Our Farmstead Journey Part 3: Finding a Way to Make it Pay

Less than two months after starting and all our money was gone...

In that time we made the move from Chicago, turned an old general store into a livable cabin, setup irrigation, a greenhouse, and prepped and planted several of our beds, but had yet to make any income. We could only run on credit for so long and this was the crucial moment that would determine if we could make this farming thing a full-time living or if I would have to start looking for work in town. Our backs were to the wall; this was the moment of truth.

It was the middle of May and the weather was just starting to warm up. The beds that we had planted were completely overrun with weeds and the crops were showing signs of nutrient deficiency. Not good. Luckily we had experience growing microgreens, which are basically little seedlings that you harvest before they get their first true leaves. I did a couple flats of pea shoots and sunflowers and set the trays on pallets in the greenhouse. In 10 days I had a sellable crop and the pressure was on.

Now the previous year taught me that although high-end restaurants have an interest in microgreens, they're often very picky about the size and only tend to take small amounts. Furthermore, the restaurant scene in Asheville is fully-saturated with farmers trying to hustle their crops and microgreens are no longer the niche they were five years ago. Likewise we had been declined by every farmers market in town. However, none of the local grocery stores were carrying micros and so I figured this was the logical place to start.

I ordered some nice professional packaging, as well as some customized stickers from Vistaprint. With a cooler bag full of samples and some business cards, I started down my list of potential buyers. I first targeted mom-and-pop stores where decisions could be made directly by people on the ground floor. Out of the five stores I approached, all of them ended up carrying our product (and one of those stores had two other locations that decided to carry as well). This however did take some persistence.

Upon my initial pitch they were all very receptive to the idea. They liked the product, thought it was something their customers would enjoy, and felt they could work within my price point. That being said, it took multiple follow-ups to finally get them to place that first order. Sometimes this meant a phone call or an email; other times I would return to the store with a different microgreen sample just to further the point. If I brought them sunflowers the first time, I would bring them pea shoots a week later. Our margins on microgreens aren't huge, but they are a profitable crop and more importantly, it gave us a foothold to begin establishing a long-term relationship.

By the time June rolled around we managed to get our walk-in cooler setup just as our lettuce crop was about ready to harvest. Our microgreens seemed to be doing well in the stores and I was able to convince the produce managers to give our salad mix a try. Some of them already carried a local 'spring mix,' but were willing to take on our 'Greenshine Mix' because it included more than just lettuce. As with our microgreens, I invested in some very professional packaging and a label printer which allowed us to print customized labels at a fraction of the cost of the Vistaprint stickers. We weren't making a ton of money, but we were showing solid incremental growth. I think our first week of sales we did $35. The second week it climbed to $130. The third week we made it to around $300. At the time we were harvesting and delivering twice a week. This was exhausting and led to us falling behind on our field work and other projects around the farm.

Then one Monday I woke up and went about trying to get my orders in for that day and...nothing. It was crickets on the other end. The stores that did respond said they still had lots of product. My heart sank. I was mentally and physically beat. Working seven days a week, 15-16 hours a day was starting to take its toll. Looking upon my field being overrun with weeds; for the first time in my life, I was sick of farming.

Luckily my wife convinced me to take the rest of the day off and go on a family hike in the mountains. This may seem counter-intuitive, but as I reiterate in Managing the Stress of Entrepreneurship and Avoiding Burnout, it was the best thing I could've done. Just getting away for half a day allowed me to recharge my batteries and reevaluate the way we were doing things. We decided to go down to delivering just once a week. This bought us an extra two days on the farm and none of our stores seemed to mine. If anything it encouraged them to place larger orders and a week later I heard back from a distributor wanting to place an order for 250 clamshells of Greenshine Mix!

Now I should relay some backstory here. I had been courting this particular distributor since January. That's right, back when we were still in Chicago; before we even had farmland. A month later we were able to set up a meeting in person and I gave them my full pitch. They were interested and asked when we thought we would have product. Overly ambitious, I told them in late April. Fast-forward to late-April and I get a text asking how the lettuce is coming. 'Oh God,' I thought. 'I haven't even planted any.' I told them we were a little behind due to all the infrastructure we were putting in place, etc. I said I would stop by with some microgreen samples in a couple weeks--this too became a promise I failed to keep.

By the time we finally did have lettuce coming off the field I tried reaching out and got no response. I continued to follow up. I texted pictures of our product and apologized for not having it when I thought I would. Still nothing. I figured I had botched it. I had made the grand mistake of over-promising and under-delivering.

Maybe it was coincidence, but two days after taking that hike I heard back from them. We decided to do a smaller order to start with and by landing this one account we doubled our revenue to $600/week. A few weeks later in early July we were able to accommodate their full order and this took us to $800. This was a huge boost for us and brought us into the realm of financial sustainability. We could now breath a little easier and rather than try and take on new accounts, we decided to focus our energy on building our soil and keeping our current clients happy.

Conclusion

I might be making it sound easier than it was. I don't want to lure anybody into the false belief that this was in any way 'easy,' nor do I want to make it seem like we accomplished some big impossible task. What we've been able to do over these past six months anybody can do if they're willing to put in the work. However, we're not out of the woods yet. I think at our worst we had 15K in debt spread over three or four credit cards and although we've arrived at a point in which our revenue exceeds our expenses, we still have a ways to go in paying down the remaining balance.

I think the hardest part of starting a new business is learning to prioritize projects accordingly. For us this meant first creating a livable 'home base' for our family. If you've read Parts 1 and 2 in this series you'll have an idea of what that entailed. Secondly, we had to get crops in the ground. This also meant finding a way to keep them fenced from predators and in the case of microgreens, free from rain. Then once we had a sellable crop it was all about finding someone to buy it. Lastly, came the task of setting up our washing station and walk-in cooler. Although I list the tasks in this order the truth is we worked on a little bit of everything at the same time. This takes immense focus, but if you stay after it the incremental progress will begin to accumulate and the fruits of your labor will become evident.

This is an incredibly fulfilling way to make a living, but it isn't without it's pitfalls. Everything from extreme weather, to deer, to pest and disease can literally destroy next month's income overnight. I think the best strategy is to diversify and cross your fingers. We've been pretty fortunate so far this year, but now are at the point where we need to start thinking about winter and all that entails. That will be part 4 in this series and will be released after I figure out what the heck we're gonna do.

Lastly, thank you to everyone who has been following along, commenting, upvoting, etc. Your support encourages me to continue pushing ahead when things get tough and to create content documenting the ups and downs of it all.