Yesterday my husband and I had the opportunity to attend another small farm conference and trade show. This time it was held in Massillon, OH. It was only about an hour and a half from our house this time. That meant no overnight stay and getting up at the crack of dawn. Well, 6:00 is early for a Saturday morning! Once again we signed up for seperate seminars. There was a large group session for everyone, then 4 sessions that were broken down into smaller groups. The one topic that I was looking forward to was about goats and sure enough it was cancelled! The others that I attended were pretty interesting though.
The large group session was using social media to market the farm. K.C. and I both were pretty amazed how the internet and social media has become the most useful marketing tool. Luckily for me the presenters talked about the usefulness of smart phones!!! Maybe I will actually get one before something even smarter comes out. The neatest thing I learned about are QR codes. They are sort of like a barcode, only these codes can be scanned using a smart phone. By scanning the code, the phone user is taken directly to a website. This can be used for advertisements, information related to a product, or many other things! This may be something that will become much more popular and useful to our farm in the future. We learned how to use social media to connect with and build relationships with our customers...such a great idea!
The second session I attended was about agritourism, which is travel that combines agricultural or rural settings with products of agricultural operations as a tourism experience. This is the direction that I would like to take our farm in. One day I would like to have a bed & breakfast or lodge with farm related activities for the customers. In this seminar, the presenter talked about his own farm and how his business has developed and grown, along with the benefits and concerns of agritourism. After listening to this seminar, I was ready to start building the lodge...but then I remembered I've never built a building before hmmmm.
The third session was cancelled for me, so I got to attend one with K.C.. We learned about operating a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) enterprise. In this business model, customers sign up for a "subscription" for foods from a farmer or group of farmers. The customer gets a share of food grown or produced on the farm for an upfront fee. This could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly. It can also be by the season or throughout the whole year. This model can look different for many farmers, but operates on the same general idea: The consumer buys a share of the food produced at the farm(s) and either picks it up on the farm, at a local business, or has it delivered to their home. It seems we might look further into this as well.
The fourth session for me was about grant money. This is not my area of expertise, but I did my best to write down all the information and give it to K.C.. Hopefully he can sort through it all!
K.C. learned about soils, wind energy, CSAs, and leasing farm land. At the end of the 4th session, my class was dismissed early. I waited in the auditorium for K.C.. He came out of the room very calmly and asked me if I had the car keys. Of course I didn't...he always drives. Well, the keys were lost and a search ensued. We looked everywhere. Luckily for K.C., we found them laying on the registration table. Let's just say, I will be taking the keys from now on : )
From two Saturday sessions, we gained a lot of information related to farming and are now working to sift through all the information and apply what we learned! We start another series of classes soon. We will be learning about rotational grazing..should be interesting!
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