business tips – Page 2

March 23, 2022Lauren Olson

First Ever Ag and Food Producers Academy: Complete!

On March 12th at the Learning Farm, we wrapped up the first ever Ag & Food Producers Academy. Over the course of 8 weeks Academy participants had the opportunity to attend a variety of business and marketing classes tailored to small scale food and farm businesses. Four courses were held online during weeknights for 3-4 weeks. Topics led by specialists and educators included, Social Media Management, Business and Financing, E-Commerce For Producers and Food Businesses and Making Food Products in New York State. As a fairly new Educator here at CCE, who works with food producers and farmers looking to boost their marketing, I found myself teaching and leading the social media course. It was a great opportunity to blend the online social media marketing world with the realities of running your own food and farm business. You can read more about the specific topics and instructors HERE. While the majority of the learning took place online, the closing event allowed us to meet each other in-person and share conversations over some delicious food.

Participants talking over some freshly brewed tea

We had a wide range of guest presenters and speakers such as Lissa Goldstien of Wild Work Farm talking about her ECommerce platform and Chrissy Claudio of Simply C Farm explaining how she organizes her finances. Participants were also able to watch an interview with Food And Ferment co-owner Carly Dougherty explaining how they’ve scale their value added food business and hear from Dillion Kleepetar of Farmstead catering talking about how to best approach a social media strategy, just to name a few. It was a pleasure to hear all of their insights and stories and allowed for some great questions and conversations, and proved to be some participants favorite part of the classes. One participant shared, “The guest speakers were very inspiring, and hearing how they incorporated different e-commerce platforms into their businesses was very informative.”

January 21, 2022Flip

Adapting and Improving, one year at a time

The wintertime brings a host of shifting timescales and events. It’s the overlap of the New Year, and notably the less busy time for the majority of farmers and food producers (sorry livestock folks, I realize there’s still a hum of activity in your barns!). For many of us, there’s a January lull before the thaw kicks many activities into gear.

Along with my partner, I operate a small community farm in Canton called littleGrasse Foodworks that raises vegetables, herbs and flowers for “Free Choice Shares”. My partner is on the farm and I juggle farm tasks with another job. I reckon that rings true for many northern New York producers. We are entering our 13th season and I’ve gotten much better at not losing sleep worrying about every issue of our farm, but rather tackling a couple things at a time for incremental improvements that lead to a range of small and big impacts.

Picture of field at littleGrasse — One of the fields at littleGrasse

If you are looking for ideas, here are three easy ways to enact positive changes in your farm or food business in 2022.

Track time for one enterprise OR activity

It’s true that we cannot understand our cost of production without accounting for how we spend our time. And it can be overwhelming to consider. For years, I felt the pressure to figure out how much time we were spending tending every one of our 50+ crops to see if any were too time consuming and adjust accordingly. It seemed daunting and I hesitated to take the plunge. And in reality, as a farm with shares, diversity is essential to the quality of our overall offering. We cannot decide to stop raising carrots on a CSA farm, but we can prioritize improving efficiencies in our processes. Anyhow, in your own business, I bet there are certain activities you’d like to get a better handle on and there are very simple ways to track activities, for example an online platform called Clockify.

I decided that instead of figuring out how long tending the carrots versus the cabbage took, it would be more useful to get a grasp on categories of activities. So in 2021, once per day I logged onto Clockify to enter my time spent on certain activities such as Accounting, Communications, Maintenance, Harvest, etc.

Example of using Clockify software — Screenshot of the Clockify software.

Logging my activities each day was easy and took around 5 minutes. Some days only included a couple hours of farm work and others included a long list of tasks. Now we are planning for 2022 and with that investment of a couple minutes per day, I have a wealth of new information that I can choose to use in various ways. These options include but are not limited to: Read more Adapting and Improving, one year at a time

January 7, 2022Lauren Olson

Boosting Your Business and Marketing Skills: Ag and Food Producers Academy

Winter is an excellent time to learn new marketing and business skills to streamline your food or farm operation in the coming year. Taking the time now to prioritize goals could lead you to succeed in your marketing aspirations. But what to learn and where to look in a time where there is so much online? At Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County, we are putting on the Ag & Food Producers Academy that starts this month on January 15th! It’s available for existing and planning stages entrepreneurs in the 6-county northern New York region. There are 4 course tracks to choose from, and all online sessions meet on weekday evenings.

Reasons to Participate

Hear from industry professionals. All the instructors for these courses work day in and day out with farmers and entrepreneurs. For example, Nicole Tommell is a Farm Management Specialist with 15+ years of experience advising producers on business planning and financing. You can hear her lead participants in the Prepare to Succeed: Business and Financing Options Course.

Nicole Ouellette, Jeremy Bloom, Flip Filippi, Nicole Tomell and Lauren Olson