All Around Growth — reflections on faith, freedom, and finding purpose through Orthodox Christian living, formation, and the long work of becoming. Earlier episodes available to supporters.
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Episode Summary: In this episode, we provide a homestead update from York Meadow Farm, covering recent changes and exciting developments. We recap our search for a permaculture designer, website and social media updates, and opportunities for tenant farmers. We also celebrate record-breaking sales at the Medina Fall Fest and share details about the "Stock-Up Saturday" market closeout, plus a special community harvest dinner.
Key Topics:
Recap of our search for a permaculture designer
Website updates & the search for a social media intern
Tenant farming opportunities
Record sales at Medina Fall Fest & special thanks to the community
"Stock-Up Saturday" & new trial-size bath products
Community harvest dinner wrap-up
Shoutout: Thank you to our Patreon supporters: Sean, Rachel, Kyriaki, and Brian!
Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast, a show where you join me as I build a life and homestead with my family and my community. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. Today is Tuesday, October 8th, 2024. This is season five, episode 17 of the show. And in today's episode, we are simply going to provide an update of the homestead here at York Meadow Farm. We're going to drop this episode publicly as quickly as possible to get some content out there. We're not going to deliver this to Patreon subscribers first, but with that said, I would like to give a shout out to the Patreon subscribers, each and every one of you, Sean, Rachel, Kiriki, and Brian. We've got a small crew, but a tight crew, and I would like to thank you for all of your ongoing support. Over the past almost year, we started the Patreon group as an experiment last November or so. And here we are in October of 2024. And I just want to let you know that I am grateful for all of your support. We did not do a video call last month. And um it's been a busy month, and we're gonna get into exactly what's been going on over the last month in today's update. So stay tuned for that. But if you missed last episode, what we talked about in season five, episode 16, was the how and how we are documenting our search for a permaculture designer at York Meadow Farm. We explored what permaculture is, how it differs from regenerative agriculture, and its importance for sustainable farming. And we've got a quick update. We will be conducting our first property walk with a permaculture designer in just a couple of days this Friday, October 11th. So stay tuned for more about this in the future. We've also been making some website updates and some social media updates. Now, uh around this time and in mid-September, we made some pretty significant changes to the website and formally announced the opening for a website and social media intern. Why? Well, quite frankly, we're looking for help managing our online presence as York Meadow Farm continues to grow. We are offering a flexible and remote opportunity for someone who is passionate about digital marketing and community engagement, someone that can help with managing website content, creating social media posts, and engaging with the community. So for anybody out there that is listening to this, that is interested in learning more about this position and applying for it, check out the link in the description below on the blog post titled Join Our Team Website and Social Media Intern Position now open, or simply visit the contact us page at our website, yorkmeadow farm.com. We also are expanding our tenant farming opportunities, or we are looking to expand our tenant farming opportunities at York Meadow Farm. And in the recent blog post titled Join Our Growing Co-op, York Meadow Farm is looking for tenant farmers. We invited passionate individuals to join the cooperative community that is growing at York Meadow Farm. Anyone who is looking to join us as a tenant farmer has access to all of the resources that we've got here on the farm and homestead, the community support and increased visibility through our established marketing efforts. We are looking for experienced farmers or farm hands, um, people with a clear vision for their crops or products and people that are committed to sustainable and regenerative practices. So if that happens to be you, then check out that blog post that will be linked to in the show notes and or simply again visit the contact us site on our page to learn more about that particular position. Now, a couple weeks ago at the Medina Fall Fest, which happened to be an event that was taking place in conjunction with the farmers market at the square where the farmers market is held, we had a record-breaking weekend, and it was amazing. It was our best sales event in the farm's history, and I want to simply thank everybody who visited, sampled our products, joined the email list. We had a lot of people join, a lot of people buying product, a lot of new customers, and I would like to give a special thanks to my assistants who were present at the market, and I look forward to sharing more with you about them in the future. Last but not least, uh a special thanks is due to Angela, who is the events director for Main Street Medina, and the one who is responsible for organizing another fantastic weekend and a weekend that happened to be our best weekend ever. Last Saturday, just a few days ago, was our final farmers market of the season. It was a themed market. Many of the markets that we do have some kind of theme associated with them, and that is largely due to Angela and the work that she does. Uh, she she just she she does a great job, she's a great market manager, and the theme of that market was stock up Saturday, and we were able to close out the market season this past weekend on this stock up Saturday. We offered a 20% discount on all products, and I think that that boosted sales and encouraged people to buy more. I think overall it was worth it both with York Meadow Farm selling bath and body products and our natural ferments line of fermented foods. Uh, it it was worth it. We made a lot of sales, we didn't make quite as much money due to the 20% discount, but I think we compensated for it with new customers, increased gross sales, and you know, some of the new products that mom made with regard to the bath and body products were these trial size soap bars, and they were definitely a hit whether it was for people buying them just to try new products or people buying them as stocking stuffers for the holiday season. I don't know, but they were the second most popular product that she happened to sell last weekend, and I'm going to encourage her to make some more as we get ready to start offering more products through the website and as we get ready for the holiday season coming up ahead. So a big thank you to everyone who supported us this season. Your love and dedication means the world to us. It is it's incredible and it's been an amazing season. Now to officially close the market season, we had a beautiful harvest dinner on Sunday night at the home of our tenant farmer, Cody and Elaine. Congratulations to Cody as well. He recently announced that he and Elaine will be getting married. Elaine is launching a new uh cleaning business, house cleaning, um, just general chores, yard work, whatever you need done, she's the one to do it. So if you're local to Northeast Ohio, um check out Elaine's cleaning business. I'll provide some information about her in the show notes as well. Um, the dinner was awesome. These harvest dinners that Cody has been hosting for boy, as long as I can remember, they've always been pretty amazing. And uh I would I would say maybe a dozen different marker uh market farmer families along with friends in the community uh were there, and each person brought something homemade with local ingredients to share with everybody else. These dinners are always wonderful, the food is always great, and it was a perfect way to celebrate the end of the season with the community that has supported us and each other all year long, and it was from the farmers market that we attend, it was the people with the other farmers market, the the farmers market of Medina County, and just the community in general. Wonderful, wonderful time. So big thanks to Cody for hosting the Harvest Dinner. It was it was a wonderful time, and like I said, it's been an exciting month on the homestead with a lot of updates, and I am looking forward to sharing more with you in future episodes. I I apologize for missing last month's video call with all of the Patreon subscribers. The first one was was kind of neat, it was just a relaxed conversation, but I will try to schedule one this month so that I can share a little bit more detail about the homestead planning and the results of the upcoming property walk and what we are doing at that time, and how we I might even go into how some of the plans have changed a little bit. Uh, we'll see. You know, there are a lot of changes on the horizon. Uh that's that seems to be the only constant in life is change. Uh so you know, we'll we'll we'll see what's in store for that video call. So uh again, a huge thank you to all of our Patreon supporters and to everyone who has supported us at the farmers market this season. We couldn't do what we are doing if it wasn't for you. So, like I said, uh many thanks to uh everybody who listens to the show, everybody in our local community, and uh of course our loyal Patreon subscribers for your continued support. If you want to support the show, consider joining us at uh uh uh patreon.com slash allaroundgrowth where you will get exclusive uh content and updates and access to things that no one else really gets. We have a telegram group that is specific to Patreon subscribers only, paid Patreon subscribers only. So uh if you're a free Patreon subscriber, consider uh upping your membership level to one of the paid tiers to get access to that group. There's a lot of great dialogue that takes place in that small Patreon subscriber group. Um it's if if anything, a few dollars a month is worth access to the dialogue in that small community. So again, many thanks to all of you who are supporters. If you want to become a supporter, that's the way to do it. Patreon.com slash all around growth until we develop more ways to support the show through the website. But for now, that's the best way to do so. And that's it for today, guys. I look forward to catching you again soon. This is Rob Kaiser. Thank you and God bless you.
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