Small Farm = Small Business

I learned a very important (and rather obvious) lesson this year about running a small farm. Farming is half the battle. If you can, in fact, manage to grow whatever it is that you are trying to grow, the process of cleaning, sorting, packaging, marketing, shipping/delivering and selling are still A FULL TIME JOB!

This is the first year our farm tried to value-add our berries and it turned about to be quite the undertaking. Although very worthwhile, it involved much coordinating, licensing, creating (product recipes & marketing materials) and research which of course added up to a lot of time.  We ended selling the majority of our product direct, at Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle, Washington.

Jared at our booth at Pike Place

 We knew going into the 'post-season' this year that what we were doing was going to be one giant experimentation that could be either really good or really bad. Here were some of the questions we were seeking to answer:

What do they want?
What do customers expect? 
What are they willing to pay?

We did succeed at answering these (won't go into the specifics here), but more importantly we answered a lot of questions we didn't even know to ask:

Do people know what to do with cranberries?
Where do people shop for fresh produce?
What are the requirements by law for making value-added products?
What information do people need to know before purchasing a product?
Are cranberries as seasonal as they seem?

Moving forward, you might ask, well did you make any money this year? No. But we did learn many valuable lessons without losing any money which I would chalk up as a win.