The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - Drivecast No. 2

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Episode two of driving around and cold-calling people. Mainly farmers and extension specialists. A good mix of strangers and friends. Mostly to talk about the pandemic, but really to talk about anything food or farming related.

I'm Jordan Marr, and this is The Ruminant, a podcast about food politics and food security and the cultural and practical aspects of farming. You can find out more at theruminant.ca or email me, editor at theruminant.ca. I'm on Twitter, at Ruminant Blog, or find me on Facebook. All right, let's do a show. You have reached Chapman Fruit Company. No one is available to take your call at this time. If you know the extension you wish to reach and would like to leave a message, you can dial it at any time. We're sorry.

You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again. Hello, you have reached Rocky Ridge Organics. Please leave me a message. Hello, Rocky Ridge Organics. This is a farmer up in british columbia and i was cold calling you to hopefully spend five minutes on the phone asking you how it's going hey margie my name is jordan i'm a farmer in british columbia who produces a podcast for other farmers and i'm doing this thing during the pandemic where i make cold calls uh to farmers and to extension specialists like you i was hoping to catch you on the phone to chat for five minutes.

Let's come back out west then. I don't want to call someone I know. I want to call a stranger. Let's go to, let's try Farms Around Nanaimo. Here are the listings for farms near Nanaimo. Here are the listings for farms near Nanaimo. Hello. Hello. Is this Morgan Creek Farm?

Yes, it is. Hey, this is Jordan. I'm a farmer in Kelowna. Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm doing a bit of a shtick right now where I cold call farmers and just try and find someone who will talk to me for five minutes about how it's going during the pandemic. Okay, sure. Go ahead. Oh, wonderful. So real quick, what's your first name and what kind of farm do you have?

Sure. My name is Aaron Grant, and we've tried to do a diverse farm with fruits and vegetables and bees and animals. We have lots of things like chickens and turkeys and lamb. We've had pigs in the past, but we stopped that. We have gardens, but there was no garden here before, so we've had to make one from scratch. What has been your primary sales channels leading into this year? Well, direct to mostly co-workers and family and friends. Like, our income isn't very great. And, you know, we've been showing a loss, you know, fairly healthily since we started. But, you know, the place was in a bit of rough shape when we got it.

And so, but yeah, generally the sales have been sort of at the farm. We've been dabbling with farmers markets, but for the most part, it's been through direct contact. And is like, at least so far, has this been more about secondary income and you have other jobs or are you aiming for this to be primary income? Good question. Yeah. We're, we're sort of, my wife's off work right now for medical reasons. And I'm a teacher that has transitioned from full-time teaching to part-time teaching. So as a substitute, so I can work when I want to and then work here when I have to,

which, you know, it's a long day. Cause you know, so I can work when I want to and then work here when I have to. Yeah. Which, you know, it's a long day because, you know, we have chickens and stuff. So, you know, 6 o'clock in the morning until 9 p.m. is the day. It was with obviously some downtimes, but we just had a meat bird, a batch of meat birds go to market yesterday and they're all sold. And got another batch next week. And then we have turkeys picking up turkeys this Friday.

And how, so how has it overall, how's it gone for you? You know, how has, how has, how have you had to adapt if at all for the pandemic in terms of sales or in any other way? Well, actually it's been beneficial actually, to be honest. Um, the online, our farmer's market, uh, wasn't able to open at first, so that otherwise you wouldn't take to a farmer's market because everyone would be like what the hell is that and so we were selling things that were otherwise unsellable or or like i was sort of making a list of things that i could potentially sell through this system and it was sort of like surprisingly all the things i was like oh yeah i

could sell uh mullein mullein leaves you know you're familiar with mullein yeah so i was selling mullein leaves not a lot of them but uh we have some mullein in our bee garden um and then the other benefit would be that we got an employee uh we haven't hired them yet but we have some funding from the government to hire an employee through the summer jobs program um so that's been another nice benefit um you know and then i have been able to work more on the farm because i'm not teaching anymore so that's been other good things i've had more time to sort of put into the farm and do some planning and expansion and that sort of stuff i i want to pick up on one thing you mentioned and by the way like kick me off the phone when you're ready for this to be over but

um okay it is it is like one neat thing about selling online, isn't it? When suddenly there's just certain products that you have in such low supply or they're so weird, you wouldn't bother to pre-harvest them or pre-arrange them when you don't have them sold. But when they're pre-sold, I'm going to take a wild guess that you're using LocalLine. Is that the software that is associated with your farmer's market? To be honest, I don't even know. It's a website that they are choosing to use. And we just send in a spreadsheet to some guy that inserts it into the spreadsheets or into the website.

So we don't have an interface. It's just a send-in email. Oh, that's extra nice then. You don't have to familiarize yourself with a whole new set of software. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, just do a spreadsheet. And I just told them to keep it automatically renewing at the old original inventory level. So I have to sort of keep going back to them and say, you know, until something changes, just keep it running.

And then does that mean that like once a week you get an email from that guy who with the orders? Yeah, basically. Yeah. The orders close on Sunday night and they let us know on Monday and then delivery on Wednesday. Okay. Well, I'm glad to hear it's going like actually better. That's nice to hear for me personally, it's been down, but not way down. I'm, I'm probably down hear it's going like actually better. That's nice to hear. For me personally, it's been down, but not way down. I'm probably down 15 or 20% year over year to this

point. And I can live with that. I'm trying to not let it get much lower, but I was selling 90% to restaurants. So you can imagine. All right. I'll just ask you one more question. I'm just going to talk about production real quick. What's your biggest kind of headache or challenge right now on your farm? Not knowing what the hell I'm doing sometimes or doing too much at the same time. I don't know. I'm kind of scrambled right now because I have so many things in the works at the moment and some are going great and others are being neglected. in the works at the moment and some are going great and others are being neglected as as you know what farming farming is like but um you know and i really don't know enough to um appreciate the enterprise budgets for everything that i'm doing so right now i'm still in experimenting phase um which is which is great because that's what I love to do, but it's also challenging from avoiding risks. I hate losing and I hate seeing things being neglected.

And sometimes I got too many things on my plate to get it all done. It sounds like you're – I'm inferring that you're fairly new to farming. Is that fair to say? Was this a new endeavor for you? Returning. Somewhat, yeah. I far i farmed well i worked on a farm i worked on farms in in university and high school but uh um from a management point of view yeah this is sort of my first uh kick at it and yeah we're four years into having the farm yeah but uh every year's got something new um and everything seems to be expanding at the same rate on all

fronts and so you know like i try to go slow like you know like the first year we did five turkeys and then it was 10 turkeys and now i got 50 turkeys coming um so we sort of go in stages of you know reducing risk by starting small you know like now i have you know 17 guys and started with two years ago and so you know but we're sort of doing well and that we've managed to have successes enough to sort of start risking a bit more it's funny like i you know i think it's the right move personally to like take it slow in any way you're expanding or trying new things but it's very hard to you can you can literally like tell yourself that but then still take it too fast because it's exciting and fun and whatever, but it's the easiest way to get overwhelmed. I find sometimes. Yeah, totally. And you know, you can't be greedy.

You can't be greedy as a farmer and say, Oh, I'm going to make, make millions on all these enterprises. Cause you know it's probably better not to do the budget and figure out what you're making. It's good to have the mentality of making millions but not actually counting the money. I'm going to take that piece of advice away from this phone call. How did you find our phone number?

Oh, well, you'll be pleased to know that I googled farms around Nanaimo and you were like were like second listed so that's gonna make you feel pretty good who was first oh here well i can tell you if you want i'll turn my phone back on you might have been first i was just guessing can you can you take can you take a guess at who was first you were second in the nanaimo hey well what i see is number one is mcnab early no not mcnab early girl urban farm okay do you know it she's a micro farmer um like she's like on a on an urban sort of scale and she probably has good she's probably doing something right with her seo yeah uh and then you're second and flying dutchman is

third uh yeah and they're just a b-supplier yeah cool all right i i so appreciate you humoring me that was fun i just love getting these snapshots and i will um this will probably go up this week and i'll send you an email with a link right and so can i ask you a question yeah of course what so what do you farm i have a five acre mixed market garden i'm certified organic and hello how are uh how are deliveries going for you the deliveries went smoothly it's been a pretty disappointing day for the room and a drive cast a lot of a lot of voicemails and uh oh yeah and then like in terms of calling random farms you know there's a category of farm that's big enough to have, like, an admin person. And they're always in shutdown mode.

They're like, yeah, no, I'd be happy for you to send us an email outlining what you would like to talk about. And I'll pass it on to the owner. And maybe you can line something up. So that happened once last week and once this week. It's like, come on. You know something. You know something about how it's going come on i don't you you know something you know something about how it's going just give me a give me something you're sitting at your desk what about you yeah are you working are you at work you're answering the phone are you at home

right now exactly so i did i did i did pass a farm uh yesterday i spent the last two days searching for farm equipment all over uh the kamloops and Chase area and I did pass a farm that had all their haying equipment in the barn along with the stack wagon which is what I was kind of like spotting for and a Cessna uh do they have a do they have a take it take it away today rate for all of it yeah exactly no not exactly so um so are you recording right now yes sorry i should have disclosed that no that that's okay um i wanted to ask you um i'm kind of curious to hear from you along the line i guess you you touched on it a little bit but uh you know nobody's interviewing jordan marr like how how are sales going for you now that you're having a little bit more

diversity of products are things picking up as anticipated well i'm still on the cusp of the diversity so like i will definitely 100 have damn baby carrots and beets next week and the peas will be along soon enough they're late everything's late this year with the cold so i still don't have the diversity to really uh give me a good sense because like the way this could work. So I'm down like 20% on the year so far, which like my sales to mid June are low enough that that 20%, but in absolute terms, it's not that much money. I'm down, right? Like it's a few thousand bucks. So I can make that up.

So like theoretically I've set myself up. I've got 500 or more really 550 550 families in my system for a la carte ordering order when they want order what they want blah blah blah and the restaurants are going again and they're kind of right now ordering around 50 to 60 percent of what they normally would right okay so maybe that, but anyway, I'm set up to like, make it all work and sell everything. Um, okay. But in this early period of like arugula, arugula, arugula, um, that's a hollow back. They call that a hollow back, Tristan. That's to test the loyalty of my listeners. Some of you will know what that means um anyway uh yeah it's the the household

sales are still like up and down I've never had more than 75 in a week and this week it was down again to like 2025 so okay yeah anyway it's not nothing and like the cumbersomeness of delivery is so bad of home delivery where I deliver that like I end up being kind of happy when the orders are down because my otherwise my Wednesday is so effing miserable so yeah it's interesting anyway so that I don't know I'm like you know the seven stages of grief or whatever like I don't know I don't know what they are, in what order, but definitely, like, I was in denial and then resentment, and through those, I was, like, super anxious a lot of the time and feeling crappy. I'm kind of in acceptance, like, getting closer to acceptance now and being like, I can't control it.

I know that's how I'm supposed to be. I'm not supposed to try and control the things I can't control. So here we are. I'm just kind of like, just do your do your damn best bud do your damn best and i guess when you were in in the part of the cycle that sort of depression that was probably just close enough to the status quo that you didn't even notice yeah that's that's me that's me on a farm uh and so another question is about the restaurants. I'm curious whether they, like that 60%, do you think that it's reduced sales volume from them?

Do you fear that when they're coming back online, they're not going to be as supportive of local foods as they were before? Are the type of restaurants you're working with kind of immune to that? Or is it gonna bounce back up to to 100 of the sales once they're back at 100 of their sales i that's i think that's an astute question and i i did wonder early on if like part of the effect of all this would be that they would tighten their belts because they they

were like on the ropes right and still are and so yeah what's going to go first if they can get cheaper stuff off the truck uh maybe they'll just maybe a percentage of their purchases will go there i don't know the answer although what i'm seeing so far is like uh my main customers the one that really drive my income or they seem like still pretty committed um and like as a bright spot i just want to mention because you're asking me about this i have one restaurant it's a really large corporate like it's a big the corporation itself is really big they own many wineries in this valley uh they're kind of a behemoth they go back 20 or 30 years um one of their wineries is like their flagship winery they're called mission hill and they have two kitchens there one for a restaurant

one for catering i know i've worked with these guys for years and um like the two head chefs the executive chef and then and then like the other kind of second in command they've been so supportive from the beginning like first of all this restaurant every year gives me an advance interest free of five thousand dollars to pay for expenses in the winter and then i just like put it you know against their purchases through the season um i they just offered me that a few years ago and i've been doing it every year so there's that but anyway this year like the first thing they did when they were like when they all of them were facing possible layoffs like those two chefs went to bat for me to a very uh to a to a

to ownership that was very receptive and said like we need to support our suppliers they're in trouble so like one of the first things out of the head the executive chef's mouth was like hey think about different ways to pivot like our restaurant our kitchens are going to be empty maybe we can process food you don't sell and we'll like find a really cheap way for you like a cheap rate for you really affordable to use our kitchens we can do the work for you like that kind of thing like what can we do and then tristan a little bit after that i heard back from them like we've come up with this idea that we're going to try and guarantee you the same number same sales this year no matter what happens and we're doing this with our other suppliers and the way we'll do it at least to start is we're going to like every couple weeks we'll order a big batch of produce boxes from you

that will pass on that the ownership will pass on to its employees so they were like the ownership was simultaneously supporting its employees and its suppliers at the same time it was like amazing so i've done two so far uh one was worth fifteen hundred dollars in sales the other was like a little bit less twelve hundred or something and um so there's that and and then they've already asked me like, are you ready for another one? We'll do another one. They're open now, but they're, you know, they're not doing a lot of business right now. But, um, and I was like, then, you know what my response was?

I was like, okay, so here's the thing. I'm actually, they, they, they asked me two weeks ago and I'm like, I'm having a great sales week. I'm a little tight right now for supply. Could I, is there any reason why I couldn't just like bang on your door in a month and say, could we do another distribution to your staff? He's like, no, we have a budget. There's like a line item in our budget for this. So just tell us when you have too much products, we'll move some of it for you. So that's, you know, that's pretty cool, man. That's like heartwarming. So to get back to your original question, um, like all my main

customers, I don't know, maybe when I look back on the year at the end original question, um, like all my main customers, I don't know, maybe when I look back on the year at the end of it, I'm like, Oh yeah. Like they were all like suddenly not buying a few of the, the, the more premium items or something. But you know, Tristan, we both know like in the industry in general, like in the, in the, in, in, well, let's just talk about restaurants. There's the fakers. There's, there's the ones who, if they're buying local, they're doing it because they need it on their menu but don't otherwise care really but most of the restaurants i've been working with for a long time it is like it is a place to go and like cure your cynicism because most of these cooks and chefs and whatever they're like they're super into it they really

really love the produce and meat and whatever and they want to help contribute to like a better food system it's it's like heartening for a guy with a black heart like mine yeah well totally i mean that's that story is awesome because it's like that's the dream right like that we've are working to build this community from farms through other businesses to the consumers the consumers care the business care, the business cares. And then when we have a crisis like this, that's, that's, that's how we're building food security, right? Is that that community is able to all pull together like that and keep,

you know, keep as many of us going as possible and maintain what we've accomplished. Right. So that's, that's awesome to hear that. Totally. Like on the no this isn't like a flip side example but like back to the households a few weeks ago about three weeks ago i actually i may i can't remember if i mentioned this in last episode but like i i wasn't getting the sales i had 500 signups and like just getting 20 orders a week so i in in my send out in my kind of fresh sheet send out i said hey everyone like I know the way this is supposed to work is I'm

supposed to tell you when I'm having trouble, like we get told to like, just talk about when we're struggling. So I'm like, here is a fact I am not selling all my veggies I got. And then I just told them I got 500 signups and I'm getting 20 orders. And I, it makes me wonder if many of you signed up in a panic just in case the uh the food supply chain got affected um and then i was like but here's the thing like in my opinion that only works if you support your farmers all the time not just like wait for the catastrophe because your farmer's not going to be around if that if you do it that way so i said it like really politely and my order skyrocketed that week and then they've kind of come down again

but again to be clear my last couple weeks I haven't been putting tons of inventory in the store uh just because it's selling to the chefs and whatever so um right by the way nice nice move Tristan nice move to like you know you knew what was going to happen you knew that like I'm having a not so great year and you you knew I was going to ask you knew that like i'm having a not so great year and you you knew i was going to ask you how you're doing and you don't want to just have to be like come out and say like oh awesome like this is awesome so but let's talk about that um hey hey you sucker who grows salad greens and radishes how's that going for you because selling frozen meat is awesome right now.

Anyway, how's it going? It's going, sales are going well. I'm sure there are other headaches, but sales are going well, are they not? Yeah, sales are going well. And we are set up, we're lucky enough that we already had a large existing customer base going into all of this chaos.

And we had, you know, it's right before farmer's market season. And, you know, unlike a vegetable farmer, who's waiting to have that variety of produce available, we, we sort of arrange our whole year to go into the beginning of farmer's markets with a big stockpile of inventory of frozen food, stuff that we've carried chickens, we carried over from the last season that are ready for this coming year. You know, we want to be, we want to have all our products available at those early markets. So we had a really big inventory going into the lockdowns and everything. So sales were good. And now we've come out of the kind of panicky sales

stockpiling that we were seeing at the beginning, we just really wanted to reassure our customers, hey, you know, our supply chains are looking good. We're still producing. Our schedule is going as planned. And we will come and do our deliveries every two weeks. And we do deliveries to drop points now. So we're no longer doing farmer's markets. We're just doing a one hour drop in each of the communities that we deliver to. And we just reassured our customers early on and, you know, we're going to be there. And so we've seen it kind of level back off to sort of steady sales. But what we did lose was like the diversity of different marketing streams we had. You know, was like the diversity of different marketing streams we had.

You know, we were doing restaurants, farmers market sales, pre-order sales. And that diversity allowed us to pare it back to just the pre-order and deliveries. So that feels a little less resilient now. But I guess that's the whole point is we had that to go to. And like you, we're seeing restaurants and bakeries are slowly starting to order again. Orders are slowly ramping up from them. So I think we're going to be okay. We're going to make up our sales that we've lost in those other means or other ways of spelling.

We're going to make up those lost sales. Whoa, whoa, whoa. But. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean make up? Are you down on the year or are you up overall? No, we're probably up over last year. But when I'm saying lost sales, I mean like losing restaurants, losing the small vendors who are making prepared foods and selling at farmers markets.

They were some of our customers. And then the farmers market walk up sales because we've decided not to be at those markets. So all of this, all of those, um, sales venues that we've, we've lost or stopped doing, or were curtailed was it was about 50% of our sales. So that's what I'm talking about making up. Um, but in terms of like the month to month, we've, we've made it up and, and, uh, and we're doing fine there, but you know, the thing is, it's also funny to see this, this is a huge opportunity where people are really looking for local sources of meat. And they suddenly, you know, a couple years ago, it was it was weird and fringy to pick up your meat in a parking lot. And now all of a sudden, it seems like a great idea to everybody to pick up your meat in a parking lot. It's less

like now it's less like a drug deal. And it's more like a, you civic civic hero um and public health hero so um the the thing is we can't just turn a tap and suddenly make more make more meat right we have all these other bottlenecks and restrictions um and supply challenges of you know we can't get enough organic pigs and we're not allowed to raise any more chickens where we live um because of regulatory stuff and um so so I think meat producers are going to be facing a lot of challenges, especially in the fall and especially with abattoir and cut and wrap capacity, because there's real strains on that system right now. And the slaughter facilities and the butcher shops are busier than ever and are going to be

absolutely packed this fall. they're they're absolutely turning people away and that includes both um you know backyard producers and homesteaders and it includes uh you know people who are doing this as their livelihood so um you know even though they're not being i'm not seeing small butcher shops um you know shuttering because of covid what they're what they're seeing is is many more more people diverting animals from commodity streams and slaughtering them locally instead, like beef that would usually get sold to a feedlot. And then also, and just a lot more people who are raising a few hogs on their acreage or deciding to slaughter a couple of beef this fall for their family.

And that all adds up to create a lot of strain on the existing system. Yeah, that reminds me, I was talking to a colleague recently who has a wing of their business that is seeds. And I asked them, like, how was it? It must have been crazy good this year. And he's like, yeah, like the three month seed selling period, we sold six times what we normally do. And which which is amazing but it's like your your anecdote partially makes me think like yeah have fun next year when there's 800 more seed companies bud because this is what we do as farmers we pivot to screw over the people that are managing to do okay because we see them doing okay we rubberneck we're like i want me some of those sales i'm coming for you bud uh uh disclosure i plan

to sell some i plan to sell some garden seeds next year uh i will i will say to my death that i had that plan before the pandemic which is true but no one will believe me they'll think i'm a bandwagon jumper and i think likewise when uh when you uh put out a podcast that goes out to um you know several or maybe even dozens of farmers um one or three of whom are in the region uh you know um all of a sudden you're going to see a lot of them realizing uh that these wineries uh that are so supportive of you i hope your relationships with those places are very strong j Jordan. No, no. See, I'm insulated because like nine out of every 10 farmers I meet who like has sold or tried to sell to restaurants before have a very negative view of the chef farmer relationship, which I happen to like. So they're always, all they do

is complain. And so it's okay. I can brag about how well it's going and then they'll dip their toes in the water. Well, yeah, no, they're no, you're right. Cause like I'll dip my toes in the seed selling water and find six things about it. I don't. Well, yeah, no, you're right. Because I'll dip my toes in the seed-selling water and find six things about it I don't like. So, no, your point holds. Okay, so it'll only be those extremely masochistic farmers who are willing to take advantage of that type of sales relationship. Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe. I better put my recorder down because I see some flashing lights. They're not meant for me

okay we're okay so i want to i want to hone in on something your pickups this is a dumb thing but like you're doing these pickups one thing i already knew that and one thing i was surprised about is that you're so you drive like a long way with a massive vehicle full of frozen meat and they're most of it if not all of it's pre-ordered and you stop in each city, there's like four cities in your run or three cities. And you do these pickups. One thing that really surprised me is you only give your customers an hour. Like that's like, that's, that's, um, that's, that's the kind of like bold and audacious that I want to be, but I'm too much of a pushover to be like, Hey everyone, you have one hour.

audacious that I want to be, but I'm too much of a pushover to be like, Hey everyone, you have one hour. Uh, and, and you're pulling into public or not public, but like, yeah, generally public parking. Oh yeah. Public parking lots. And I get that question from other farmers who are thinking about doing this and they're kind of like, did you ask for permission? You know, did you get permission from the municipality or from the business? And no, I just, I, you know, I part, I chose spots that are big enough for me to pull in my massive truck and trailer combination and turn around, which is, is, is going to be a spot that has a lot of room anyway. Um, you know, and it's a, yeah, they're kind of, they're kind of public parking lots or things like that. And so, um, and I'm only there for an hour, so it's not really enough time for anybody to like mobilize

a bylaw. Yeah. To be, or mobilize a bylaw. Yeah. Or mobilize a bylaw enforcement response. I think it takes them a lot longer than one hour. So, um, so I haven't had any issues with that. I did have my busiest pickup is probably could be up to 80, 80, uh, pickups, uh, in that one hour period. So I extended that to two hours as an experiment for a couple of drops. And I just found that all that meant was the second hour, I was just sitting around for a long time, and waiting for just a few more people to come pick up. So I just changed it back to one hour. And I have been really surprised that actually, people, you know, it seems like people are pretty evenly spread out. It's not like everybody comes all at the beginning or all at the end. It's pretty even throughout the hour. And, uh, and what makes that possible right now

with the number of orders and the number of pickups we're doing is prepayment. Like if I was taking payment at the, when I was taking payment at the drop points, only about 30% of people were prepaying and 70% were paying in person with cash or card. of people were prepaying and 70% were paying in person with cash or card. And, uh, and then at that time I would sometimes have a lineup of 15 or 20 people waiting. And now with everybody prepaying, like it's like we're to 100% prepayment. We're requiring it pretty much. I'll make an odd exception, but, uh, the transactions are so quick. Someone walks up, tells me their name, uh, the meat salt organized alphabetized and, and, uh, in the freezers. Someone walks up, tells me their name, the meat's all organized, alphabetized and in the freezers. And it takes me usually just, you know, a couple seconds to find their order, hand it to them and they're gone.

So I hardly ever have more than two or three people waiting. OK, follow up comment, follow up question. Comment is prepayment is also power, right? Like if they're not there, you don't feel like you're like, well, see ya. Like you can figure out another way to get your meat i have your money so i don't care i don't i'm not going to waste another 20 minutes of my life uh so yeah it does and and also i mean i don't i do them by myself so the last 10-15 minutes when i would be calling and doing reminders i'm busy doing drops like i don't I don't have time to call people for reminders. Um, so I stopped doing it and people, uh, miss the pickup and the ones who do, uh, either just plain forgot, or they're the kind of usual

suspects. We have some repeat offenders and I just email them when we get home and say, Hey, you know, your thing's still in the freezer. You'll have to come get it next time. If I was moving a perishable product, uh, you know, then i guess it was prepaid and you just missed out on it but for me it's just the bag just stays in the freezer till next time so it's not a big deal also are you and are you i have a feeling you're not taking credit card payment you're only are you only doing e-transfers because you are like so many small business people you don't want to incur the extra fees? No, we are, we make both an option. So the prepayment is by e-transfer or by card through the sales platform. But we are really explicit with people. We explain, you know, if you pay with a card, it will cost us, you know, 3% of your transaction. And we really prefer e-transfer.

And most people are e-transferring, but I just won't, you know, it's already inconvenient enough to buy local food. These are people who are already ordering online and meeting me in a parking lot. So if they want to pay with a credit card, you know, cost of doing business, like, let's not make it any harder than it has to be. Well, that's the thing. I want to make, I want to, first, I want to make a case for allowing credit card. First, I want to make a case for allowing credit card. And then I want you to convince me why I should change things up a bit to your system. Because I only take credit card for the households right now. Oh, okay.

Because I am terrified of having to chase down payments. So, like, you know, if someone elects in your... Because we use the same order system. The difference is you cannot place an order in my system without paying by credit card. Whereas with yours, you give them, you set it so they don't have to pay upon ordering. They, you know, then you just tell, they get a message like, please pay. So how much energy is expended each week? Like reminding people to pay by e-transfer, you know, the ones that had intended to pay

by e-transfer, how much, how you do do you guys have to like spend on that it's not it's not a ton um but there is going through and matching to make sure that the e-transfers you know that the invoices were all paid and marking the invoices is that because we're packaging we we adjust the total, like people order based on an estimated total weight. And then when we pack their order, we update the weight and invoice them. So it doesn't matter whether the person pays by e-transfer or credit card, the sort of like process of having to wait a couple of days or a week after you made your order before you receive an

invoice and pay it is the same so they receive that invoice the day before the delivery comes it's like hey reminder your meat's going to be in this parking lot please pay this invoice and i'd say um probably 90 of people pay before the drop off or 85, 10% maybe pay like, at like while they're waiting or right after they get home or something from the drop point. And then maybe a couple percent need to be reminded. But it's not taking an inordinate amount of time. So I will keep offering both, but I would not personally, I'm not going to take away the credit card option. I mean, just some people, that would be the straw that broke the camel's back. And they would just say, all right, you know what, nevermind, I'm just going to go down and purchase

meat from a distributor. And then there's the other the person on the other end of the spectrum, of which I have one of these customers, who from the get go, we're like, Hey, I want to use your online system, but I don't pay ever buy plastic, like I don't have a credit card, I don't do that. So can you accommodate me which I did which is but super annoying like he he sends me a screenshot of his order because he can't place the order without paying right so he sends me a screenshot so then theoretically okay not that big of a deal I go and then place the order because as the administrator I can place an order without having received payment uh Only I always forget.

So then he's been using my pickup point at my farm and like three weeks this season already, he's shown up and then that, so he's placed an order five days ago and I'm like, oh shit. And so then I like steal someone else's produce, give it to him, then ask my wife to watch like the pickup point while i race to my garden to like harvest more stuff it's driving me nuts and and little cherry on top he also he lives in an rv and um doesn't have a lot of storage space and we host meat meat pickup too at the farm like our our your and my friends at fresh valley farms and uh he just asked me if he could buy meat from them that they require to buy like a minimum order of 75 bucks so he's like i'll buy the meat and then

you'll store it in your freezer i'll buy like pounds of ground beef and then every time i come for my veggies i'll take a pound with me um so uh i mean i'll just bleep this out later my life tristan and uh i didn't say yes i just said i gotta think about it he's like yeah well i'll pick this up with you later anyway uh so i think that i think that you there there there is a case for what I've, you know, some farmers that I'm aware of who are a little less obliging than you or I tend to be, do have a concept that enough customers. And if they have a customer that's challenging the system in that way, they do what's called fire the customer. Like they can let somebody go no no so i don't know i know you and i are both aware of that concept tristan but as we have discussed before you and i don't have hearts of gold we have hearts of hearts of stupid jordan hearts of stupid

we have hearts of stupid um but i really am going to try hard not to store this man's ground b for him because of his lifestyle choice like because he's probably the same kind of guy that goes tells anyone who will listen like you just got to simplify your life you got to get rid of your possessions keep it simple as long as you have another guy to store your shit for you for free yeah and then when you put when he posts on vanlife.com that the best thing to do when you're like living the rv lifestyle in in the okanagan is go get all your veggies from jordan marr because he'll store he'll or get all your meat from him because he'll store he'll store anything you need and and just outsource your refrigeration to jordan and then you're then you're going to be really sad you didn't fire him by the way uh

we should cover the basics who is this who am i speaking to oh this is tristan danwell over at spray creek ranch here in lilywood british columbia canada you mean sometime co-host of the ruminant podcast tristan banwell of spray creek ranch yes that occasional livestock contributor to this fine publication wonderful so listen tristan banwell uh this was fun um i'm at my next stop so we're done here but uh Um, I'm at my next stop, so we're done here, but, uh, uh, okay. Quick anecdote that I love telling, uh, I used to have a subscription to sports illustrated for kids. I think I've done this with you before, but I'm going to do it again.

I don't know about that. Okay, go. And, uh, when I was a kid, I had a subscription to sports illustrated for kids. And then this one issue, they, they, they, they, they were interviewing one of the NFL's like best centers, the guy who hikes the ball. they were like how did you become a center like it's the position no one wants he's like well in little league football at tryouts no one told me that if you didn't want to be the center just make sure when you're like trying out like hike the football over the quarterback's head he's like no one told me that so i was the only one that did it properly

and now i'm a center for the rest of my life and um you know you just gave me a very good drive cast interview tristan so i'll be talking to you next week buddy well there's that uh yeah and then the uh the i guess the silver lining is that the guy ended up as the center in the nfl it is true it is so maybe i don't know it's a it's a mixed anecdote that you're giving me you know so I'll I'll keep on contributing and we'll see if that pretty soon we're gonna get picked up by a major podcast exactly and later in his life for his efforts Tristan started to to earn dozens of dollars a week for his podcast appearances I all you know if i get a uh a pillow um that looks like a piece of sushi from your uh you know online um uh fundraising drive then i will be uh i'll be

made oh you are referring to the ruminant.ca gift registry which is where you can go and purchase a gift for your podcast hosts uh the thing is i don't i don't know that anyone's ever well yeah the way it works is like no one's those gifts are like suggested like give me the money and i'll go buy that thing um but if anyone wants to send tristan a sushi pillow in the mail, choose a local business in Lillooet to be the care of, like Google Lillooet, find a business, make them the care of. And so send it to that business. Send it to Spray Creek Ranch, care of home hardware in Lillooet, British Columbia. Anyway, I got to go, man.

This has been fun. We'll talk soon. All right. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And I'm not kidding everyone um you can i did this with tristan like i found out that um because they live so far off the beaten path he sometimes gets stuff sent to him to like a business uh in downtown lillooet like

there's a designated business that did that for locals but i just like randomly chose a business in downtown Lillooet. Like there's a designated business that did that for locals, but I just like randomly chose a business out of the business directory and sent him something once and we kind of had some fun with that. Anyway, I do really have to go. I do really have a delivery. Talk to you soon.

Hello? In response to current events, your online presence on search engines like Google is more important than ever. Press 1 now to verify and update your free Google listing. Press 9 to be removed from the list. Amongst larger organizations in their industry, the best part is we can do it for you, so you can remain focused on what you do.

Your call is very important. Did you press 1 to confirm your business listing on Google? Yeah. Hi, and who do I have the pleasure of speaking with? This is Jordan. George or Jordan? Jordan. Hey, Jordan.

Purpose of the call is just to make sure that the information listed about your business is listed correctly, both on Google and Google Maps, but more importantly to make sure your customers can find you if they're searching online. Are you the owner of the business? Yeah, who are you representing? We're with Brand Rep. We're a certified Google partner. What does it mean? We'll call it a courtesy to you to make sure your listing is updated and correct on Google Maps.

What does it mean? When was the last time you checked your listing, George? Yeah, no, no. I mean, I'm interested in talking about that. I'm just curious curious what does it mean to be a certified Google partner well first of all Google is just a search engine and what they do is they employ companies across the United States to work with them it becomes certified so they work with businesses small businesses across North America to do things like search engine optimization, update their listing, their Google My Business, and also place ads if companies are interested in doing that. The purpose of my call today is the verification of just your information online.

Are you the owner of the food artisan of Oxgar? Is that how you pronounce it? I don't know what you're saying again. What's the business you have in front of you? Well, I've got a couple here. It looks like a couple are tied to that phone number. That's why I'm asking you which it is there's a Vintner Farmer Chef diners at 4855 McKinnon tied to

that number and also food artisan Vintner Farmer Chef with is a failed side hustle that I tried some years back it's just you're looking at the ghost of shattered like shattered dreams but you don't have to feel bad it didn't cost me oh my god how far back does that go i don't know eight years something like that i was i was the farmer of that trio vintner farmer chef have a lot of respect for farmers. I had an old uncle back in Ohio. That's tough work, I tell you that. That's for sure.

So what's the name of the new entity? And I'll look that up here. I also got a couple ideas that you can do to make sure you remove the old address. Let's make sure the existing one is correct. All right. Well, I'm a little suspicious. And let me just say right now that I can draw a line between your intentions as a guy just

like doing his job and whatever your company is doing. But it seems like you're harvesting information from me under the guise of like checking something. But really, you just want to sell me some services right well you really do have a pessimistic and sarcastic view of life uh this is actually a verification no no no it's not with the information it it is up to you but With the information, it's up to you. Listen, it's not my first rodeo. I didn't have to press one.

I don't have a super sarcastic view of life. I personally am a straight shooter. When someone calls me with the intent to eventually try and sell me something, I'm not against being sold to. I don't like when it's done under a veil of not selling, right? Like when it's done with kind of under false pretenses, and I'm just trying to understand what... Yeah, let me answer that. Let me answer your...

So there's two parts to this. The first part is absolutely free. It's a free verification of your information. We looked at things like how quick your website loads, Absolutely free. It's a free verification of your information. We looked at things like how quick your website loads, and we make sure all the information. We also test to see how easy it is for your clients to find you. So, you know, that's value-added information you can take with you on there. Now, at the end, if you find out, and I won't know this until we look at your listing,

see how it stacks, if you want to attack that competition, there are ways. And that's not my department. I'm the verification department. I transfer you over to a marketing advisor that can help you with that. But that's absolutely optional for you. All right. Well, I think, look, I'm going to get called by your company again. I get these calls at a pretty irritating rate, like once a week, twice a week at least. They're probably not all from your company. But I think my next step is I want to go and Google this idea of a Google certified company so that the next time I receive a call, because I'm suspicious about that. I think that's a marketing term that doesn't mean anything.

I could be wrong. I'm wrong a fair bit in my life, but I just want to understand what that means. Are you, are you, are you, do you have a, are you right now? Sorry, could you say that again? Because we briefly lost connection. Am I what? Are you near a computer right now? Sorry, could you say that again because we briefly lost connection. Am I what? Are you near a computer right now? No, no, no. I've got you in Bluetooth in my delivery van. And you're traveling? I'm traveling.

Well, it's really easy. All you have to do is look up brand rep. That's B-R-A-N-D rep r-e-p yeah we're one of several certified google partners we've been doing it since 2010 is when we got a certification and we've helped over 70,000 small businesses across america so we we help we help businesses basically get seen on the Internet. We do that through search engine optimization, and that's probably one of your most powerful business tools if you're looking for customers. You know how it works when people are searching for goods and services online.

They're using their Google Maps and they're saying, sushi restaurant near me, and they're clicking on those who are in the top three. Oh, yeah. And that's what we can do for you. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I'm sure I can use some help. But for now, I don't want to take the conversation any further. So I'm going to – I'll take a look.

You said Brand Rep, that's the name of the company. Yeah, and as a courtesy to you, since you shared with me what was near and dear to your heart, would you give me the opportunity to call you back after lunch? I will give you the opportunity to call me back. Not today. It's an insane day. But you're opportunity to call me back. Not today. It's an insane day. But you're welcome to call me back. Sure.

I'm not. Yeah. I just want to do a bit of research myself. Okay. So here's what I'm going to do to show you that I'm real. I'm going to ask you what your favorite color is. And when I call you back, I'm going to tell you what you told me. So you know it's me all right

that sounds like a good verification uh uh strategy I'll we'll go with green that way you can you can block everyone else what's your favorite color green now you you never told me your name I told you my name but i never told me unless we get my name is jordan and all right yeah i'm like sorry okay jordan the farmer jordan all right jordan i'll i'll call you tomorrow and uh hopefully by then you'll have looked up uh brand and i encourage you we always encourage our clients to look at that and you'll see that we've been doing this a long long time we're based in Irvine California and we work with companies not only in the US but in Canada as well why service all of North America why does it list is coming from

Florida then it was a Florida number that I answered I that's a great question we've got a lot of many of us are working out of our remote location because of COVID-19. We don't come back to the office until the first of next month. So you might be seeing a phone number that comes up that's different than what our normal is. But that's very common if you're dialing out of an ip address right hey wait a second i just figured out that our our verification game isn't going to work you could just tell the next person you could write that in my file it's okay i i hear your voice i'll know if it's you but i'm not i i don't buy into this what's your favorite color

thing any longer i'm i i yeah okay it, yeah. Oh, okay. It's okay. You can, there's, there were, there were others. I'll tell you something personal that, that I had an uncle who did farming in Ohio, which I told you at the top of the conversation. Cool. And you can, if you call me back, you can reference, you can reference something else custom from this conversation and then we will proceed. i look forward to your call okay and uh uh yeah thank you for your time yeah and do that jordan you have a great day okay you too I don't need anything to live on Except for a little old you

I've met a whole army of weasels A legion of leeches Trying to give me the screw But if we bury ourselves in the woods in the country We're no closer, we never have laundry We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves Live life like it was meant to be, aw don't fret honey I've got a plan to make our final escape All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars and maybe a roll of duct tape and we'll run right outside of the

city's reaches we'll live off chestnuts spring water and peaches we'll own nothing to this world of thieves and live life like it was meant to be life like it was meant to be because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country. With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking

some real soul searching and here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car to keep my love going strong so we'll run right out

into the wilds and graces we'll keep close quarters with gentle faces and live next door to the birds and the bees and live life like it was meant to be I'll tell you what, if you call me with that recorder running, I will spray you with a bovine chemical and you will never have any problem with worms or long relationships.