Harvest of Joy Farm LLC Business Plan, Revised Dec. 2012

As I mentioned in class, Diane and I spent a year educating ourselves on the logistics of running a business and developing a business plan before we formalized our company. We review and revise our business plan after each growing season. Here's our most recent business plan, minus our financial information, which I'll share with you in a less public format.

Harvest of Joy Farm LLC Business Plan, Revised Dec. 2012

Mission Statement: 

We started Harvest of Joy Farm LLC because we love to play in the earth and wish to share the bountiful joys of our labor with others. We developed our company in order to support ourselves and our families while spreading health and joy throughout our community with delicious, affordable, sustainably grown food.

Business Vision:

Harvest of Joy Farm LLC is a limited liability company co-owned by Diane Glenn, Amy Newday, and John Edgerton. We grow and sell diversified produce. Our sales are primarily direct to the public, both through our CSA and through local markets. Our relationships with our customers are very important to us. We encourage them to get to know us and to learn about our farm.

We farm organically and sustainably. We feel great satisfaction knowing that our business enriches the health of the ecosystem in which we live and the community which we serve. Because of this, we are committed to the following:

Healthy Soil:  Healthy plants require healthy soil. We feed our soil with compost, cover crops, mulch and organic fertilizers, and use soil conservation techniques such as crop rotation to keep our soil healthy.

Carefully Selected Seeds:  We source untreated, organically grown seeds when available, selecting our varieties primarily for taste, but also for their abilities to withstand pests, disease, and challenging growing conditions.

Organically Grown Plants: We grow our plants from seed to ensure they have the best start. We rely on physical and biological methods to control pest populations and use organically approved chemicals when necessary.

Delicious, Healthful, Freshly Harvested Produce: Fresh is best! We harvest at the peak of ripeness and deliver to our customers as quickly as possible so that they can enjoy that just-picked taste.

Ecological Health: We are caretakers of the land that we farm. As such, we employ conservation practices which promote healthy soil, air, and water, and which encourage biological diversity.

Energetic Sustainability: True sustainability requires that we think both locally and globally. We practice energy conservation and use renewable sources of energy when feasible.

Economic Sustainability: For our farm to survive, it must be economically as well as ecologically sustainable. Our farming methods require skilled labor, complex planning, and in depth biological knowledge. By operating our farm efficiently, we earn a fair wage while providing our customers with top quality produce.

Ongoing Education: The natural world is complex and ever-changing. We continue to learn and experiment with new tools and techniques to improve our sustainability, efficiency, and the quality of our produce. We offer customers opportunities to learn about biological and farming systems as well, through field days and classes.

Exceptional Customer Service: We hope that our customers will experience an enhanced sense of well-being through their connection to our farm. By choosing to make fresh, in-season, locally grown produce a part of their lifestyle, our customers are making a commitment to their physical health, their local economy, and their earth. We support that choice by providing convenient produce pick-up locations and through educational resources, including recipes and ideas for using the produce they receive. We actively solicit suggestions from our customers and provide regular updates about what is happening on our farm through our website, newsletter, and Facebook page.

Relevant Background:

Diane Glenn, Amy Newday, and John Edgerton have brought their years of work experience and passion for growing food together to create Harvest of Joy Farm LLC. Amy's agricultural background stretches back to her childhood on a family operated dairy farm in Shelbyville, Michigan. Her educational experience includes an undergraduate degree in Biology, with coursework focusing on Conservation Biology, Ecology, Plant Pathology, and Integrated Pest Management. She has worked as an integrated pest management scout in southwestern Michigan orchards and gardened organically on several different farms over the past fifteen years.

Born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Diane graduated from Kalamazoo Central High. For twenty-nine years she worked assisting AAA of Michigan’s members with their insurance claims, and later, their travels. For the past ten years she’s cultivated her love for nature and growing healthy foods, experimenting with different organic growing methods and time saving techniques for feeding family and friends. Nutrition and exercise has always been important to her. Today, her venture into teaching Yoga keeps her on track while she works in a healthy environment growing and eating fresh wholesome foods. Along with her experience growing produce, Diane brings her 29 years of customer service skills to Harvest of Joy Farm LLC.

John Edgerton lives and farms near Martin, MI. His forty years of growing experience includes market gardens, preservation gardens, and community gardens. He’s passionate about preserving the diversity and deliciousness of our vegetable heritage and saving seeds from heirloom varieties that grow particularly well in Southwest Michigan.

Products & Services:

We sell fresh, sustainably grown produce through our CSA, farmers’ markets, and direct-from-farm sales. We provide our customers with information about sustainable growing techniques and cooking with seasonal produce, as well as opportunities to participate on the farm and to enjoy the land on which their food is grown. Future possibilities include developing a seed production program which will allow us to offer seeds, as well as educational support, to customers interesting in growing their own vegetable crops. Potential future customers include local stores, restaurants, and other businesses or organizations.

We plan to have close to an acre of land in active, diverse vegetable production in 2013 with additional acreage in compost or cover crops. During the 2013 growing season we will market our produce primarily through our CSA. We will also sell at a mid-week farmer’s market and maintain a weekend roadside stand at the farm.

Marketing:

In general, our customers are people who are concerned with their physical health, the health of the earth, and the sustainability of their local economy. Specifically, we expect each of our venues will attract a slightly different set of customers.

People who may be attracted to our CSA program are people who are concerned about their health and enjoy cooking with fresh, seasonal produce. They may be deeply committed to their local economy and to environmental sustainability. They may be seeking a deeper connection to the land and to their community. They may have a desire to spend time on a farm or to give their children a first-hand experience of how their food is grown. They enjoy having a personal connection to their farmers and learning about the farm through on-farm field days, receiving weekly newsletters, and visiting our blog and Facebook page.

CSA shareholders may be families concerned about the health of their children’s diet, people in their 20s and 30s concerned with environmental sustainability, and middle-aged to older folks who wish to invest in their local community and who are environmentally concerned. In addition, these may be people who have memories of food picked fresh from a childhood garden or they may be gardeners themselves who just don’t have time to grow all of the produce they desire. CSA customers are committed to making time within their busy lives to eat well and so they value the convenience of the CSA, which provides them with clean produce at a convenient location each week, along with simple tips and recipes for storing and cooking the food they receive.

The foundation of the CSA is the relationship between farmer and eater. Our initial CSA customers have been primarily friends, family members, and acquaintances who know us, trust us, and want our business to succeed. We anticipate that word of mouth and social media outreach will enlarge our circle of CSA customers as our business grows.

Our farmer’s market booths attract customers who enjoy the market experience. There may be quite an age range in these customers, though they are probably mostly in the middle class and the majority may be female. They may be young parents who like to make a trip to the market a family outing or middle-aged to older folks who enjoy spending an hour or two in the social atmosphere of the market. They all value good food and want to bring home the tastiest produce they can find. We will use our farmer’s market venues to sell CSA overproduction and collect information (about crop popularity and profitability) which will help us decide which crops to plant specifically for these markets in the future.

Our roadside stand at 1141 124^th Avenue will appeal to motorists driving to Gun Lake for weekend recreation who want convenient and farm-fresh vegetables. We will open our roadside stand on specific weekend days in 2013 and investigate the possibilities of publicizing this at Miller Lake campground or the nearby RV park.

We also sell larger quantities of vegetables for preserving (such as canning or drying) to customers directly from the farm. These are people who enjoy the tradition of putting food up for the winter. They may have their own gardens but don’t grow enough for preservation. We will reach these customers largely through word of mouth.

If we have quantities of produce that we are unable to harvest ourselves, we may choose to offer these as U-pick crops. Customers who are looking for large quantities of low-cost produce or who enjoy the harvest experience may take us up on these offers.

Our CSA:

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is an agricultural business model which allows community members to invest in a local farm and, in return, to share in the harvest produced by that farm. This arrangement benefits the farmer by providing beginning of the year capital and by reducing the pressure involved in selling a crop in a timely fashion once it’s been grown. This relationship is also highly beneficial to consumers who are concerned about the origins of their food and who wish to actively support their local agricultural economy. The close relationship between farmers and eaters fostered by the CSA allows customers to become intimately familiar with how their food is grown, to participate in the growing of it if they so choose, and to learn how to store and prepare a wide variety of fresh, healthy foods.

Each week, CSA shareholders receive a portion of whatever we are harvesting at the time, along with a newsletter which provides updates about what is happening on the farm and recipe suggestions for using that week’s produce. Customers pick up their produce at the farm or at pre-arranged drop off locations.

Our CSA began small. During our first year, we offered 4 shares to carefully selected stakeholders at the cost of $250 for 20 weeks of produce. We asked these first CSA customers to act as a focus group and to provide us with detailed feedback on how we could develop our CSA program to best meet our customers’ needs. In our second year, we expanded our CSA program to include 7 full shares and 15 half shares. During year 2, we provided our customers with 21 weeks (late May through mid-October) of produce. The cost of a full share during our second year was $400. Half shares were available for $235.

In our third year, our CSA season will again run for 21 weeks and we will offer the equivalent of 25 full shares. We will offer full shares for $450 and half shares for $260. An additional end-of-season share of storage crops will be available for on-farm pick-up in October for $22. Our long term goals include investing in infrastructure that will allow us to extend the growing season even further. One option we may consider is offering extended-season shares such as “spring” and/or “winter shares.”

Plant Variety Selection & Seed Saving:

In order to consistently offer our customers the highest quality, most nutritious, and tastiest produce possible, we evaluate plant varieties and select those which grow best within our local ecosystem. Because growing conditions can vary so widely from year to year, however, it is critical that we have access to a broad genetic base of crops that are adapted to these conditions in order to reduce the risk of crop failures and underperformance. In 2013, we will be evaluating possibilities for integrating on-farm seed production into our operation to further enhance our ability to grow high-quality crops that are particularly well-adapted to our local environment.

Fruit and Fruit Trees:

Long term possibilities include offering fruit and fruit trees to our customers. We will begin movement in this direction in 2013 by grafting a small number of apple varieties.

Education:

Facilitating healthy relationships between people and their food and helping them to understand the implications of their food choices is critical for the survival of our business, the vitality of our community, and the well-being of our planet.

Our newsletters, blog, and Facebook page are critical ways through which we communicate with our customers and we will spend renewed time and energy on these media venues in 2013. We will host a spring planting party as well as our annual fall harvest celebration in order to facilitate direct connections between our customers and the land which produces their food.

In Spring 2013, Amy will offer a CSA class through K college, which will bring students to the farm to work and to learn. We will offer a summer internship to a Kalamazoo College student as well.

In order to both cultivate a customer base closer to the farm and to find ways in which we can be of greater service to our local community, we will explore possibilities for connecting with and sharing educational resources with the Martin Community Garden, as well as other local groups and individuals.

SWOT Analysis:

Strengths:  Years of organic gardening experience Background in biology & integrated pest management Enjoyment of hard, hot, outdoor physical labor Passion & humor Supportive friends & family Sense of community Good credit histories Creative problem solving skills Agricultural family background & accumulated agricultural wisdom Good customer service skills Good organizational skills Access to Buskirk family land & equipment

Weaknesses: Lack of business & marketing experience Current low income from other jobs Lack of mechanical & construction skills Don’t own adequate land Sometimes poor communication with family members Lack of experience with large(r) scale production Distance from larger cities of Kalamazoo & Grand Rapids Necessity of juggling other jobs Distance from farm for Diane

Opportunities:  Current interest in local foods & farming Increasing awareness of the impact of nutrition on health & obesity Recent publicity regarding the benefits of fresh organic foods Increasing funding for local food education programs (such as farm/school connections) Possibility of leasing family land Long term possibility of including fruit production Expanding consumer environmental concern Available grants for beginning, female & organic growers (for specific practices, such as season extension) Loosened regulations on home processed foods Currently many low cost resources are available for small business start up training, both general & agriculturally specific

Threats:  Competition from others currently entering the market Diseases, insects, weather, animals, etc. Low cost of conventional retail produce Uncertain US & Michigan economy

Management Analysis:  Because of the intimate nature of our business, there will be constant overlap in our responsibilities. We are committed to consensual decision-making and to keeping each other abreast of our thoughts and activities regarding the farm so that we will all have the information we need in order to make good personal and business decisions. In order to streamline planning and decision-making, we will take leadership roles in areas which best utilize our expertise and experience.

Amy:	Diane:	John:
Production Planning for CSA	Production Planning for Farm Markets	Production Planning for Seed Saving
Accounting	Farmers Market Management & Sales	Fruit & Fruit Trees
Overall Business Planning	Overall Business Planning	Overall Business Planning
Sales & Marketing	Sales & Marketing	Sales & Marketing
Education & Outreach	Education & Outreach	Education & Outreach
Social Media

                                   

Key Goals for 2013:

Write an “annual report” for CSA members that provides a review of the past year on the farm and details plans for 2013.

Convert high tunnel into a plant propagation space.

Expand production to close to 1 acre.

Integrate cover cropping/compost cropping into production plan.

Expand CSA to the equivalent of 25 shares (combination of half & full shares).

Increase net profits to ½ of gross income.

Track labor and expenses for three key crops: leaf lettuce, snap beans, and tomatoes.

Create a roadside stand for on-farm sales.

Graft fruit trees.

Evaluate possibilities & systems for seed saving.

Increase outreach & education through social media.

Network with local community groups & individuals.

Offer spring and fall on-farm field days.

Plant asparagus or at least prep land for 2014 planting.

Offer educational activities for K College students, customers, and community members.

Other Long Term Possibility Brainstorms (from years past):

Extending our CSA to offer spring and/or winter shares.

Fruit production (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries?)

Connecting w/local schools, possibly through programs like Farm to School Network

Incorporate a center for healing arts/workshops in the arts & nature studies

Convert small hoophouse to heated greenhouse for transplants

Build larger hoophouse for production (possibly movable)

Create a plant breeding program/Create seedbank

Increase community assistance offerings (discounted shares or donated produce)

Explore renewable energy sources

Examine pros & cons of organic certification

Apiculture

Mushroom culture

Selling to local restaurants and hospitals