, and would love to increase this offering. If we can build up more regular deliveries, we might be able to expand our offerings and partner with other local farms and food producers to include meat, milk, cheese, eggs, grains, shrimp(!) and prepared foods. You'll be able to get almost your entire diet, all sourced locally and ethically, delivered right to your door! But, those are dreams for the future. For now, we reflect on deliveries past.
Then, we invite you to tell your story. Help build resilience in our community and the local food system by sharing the story of your farmer and food producer.
Next, the darker side of storytelling. What happens when your story is deleted, expunged, removed from the conversation without cause or warning? It's happening to an alarming number of small farms, as they are being deplatfarmed.
We'll wrap things up with a recipe that tells the story of spring: Cheesy Potato Waffles with Ramps and Scallions. But first, though the parade of fruit blossoms has slowed and snow is in the forecast, enjoy a peach blossom at sunrise.
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Order Deadlines
| Delivery Option |
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Deadline |
| Home delivery | Thursday |
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Tuesday, 10pm* |
| Pickup @ Culver Farmers' Market | Saturday |
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Thursday, 10pm |
| *Sourdough orders for delivery require an additional 24 hours |
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One Year of Home Delivery
This week marks the one-year anniversary of Hole in the Woods Farm offering home delivery, and it seemed like a good time to reflect on the experience. We were investigating options with the intent to begin offering delivery in the fall of 2020, but the pandemic hit. With people clamoring for fresh, nutrient-dense, safe food, and grocery stores largely empty, the situation demanded we jump in sooner.
Many urban farms have seen their sales double or more when they offered home delivery (even pre-pandemic). With the pandemic and the focus on contactless shopping came the recognition that the average grocery store produce item has been touched by 42 different people on its global journey, and these same farms saw their home deliveries skyrocket, more than offsetting the loss in sales to farmers' markets and restaurants.
This has not been the experience for most rural farms, including us. Small, independent grocers, such as Park n' Shop here in Culver, seemed better able to handle the increased demand, while their shoppers appeared a bit less prone to panic. Shoppers in rural areas are less accustomed to Uber Eats, Door Dash, and InstaCart, and thus to the idea of food delivery in general. Finally, because our customers are spread less densely over a wider area, costs for fuel and time are higher for rural farms.
Nonetheless, the delivery experience has been positive overall. There are several benefits that make it worth continuing the experiment a little longer.
First, the convenience factor for our customers is huge. As life returns to normal and the economy (hopefully) improves, more people will return to being ever busier. Children will once again have travel sports on market days, parents will have fitness classes, date night will once more be outside the home. In short, making it to the farmers' market during a short window will become difficult for many folks once again, even as the desire for quality family time and healthy, fresh, home-cooked meals remains a priority. Add in the fact that many folks choose not to visit markets when it is too warm, too cold, too rainy, or too sunny, and the convenience of delivery really shines. Selecting home delivery takes all of the pressure off!
Second, the quality of the produce is greatly improved compared to at a farmers' market. In the past, we regularly had restaurant chefs marvel at how much nicer our salad greens were after sitting in their refrigerators for three weeks than the greens were as they came off the trucks of large suppliers. Meanwhile, market customers experienced shelf lives only about double that of supermarket greens. The difference? Climate control. Produce for delivery is harvested and packed to order, kept in our walk-in cooler until just before delivery, then delivered as quickly as possible. Produce at the farmers' market or a grocery store is placed out for display, where it experiences the sun, wind, heat, and customers with touchy hands. It has been harvested, packed, shuffled to a market transport bin, and stacked up for display. None of these are ideal conditions for produce. So, while produce at the market is far fresher than almost any other option, it has to suffer the indignity of a challenging environment. Home delivery circumvents all of this, getting the produce directly to your home in the best condition possible. The same goes for our bread: it is baked to order for delivery, and much of it is still hot from the oven when we pull out of the driveway to make deliveries.
Third: no waste. There is a saying among market farmers: "pile it high, and watch it fly." Customers are drawn in by an abundant-looking display. Thus many a farmer has noticed that if he has 100 bunches of carrots, he'll easily sell 90 of them. But if he has 10 bunches of carrots, selling 1 is a challenge. Except in rare cases, produce farmers always return with a significant portion of their product that can no longer be sold: its main purpose was to make a display appear abundant, and now it has sat out in the elements too long. This produce mostly goes to feed the farmer, but a fair portion always ends up compost. With online ordering and home delivery, though, 1 bunch of carrots appears just as abundant and attractive as 100. This allows us to harvest to order for delivery: we don't even pull the carrot from the ground unless it has been ordered. That means it is fresher, of course, but also that there is no waste.
Related to that is greater selection. Waiting for the farmers' market means taking the risk that someone else will purchase all of a special item before you arrive. Alternatively, because it is difficult to sell produce when only a small amount is available, and because market booth space is limited, many times we have to make the decision to not even display items that have limited availability. If we only have 10 pounds of fingerling potatoes, they will look almost invisible on the display, and won't sell quickly. Even if they do, we will only make a couple of dollars from their sale. However, removing them from the display might allow us to display a larger pile of scallions, which will sell quickly, allowing us to earn more money from the space and time. Fewer, larger piles make the display more attractive to customers than more, smaller piles. The opposite is true online, however. The photo for one bunch of salad turnips takes up the same amount of display space as the photo for 100 bunches of salad turnips. So, more variety makes the online store more appealing. And, because out-of-stock items merely disappear from view, no one feels they missed out because they see an empty space on the display.
We are also able to use less packaging when we provide home delivery. Food packaging is a huge amount of the garbage going to landfills, and much of it is non-recyclable. We try to reduce our packaging for farmers' markets, and we use compostable packaging almost all of the time. The one packaging exception, and also the only exception to our farm's no single use plastic rule, is the clamshells for head lettuce, which we only use for farmers' market display. For delivery, we are able to use the same compostable corn starch bags we use for loose greens, which also help the lettuce stay fresh longer. However, these bags are opaque, and do not work for market display. We have found that head lettuce will wilt in mere minutes if it is windy at market and it is not in a container. So, we are forced to use plastic clamshells until we find a better solution. However, for home delivery, there is no need for display packaging: you saw the photo online, and photos don't wilt! We can place the heads in compostable bags, and everything works out well.
Finally, we can internalize and measure the carbon footprint of getting our produce to you. On the one hand, this makes the carbon budget of our farm appear larger. This is a struggle, as our goal is to be carbon neutral by 2025, and a net carbon sink after that. The miles we travel to make deliveries greatly increase our carbon footprint, making that goal more challenging. However, when one considers the entire carbon footprint from seed to your fork, home delivery likely produces less. Most of our customers drive to the farmers' market, so getting our produce to your table involves a round trip for each customer to the market, in addition to our round trip (except for the Mishawaka Farmers' Market, this usually means two round trips, because we must use two vehicles to carry everything). However, when we make a delivery, it only involves our trip. And, the more deliveries we have in an area, the less of a portion of the trip needs to be ascribed to that delivery: the marginal cost, in terms of energy use, is much lower. So, while doing deliveries makes it appear that we are using more energy to deliver food, in reality, if it prevents a car trip to the market for even a small portion of our customers, the total energy expense, and thus carbon footprint, is less.
Haven't tried home delivery yet? Or, do you know someone who would love our food, but can't make it to the farmers' market? Try our home delivery! The more people who do, the sooner we will be able to reduce the cost, and increase the diversity of food we offer for delivery.
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Tell a Story
Did you know that, on average, shoppers now read a minimum of 10 reviews before purchasing a product? More, if it is from a company they are unfamiliar with! Personal recommendations by friends are even more powerful and important than reviews.
We are now a few weeks out from the opening of the main season, outdoor Culver Farmers' Market, followed shortly thereafter by the Mishawaka Farmers' Market. And, of course, our home delivery will continue, with an increased variety of produce as the season develops.
Now is the time many new folks will first consider becoming members of our community. So, it's a great time for you to help make that happen!
Take a moment, perhaps as part of your preparation for Earth Day, to help share the story of your favorite local food sources (which, of course, we hope includes us!). Now is a great time to take a moment and tell some friends about why you love Hole in the Woods Farm, and/or your local farm or market of choice. Are the offerings delicious? fresh? unique? Are ecological impacts important to you? Is the provider an active and important member of your community?
If so, tell a friend. Share it on your social media. Write a review on Google or FaceBook or Yelp or whatever review source you like to use. And feel free to be specific. Maybe you really love the arugula microgreens, or all of the vendors at the market are smiling and welcoming, or someone helped you hug a giant bag of market goodies to your car. Whatever the story, let people know. It will help the farms, the markets, and the whole community!
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Deplatfarmed?
The recent wave of rapid growth of small, local agriculture has been concurrent with the explosion of social media. I don't believe this is a coincidence. Small, local farms depend on developing a community of supporters. Meanwhile, social media platforms were ostensibly created to build a sense of community. They became an effective and inexpensive way for new, small farms to get their story out to their community, and for communities to learn about their local food options.
In particular, Facebook and modern market farming have grown up together. For many farms, Facebook has been the leading, if not only, form of marketing, This makes some sense, as the demographics of Facebook users closely matches national trends on supporters of local food. Also, at least at first, Facebook was "free" (you paid by giving up personal information they could sell access to), and most new farms are extremely under-funded.
But things have been changing. For several years, the percentage of FaceBook users who actually see posts on business pages has been declining. In the case of our farm, between Instagram (owned by FaceBook) and FaceBook, we have just shy of 1000 followers. However, any given post is likely to be seen by fewer people than when we had 100 followers! This makes sense: FaceBook wants businesses to pay to "boost" posts, so they can reach the audience they have built. However, once a business begins to pay for speaking to its audience, both the number who see content for free, and the number of people who are shown boosted content per dollar declines: Run a few $5 ads and you get hundreds of impressions. But, after a handful of successful ones, you now get only tens. You have to pay $10 to reach the same audience that used to cost $5.
To this point, I really have little ethical complaint. I don't like it, but it is well within the realm of acceptable business practice: publishers increase advertising rates all the time. It does, however, mean Facebook becomes a less attractive business proposition. This is one reason behind starting this newsletter.
However, there has been a recent trend among social media companies (not only Facebook: others have done this as well) that I do have a concern with: unilateral deplatforming. This is the practice of removing access or simply deleting accounts of those a platform deems unacceptable. Which also is, on surface, OK. Publishers change their editorial policies and allow/disallow various advertisers all the time. But, it is unique in that it comes without warning, deletes all past activity and data as well, is seemingly arbitrary, and has been hitting small farms exceptionally hard. So much so, that I've called it "Deplatfarming." I know several farms that used social media as their primary communication means, were deplatfarmed, then went out of business (which often also means losing the family home), because not only did they lose their marketing outlet, they also lost the ability to tell people they had lost their marketing outlet!
One colleague with a berry and small fruit farm had been using Facebook extensively: "Facebook recently deleted our farm page along with all its information. They stated that our farm page or a similar page violated Facebook Community Standards. 10 years of work, thousands paid in advertising, and hundreds of posts all deleted in an instant and no specific reason given nor any opportunity to rectify what we are alleged to have done wrong. I never dreamed this could happen to a simple farm page that shared farm life. We never sold on the page; just gave out information and communicated happenings related to our farm." (italics added)
They spent many hours attempting to just speak to a person at FaceBook. When they finally did, they spent many more hours attempting to rectify the situation. However, they were completely unsuccessful. Facebook would not reveal what action violated what community standard, nor even if Strawberry Hill Farm was the culprit! That's right: not only did they have no warning, nor opportunity for defense, they don't even have the opportunity to know if they are the accused party! They may have been deplatfarmed for something someone completely unaffiliated with them did.
It's largely irrelevant, though: even if Facebook deemed them innocent of all transgressions, all of their posts, photos, comments, and the names of their over 8,000 followers have been permanently deleted with no means of recovery. A traditional publisher cannot disavow (in the Mission Impossible sense) all traces of an advertiser and contributor this way.
What can you do if you're concerned? I don't know - I don't have a specific call to action for this one. I would, however, suggest that you look for other outlets, such as email newsletters, fliers, phone trees, and smoke signals, used by the local food producers you support, and make sure you are receiving them. And keep reading the Weeklyish: who knows when it may suddenly become the only way we can reach you?
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Cheesy Potato Waffles with Ramps and Scallions
We had one bunch of Nebuka Scallions and a small handful of ramps left over from Saturday's Culver Farmers' Market. Come Sunday morning, they were just calling my name. I needed something yummy for brunch, so, I created these waffles. Potato waffles, with ramps, scallions, and pepperjack cheese. They were delicious and stuck around long enough for a long afternoon of field work!
Makes 5 waffles. 2 is a pretty hearty serving.
3 large starchy Potatoes, such as Kenebec or Russets (about 2 1/2 lbs)
1 small handfull of Ramps (about 1 oz)
4 large Nebuka Scallions
1 C shredded Pepperjack Cheese
3 Tbsp Flour
1 teas Kosher Salt
1 teas Baking Powder
3 Tbsp Butter, melted
2 eggs, slightly beaten
Sesame Oil
Pre-heat a waffle iron to its highest setting.
Peel, then shred the potatoes. Grab fistfulls of the potatoes, and squeeze the excess water out of them. Put the squeezed potato shreds in a large bowl. If you save the water in a bowl, the potato starch will collect on the bottom, and you can use this for thickening soups and sauces.
Finely chop the ramps cross-wise. Do the same with the scallions, using both the white and green parts. Save some of the green parts for garnish. Mix the ramps, the scallions, and most of the cheese in with the potato shreds.
Combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix thoroughly into the potato mixture. Whisk the eggs and butter together in a separate bowl, then thoroughly mix into the potato mixture.
Generously brush both sides of the waffle iron with sesame oil. Cover the bottom side of the waffle iron with a thick layer of potato mixture. on my iron, each waffle needed a little more than 1 cup of mixture. These waffles will not rise as much as a normal flour-based waffle, so fill it fairly full.
Squish the top of the iron down to make sure good contact is made, and cook until the waffle is golden brown and releases easily. These take almost twice as long per waffle as regular waffles in my waffle iron.
As waffles finish, serve immediately, or put in an oven on the "keep warm" setting (don't stack them on top of each other, though, or they'll get soggy). Serve topped with more grated cheese and a sprinkling of scallion greens. Sour cream might also be nice, but we didn't have any...
Yum!
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Order Deadlines
| Delivery Option |
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Deadline |
| Home delivery | Thursday |
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Tuesday, 10pm* |
| Pickup @ Culver Farmers' Market | Saturday |
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Thursday, 10pm |
| *Sourdough orders for delivery require an additional 24 hours |
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