Farmer Spotlight: Wright Brothers Farm
How three brothers’ new Farm is carrying on an old family tradition.
The Wright Brothers Farm has at once a very long, and very short history. Since Fall 2017, the Farm has been selling fresh produce to restaurants and, more recently, CSA members in various Washington state communities. Craig Wright took time to discuss the Farm’s 1903 origins, it’s new beginning and now rapid growth due to convenient ordering and delivery options.
When asked about how the Farm came to be, Craig began, “That’s a long story. My great-grandparents bought the Farm in 1903, when it was covered in first growth cedar. They cleared much of the land for my grandfather’s pending dairy Farm, and on the same land my great-uncle raised chickens. At one point they also leased the land to another dairy farmer.
In 1971, my uncles took over the farming, and turned the Farm into one of the first organic Farms in the state of Washington. I was in 3rd grade at the time—one of three brothers born within three years—and we all started working on the Farm every summer until we graduated high school. We did everything. I was the oldest, so I worked the retail side manning the on-Farm stand. My middle brother started driving the tractor at a young age, and my youngest brother was stuck weeding.
While we went off to college, my uncle and cousin kept farming, for another 35 years. My brothers and I had affection for farming, and occasionally tossed around the idea of getting back into it. In a fortuitous move, my brother signed us up for a class in Snohomish County called “Cultivating Success”. That was our first real step.
In 2015 we started with a small, glorified garden. Every year we make more improvements, adding an irrigation system or a deer fence. We use raised beds and drip irrigation, made compost on site, added two hoop houses and recently doubled our greenhouse space. Farming comes with an incredible diversity of learning based on needs of the business, from soil science and germination to taxes and paying employees, to social media and marketing! We learned to divide and conquer, and each stay out of the other brother’s tasks. I handle the sales, marketing and distribution—the overall business plan.
We started selling commercially in Fall 2017, so this will be our fourth year. We started small with 1-2 restaurant clients, adding more each year. We have 9 lined up this year, and we’re optimistic that they’ll be open again at some point. We’ll hit full stride with production in July. It’s a question mark if restaurants will be busy, so we’re prepared to focus on the CSA home delivery side of things and take on more customers — there’s been a high degree of interest!
Last year we tried running a choice CSA on spreadsheets. Each week I’d send out a form with what was available, tell them what they’re going to receive in each share, and let them make two changes. It was really hard because we had no platform like Barn2Door. I was left sorting through 30 different answers to create a pick and pack list and labels for boxes. I was spending hours and hours every week sorting that out. It was too much. By the end of the season I made up my mind that we were going to do a full choice (versus set box with swaps) CSA the next year, and that we needed a fully functioning website, webstore, and ordering processing system to make it happen.
We signed up with Barn2Door, and our Onboarding Manager helped us get set up. We’re offering a CSA with pick-up options or direct home delivery. We sell subscriptions to the CSA (or farm box), and when a customer purchases a share then we invite them into the private store. Customers get a reminder to shop each week and fill their cart with what they want (blog: your cart is the new box!)
The great thing is that it really works. I’m most excited about the backend options that free up my time. It automatically produces a pick list with what to harvest, and a pack list with each customer’s order. That’s awesome, and best of all I’m not taking hours to sort any of that information.
I know people like to pick their own items, and if they want the convenience of direct home delivery I can offer that too. We have control over order cutoffs for delivery, and in theory we could allow customers to order all the way up to midnight for food delivered the next day! Imagine now a Farm like ours can offer the same ordering and delivery convenience Buyers have come to expect from companies like Amazon.
I’m very pleased with the look of the website in the end (Barn2Door powers our store, orders, payments and delivery management, and also built out our website). I appreciated their patience and working through the process to make sure we came out with exactly what we wanted. Everybody involved was a pro.”
Barn2Door is thrilled to support Craig and the Wright Brothers Farm. You can learn how Barn2Door supports CSA Farms, and watch how Barn2Door works in 5:40.