Ep. 529 - Highlights and Updates as We Wrap Up the Year at York Meadow Farm

In Episode 529 of the All Around Growth Podcast, join host Rob Kaiser as he takes a detour from the planned career-focused content to provide a casual update on the happenings at York Meadow Farm as the year wraps up.

Touching on rebranding, logo updates, farmers’ markets, and more, Rob gives listeners an inside look at the homestead's recent developments.  The episode also acknowledges and addresses valuable feedback from the audience, promising a future exploration of the intriguing topic of "contentment."

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Discussion Links: 

York Meadow Farm

Natural Ferments

Boyert's Greenhouse & Farm | Garden Center - Medina County

Christmas Farmers Market

Indoor Winter Farmers Market

Richardson Farms: Richardson-Farms.com - Medina

Keller Meats

Keller Market and Cafe Bistro

Krieger's Health Foods Market

Oxbow Orchard | Valley View, OH

Tremont Farmers Market

💥 2024 Dream Activation Workbook
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York Meadow Farm: Lacto-Fermented Foods
Rich in probiotics, our fermented foods are also paleo and keto friendly. Eat a proper human diet.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey there, welcome back to the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. Today's episode number 529 is all about the career side of things. But we're ditching the planned content to give you a casual update on what's been happening here at the homestead at York Meadow Farm as we close out 2023. In our last episode, last week, 528, titled Unfiltered Realities, Navigating Social Media, AI, and the Authenticity Spectrum. We talked about social media, marketing, AI, and more. Shout out to our awesome Patreon community. Big thanks to Brian from the LOTS Project, Sean, Kiriiki, and Wayne, and also a warm welcome to our new YouTube subscriber, David Johnson. Now, speaking of Patreon, we have reached 40% of our goal of 10 subscribers to restart the live streaming of the show. If you enjoy the show, consider joining and shaping its direction. Now let's dive into today's updates and what it is that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about rebranding, logo updates, farmers markets, retail locations, the food processor purchase, website updates, driveway improvements, the tenant farmer situation, podcast updates like recent appearances, guest shows, and future plans, and just overall homestead and business development. Now originally we planned to talk about career and contentment, but Life on Life's terms threw us a curveball, and due to the fantastic feedback on that topic from Wayne and the Patreon and Telegram groups, we're giving it the attention it deserves, so we are going to revisit that topic soon. Now, today is December 12th, 2023, and whether you are a Patreon subscriber, getting early access, or tuning into the show whenever it is that you are listening to it on your podcast player of choice, I am thrilled to have you with us. This is a show titled Highlights and Updates as we wrap up the year at York Meadow Farm. So let's get into it. Alright, so many of you know that we are going through a bit of a rebranding process. And what I mean by rebranding is our fermented foods. Now, those of you who have listened to the show, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For those of you who are new, here's what's going on in a nutshell. Over the past few years, we've been making fermented foods and bath and body products here on the homestead. And last year, as I went full-time with dad, we decided that we were going to rebrand the fermented food line for a number of reasons, which I won't really get into in depth now. But the long and short of it is we couldn't make a whole lot of progress with that because early in the earlier in the year dad got sick, was diagnosed with cancer, and passed away. So the whole operation went on hold during that time. Everything came to a halt as we entered into caregiving mode. But after his funeral and things started to get back on track with regard to operations here on the homestead, we continued moving forward with the rebranding, began introducing customers to the new name Natural Ferments, established the website which basically redirects to York Meadow Farm and encourages people to sign up for the newsletter to stay tuned for updates. We are getting close to actually launching the rebranding officially in early 2024 when we deliver updated product and pricing sheets to all of our wholesale customers. Now, hopefully, at that time, the logo will be complete, and the logo itself and the process, all of the processes rather, that have gone into the design of it are just about complete. That's it's been a complicated process. I've worked with multiple people and have finally come up with the final product, and that is being finished up. We're getting color schemes and everything finalized, and I should have that and all of the uh subsequent files associated with it by the end of the year. So hopefully when I go through the pricing and updated product descriptions, I can introduce that to everybody with the updated logo and begin labeling the product accordingly at the beginning of 2024. Now, as far as farmers markets are concerned, we've got a winter farmers market going on at Boyert's Greenhouse and Farm. I will link to that in the show notes so you guys can learn more. But that farmers market actually began in November with a Thanksgiving market the weekend prior to Thanksgiving. But we were busy at the candlelight walk, and due to the uncertainty of the year and how everything transpired, I was unable to plan accordingly for the market at Boyerts and the candlelight walk, so I focused on the candlelight walk, which turned out to be a good decision. We had an extremely successful three-day market series there. But next year, I think what we're going to do is I'm going to scale up, which is part of the plan, and we'll talk about that shortly with the food processor. But because we have scaled up, it will be easy to do both markets. And I will be attending Boyert's Market next year personally on that Saturday prior to Thanksgiving. And my sister and mom will be able to handle the candlelight walk, and then after the market at Boyerts, I will return back to the square and work with them. So luckily, we've got some family help getting things going and continuing things going and chipping in, helping out where with what is necessary, and I'm very grateful for that. The winter market at Boyerts, there is a Christmas market on the 16th, and then in January, everything picks up, and there is a market every other weekend, and that continues through March. Now it's not a steady weekly market like it is during the rest of the year, but quite frankly, that's okay with me. The market is extremely successful. Everybody at Boyertz does a great job with promoting that market. There's a lot of foot traffic, it's good for Boyerts, it's good for the vendors. And with all of the retail business that's taking place and new retail business that is scheduled to take place in 2024, I'm okay with a market every other week for the first three months of the year. Now, when I say new retail locations, that's right, we're going to be in a fourth retail location. Currently, we are selling at a small farm store, Richardson Farm Store, who has supported us from the very beginning. We are also at Keller Meats and Cafe Bistro. They are going through a reband rebranding process of their own. And I will link to Keller Meats in the exchange market, now called Keller Meats and Cafe Bistro. So you guys can learn more and see what's going on there. They've got a new website, lots of new stuff, new store layout, new coolers, new everything. And Keller Meats is a great place to basically get outfitted and you know improve your culinary experience in all ways. They've got meats and cheeses and seafoods, and they're working on you know freshly prepped meals on the go. They've got a cafe, a coffee shop, a restaurant down below. They've got a brewery and a barbecue catering joint. And it's just there's a whole lot of things going there. And that was actually the first event that we did this year after dad's funeral and getting back into the swing of things. They helped us kick things off in the 2023 season by bringing us in to do what was called the rock the dock event where we were out on the loading dock giving samples, and they were just a big supporter and helping us get back into the swing of things. So big shout out to Kaylee and the rest of the team over at Keller Meets. I'm very grateful for the ability to work with them to sell there. It's awesome. It's awesome to see them grow and to grow right aside right along with them. Later on in the year, we were approached by Krieger Whole Foods or Krieger Health Foods Market in Cuyahoga Falls, and they were looking to add another fermented food product or food line to their current lineup of fermented foods. They contacted us. I gladly said yes, and I continue to deliver product to them on a regular basis. About once a month, they order anywhere from five to seven cases of product, and it seems to be moving quite well at that location, and we are further broadening our customer base. And we have also been contacted by Oxbow Orchards, who I will link to in the show notes as well. And they it looks like they are opening up a farm store in 2024 as well, and they are looking to market their own meat that is raised on farm and also feature locally grown and/or locally produced products. They contacted us, want to sell, and I am very grateful to have the opportunity to be there. They are in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park up in Valley View, which is closer towards Cleveland. So we will be over in the Cuyahoga Falls Akron area. We will be up in Valley View Cleveland area and right here in Medina. And it looks like with those four locations and the current markets that we are already in, we will continue to grow. If I can keep up with production and actually grow production, then I will also be at the Tremont Market in downtown Cleveland on West 14th Street in the little Tremont neighborhood. I'll link to the Tremont Market as well, and that is great because we did very well there when we were there at the end of 2022. We went to the last three markets there and everyone loved what we had. We were hoping to be there this year in 2023, but like I said, sometimes life throws you a curveball and you've got to adapt and make some changes, and that's exactly what we did. So we opted out of the Tremont market this year. Did a pop-up event with North Coast Promotions, who runs the Tremont market, and we're still involved in a very, very small capacity. But hopefully, we can get more involved with them and the Tremont farmers market next year because we're looking to grow. That's a great opportunity to do so, and hopefully it will work out. We will see. Speaking of growing, the food processor that we are looking at is going to give us a great opportunity to grow and expand and speed up our production process, and just it's it's going to be awesome. It's going to allow us to process everything so much faster and have a more consistent product. There's going to be a little bit of a learning curve with learning how to operate that thing, and quite frankly, it's a little intimidating because when all said and done, with all the food with the food processor, its various attachments, there's actually two food processors that we're looking at, and uh two food processors that we're going to buy. One is a vegetable prep machine, the other is a more typical food processor for making purees and uh mixes and things like that. But when all said and done, we are going to be spending thousands of dollars, right? Thousands of dollars, and that is that's intimidating. I've never made a purchase that big before for the business, but I'm also very confident that it's going to pay off in a very short amount of time. I'm very grateful that we had sales this year that facilitated the purchase of this, and I think this is going to allow us to continue the trajectory that we are currently on and even allow us to grow further and exceed the expectations that we have. I will be setting some goals and some metrics and benchmarks for next year and see what you know, and we're going to work towards those and we're going to see what happens. Moreover, I'm going to be setting goals three years out from now and then breaking them down into bite-sized pieces as far as what we can do next year and ultimately what I can do today to make that happen. Because of all of this change, right, and the way that the farm is structured, the rebranding, the new business structure, all of that, we're going to be making some changes and updates to the website. Because right now, the website as it is, if you go to yorkmeadowfarm.com and take a look at the website, what you will see is the original website that we've built. And I think I created that website uh six years ago. And we've changed a lot in six years. We've changed a lot over the past 12 months. And I think a new website is an appropriate thing to do to demonstrate the change that has taken place. So what we're going to do is build out a website that is that that indicates and shows York Meadow Farm as being the hub of activities for all of the businesses that operate here. One of which is going to be natural ferments. One of which is going to be I'm sorry. One of which is going to be food production, which right now largely consists of natural ferments. One is going to be the bath and body products that York Meadow Farm makes. One is going to be our tenant farmer operations. And we may get to a point next year where we lease out an additional parcel of land to someone else. More to come on that. But hopefully that happens, and hopefully we can continue to work with our community to support people who are doing their own thing in their own way, and we can help facilitate people who are trying to make things happen. Now, in order to do that, because there's increased traffic and everything going on, our driveway has taken a bit of a beating over the past few years when it was initially installed. It wasn't installed, you know, quite right to begin with, and we didn't really expect or anticipate to be doing what we're doing now. So there's been a fair amount of erosion taking place. Some drain tiles were cut when the driveway wasn't installed and weren't repaired properly, and that involves a lot of water flow down the driveway. When the temperatures get cold, there's a lot of ice dams that form down by the road, and it's kind of a sketchy situation in the dead of winter. So, what we are going to do is we are going to have some considerable driveway improvements done. We are getting multiple quotes from multiple contractors, one of which is going to be stopping by today. And based on, we are going to have at least three new quotes done to take different options into consideration, different costs into consideration, different materials into consideration, and then after we receive a bunch of different input in addition to the quote that we've already received, we will have four different options of how to deal with the drainage and how to improve the driveway, and we will select the best option that is suitable for what we want to do and how that factors into the long-term plan. So we're thinking way ahead with turnarounds and you know parking areas and all the different things that we can do. So we're very excited for the driveway improvements that are scheduled for 2024. And having the multiple contractors come out and take a look allows us to think through, get different input, and just see what the best the best way to go about this is because our driveway is 2,000 feet long, we are way off the road, and it's going to be a substantial investment to to to get that thing done and get it done right. So we want to make sure that we're spending our money wisely. So that's that's exciting. Um, we need the additional parking for a number of reasons. We've got trucks coming in, deliveries coming in, the tenant farmer is there, he's got people working with him. Sometimes there's two additional vehicles up front in addition to his, and you know, we are growing, Cody's growing his operation. There's a lot of activity taking place, so we want to make sure that everybody that comes in here can park, provide access to people coming and going when they're there, and basically just provide a safe space for access, ample parking, and also potentially enough parking for future events because we are looking at hosting events of all kinds in the future, whether it's Freedom Cell Network events, workshops. We're not really sure what the future has in store, but we know that we want to do something. We've hosted workshops here in the past. We had the Farmstead Meat Smith here a few years ago. We had Andy and Doug from Hand Hewn Farm here a couple years ago. We did a pig butchering workshop and we and we broke down a cow. It was amazing to have these workshops and host them for other people whose properties weren't appropriate for hosting workshops at that time, but now we are getting to a point where we can host workshops on our own for topics and situations that we are interested in, in conjunction with hosting events and workshops for the community for people who aren't able to do that themselves. This is going to be and already is a hub of activity that supports the community, and we are taking steps to actively improve that to facilitate continued growth and development of that. And we're going to be talking about that in the podcast. Not only this podcast, but other podcasts. Last week, or I guess it was a couple weeks ago, I was honored to be a guest on the Modern Homesteading Podcast and was interviewed by Rachel Jameson, who is an audience member of the show. Big shout out to Rachel for inviting me on the show to talk about the plan. Like what we're doing, how we got here, where we're going, the development of the commercial kitchen, and basically the entire food uh fermented food operation and how we did it. So again, I'll link to that interview in the show notes. I would encourage you to check out the modern homesteading podcast, the homestead front porch group on Facebook, redemptionpermaculture.com. There's a lot of information that be that can be obtained there. It's a great community as well. Please consider checking out Rachel and all the work that she and Harold are doing. It is fantastic and it was an honor to be on their show. And it is actually a big part of how and why we're doing what we're doing comes from them. And the way that Harold has structured things over the years. I had a great conversation with him recently, and look forward to having some more correspondence with him regarding why he did what he did, and also seek his input on why not to do certain things and how to why we should continue doing the things that we're doing. Okay, so lots of correspondence with lots of good people and lots of input from the community, the community that we have, and the community that is forming, and the community that is yet to be. So that's kind of a summary of everything that's going on. Second of all, we don't have an email list. Okay, so the growth and development that's taken place with regard to the All Around Growth Podcast has been exactly what I intended it to be. Just organic grassroots development. The community that we have is from the people that want to be here and participate in it. And it's awesome. But it's time to grow. It's time to grow. So after a lot of conversation with mom, we are going to incorporate the All Around Growth podcast into the farm so that eventually when you go to the website that we have, which is allaroundgrowth.co, it will redirect to the farm. Everything will be housed under the farm webpage. And my hope is that we can have an email distribution list specific to the podcast listeners in conjunction with the already existing email list that goes out to our market customers. Okay. And somehow or another, these are all things that need to be figured out. We'll have a natural ferment uh email list as well for the new customers that we have that are solely interested in the fermented food product line. So we'll see. I'm not really sure about that, but we may continue operating as York Meadow Farm distributing the fermented food line. A lot of that needs to be fleshed out, but basically what's going to happen is natural ferments is already, the structure's there, the insurance is set up, it's already there and it's operating as its own entity. York Meadow Farm continues to operate as its own entity with some additional changes that have been made over the past few months, past year, and all-around growth continues to operate as its own entity, but all of those things have been operating here on the grounds at the homestead at York Meadow Farm and will be housed under the umbrella of York Meadow Farm. Okay? So hopefully that makes sense. If it doesn't, please let me know in the comments or in the telegram chat at t.me slash all around growth. And if you want to get some behind the scenes, you know, views on what's going on here, things like the Madonna County Freedom Cell Network, different chats and different, you know, correspondence with specificity about certain topics, then join the Patreon page at patreon.com slash allaround growth, and that is a great way to get some behind the scenes dialogue and understanding and clarity on certain things that have been discussed. So that is basically it. We've got a lot that's going on. My phone is dinging, people are coming in, contractors are coming over. I'm gonna wrap this up for now. Like I said, this episode will be released to all of the Patreon subscribers for early access today and at the latest tomorrow morning. So, guys, if you subscribe to the show, thank you for doing so. You guys are the first to hear the updates. And for those of you who are listening in the future, if you want early access to all the shows that are regularly out there on podcast players and additional exclusive content available only to Patreon subscribers, then you know what to do. Patreon.com slash allaroundgrowth. That's where you can get the good stuff, and that's it for today. Guys, I hope you have a great week ahead. I hope you have a great day, and I very much appreciate you for being a part of the community, a part of my life, and I'm grateful to be a part of yours. Thank you so much and God bless.