Overcoming Paralysis with Analysis. Growing Your Farm Business with Jessica Evans from Evans Family Farm
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Intro
Allyssa Knutson: [00:00:25] Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. We've got a great conversation for you today with one of our farm advisors, just to get Evans from Evan's family. Farm. Welcome Jessica.
Jessica Evans: [00:00:37] Thanks for having me on! I'm excited to be here.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:00:39] Thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. And just getting to know you a little bit more as well as for our listeners to get to know you and to learn more about Evan's Family Farm and just how your story is quite unique, but also I think will resonate with a lot of farmers across the country.
As you know, a lot of uncertainty has been occurring, you know, this past year and how you've been able to grow and expand. So I guess to get things started, I would just love for you to maybe take a moment to introduce yourself, how you got into farming and selling direct online.
Jessica Evans: [00:01:13] Sure. Yeah. So we do have a very kind of non-traditional story. We are originally from kind of suburban Southern California, both my husband and I don't have a background in farming really at all. All of our experience just comes from firsthand experience. We had a little bit of a backyard homestead, I guess, out in California is what you'd call it. And we just did raise things for ourselves and really kind of got bit by the farming bug and fell in love with regenerative agriculture along with a lot of other motivating reasons to leave until they California for us. Led us out here, we're in kind of central North Carolina now where we purchased our original 10 acre farm where we raise pasture proteins.
So we're definitely on the animal side, livestock side of things. We do poultry, pork, lamb, beef and eggs, and then selling direct was always something that was important to kind of, as we started the farm as a business, we always wanted to have a connection with our customers, for people to understand where food came from and why it was important how their food was raised.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:02:08] That's great to hear how you were able to move across the country and experience, you know, big success over on the East coast, starting on the West coast. So maybe tell us a little bit more about how the business operations have evolved over the years, especially from that cross-country move. I'm sure that was quite a bit of an adjustment for you. So kind of going from a hobby farm to more of a full business operation on the East coast.
Jessica Evans: [00:02:34] Yeah. Well, my husband and I are both kind of entrepreneurs at heart. We've always kind of done different ventures has his run his own business for, I mean, as long as we've been married, which is a long time now. And so we've always kind of had a little bit of that spirit to go ahead and just try things and give things a whirl and make that jump, I guess.
Neither of us really suffer from paralysis by analysis, where we just sit on things for too long without doing anything. I'd rather just do something and try it. If it fails, I guess we'll fail big and we'll try something different next time. That definitely helped contribute I guess, to the cross-country move and to, to going at farming.
I guess just from the get-go. So, we started out here for about our first year. My husband's able to stay home when we worked both kind of full-time on the farm to get stuff started and that helped a lot. Cause we had a lot of infrastructure to build. The property we took on was not really set up for livestock.
It was set up for horses and roping cattle and rodeo, I guess, more than farming. And then year two, we realized that farming is a much slower startup business than other businesses. So he went back to work off farm, full time. And I'm stubborn. I wasn't willing to give up on the farms. I said, I'll take it over.
And so, it's kinda gone from there. So he still works off farm full time. We're now at a point where we're starting to bring him back a little bit cart time, and hopefully, you know, the next couple of years he can be at least half time on farm with me again. So that's the goal.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:03:47] And I think you brought up a great point of the entrepreneurial spirit and how important that is kind of going into a new operation, a new business, but especially for farming. So what is it about, you know, starting a business that you're passionate about and what is it about farming and agriculture specifically that you enjoy?
Jessica Evans: [00:04:09] I always had a connection to food growing up. My mom was a big health nut. Really believed in nutrition is kind of one of your first defenses. She did nutritional therapies for cancer. When I was a kid, we had all sorts of crazy health foods delivered to our house.
So I was always passionate about that side of things. And then my husband and I, both being entrepreneurs, just kind of willing to take things on. We like the challenge of learning new things. Our first year here, since both of us were on farm, we were able to visit other firms. And even if they didn't do things like us, just, there's always things to learn from somebody else's experience.
And that really helps us a lot. Just continuing to kind of. Learn and see, and build and try things out. You know, like we've gone through four different models of chicken tractors at this point because it just I'm like, okay, that didn't work as well. I like this better. Let's try it this way. And that kind of spirit definitely helps, especially in agriculture and farming. You know, nothing but farming, I think teaches you how to be flexible. You're either flexible or you're frustrated I think.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:05:04] For sure. I think that learning aspect of, you know, having a growth mindset and being open to change and adapting, I'm sure over, especially this past year, you've learned a lot about, okay, let's try this. It didn't work. Let's try something else that works. Let's keep doing this or looking for ways to evolve. So maybe touch on a little bit more about this past year and kind of the journey you've been through from businesses closing down. I'm sure everything has been kind of changing, you know, in general for, for everybody. So trying to find a way to kind of stay afloat during these uncertain times.
Jessica Evans: [00:05:39] Yeah. This year was a big year for change for absolutely for being flexible for everybody. We were really fortunate in that we had kind of already launched some of these online platforms that became essential, I guess, in kind of the COVID food crisis before all of this hit. So we'd had kind of some experience using those, using our online ordering platform.
I'm a little bit with deliveries and subscription service, we had just rolled out. So having a lot of those keys in place really helps us kind of capitalize that when our community has really found a shortage of food at the grocery store, you know, when those bottlenecks in our food system, I guess were exposed more to the general public than they normally are.
So that really helps to have this keys in place, but we have to be flexible in other ways, too. We did have, you know, big wholesale accounts that were no longer available, you know, that wasn't happening. Our farmer's market, you know, started on huge delays. So that was, you know, month of lost sales before we were able to get that rolling. Definitely had to be able to pivot a little bit. And use what we had for sure. I mean, it's definitely the bootstrap way to do things, but it can be the most economical. I still make home deliveries in my minivans.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:06:43] For sure. Yeah. Just finding ways to make it work, honestly. And kind of focusing in on for during this podcast, we oftentimes talk about the four lovers of farm success, so that. Price quality brand and convenience. And I know Evan's family farm that you hold true to quality. You touched on food and making sure that people have access to quality food.
And also your brand is very strong. You have those convenient options for your buyers to purchase from you and you also. Strategically price your products according to, or to reflect the quality of the products as well. So what lever, I guess I'm posing the question to you would stand out most to you. Evan's family farm between price quality brand. Yeah. Convenience.
Jessica Evans: [00:07:28] Yeah. I mean, as much as they're tied together, it's kind of hard to separate one from the other, but quality is definitely kind of a cornerstone of where we're at. Price wise, we're never going to compete with like Walmart chicken. It's just not going to happen and I don't expect to, and we're a different quality of product, you know, than Walmart chicken.
So selling our quality and holding to that standard too, it's sometimes tempting, you know, of all these sales pouring in and I'm out of beef like, well, I could find beef anywhere, but is it to the quality and the standard, you know, the mission that our farm has committed to. You know, sometimes that's a challenge to stick to because it's tempting, you know, just to kind of fill orders as much as possible, but we work with some other partner farms to keep our inventory up, especially with being on 10 acres with can't grow a lot of beef.
I mean, our customers really want beef. And those partnerships have really been essential to our success this year. And it was mutually beneficial. So, and local farms that have great agricultural practices that raise animals. Like we would raise animals. They were a hundred percent wholesale. You know, they sold every single head of beef, multiple head of beef a month to restaurants.
And that just, that just shut down overnight for them. So for them to have an outlet where they get still, you know, profit on the beef that they are raising. And then we can still supply quality beef to our customers. Those became really mutually beneficial and I think our customers valued the transparency of that. I think that that's kind of incorporated in our brand is that we're always open and honest about where everything comes from. And then we were able to maintain that quality as well.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:08:50] Yeah, definitely from the strategic partnership standpoint, and also looking at the messaging. I know you guys do a great or excellent job at messaging on your website, especially about the honest pasture-raised meat. You mentioned how it's grass fed it's non-GMO humanely raised, processed, and then you also kind of go through a commitment as a farmer to the consumer.
So you take it a step further of. As a farmer, this is what we promise to you when you purchase or you buy from us. So how do you go about in the other channels or just in communications with your buyers, how do you convey the quality and, how you make those promises to your buyers?
Jessica Evans: [00:09:28] Definitely this year when there's less and less face face-to-face contact with our customers. Our social media presence has been huge in that. I mean, I'm not a crazy social media poster cause I'm busy, but I, you know, I try and keep at least one thing in our stories just about what's going on. And a couple of times a week, you know, I'll put something in our, in our main feed. And a lot of just related to from life in general, but that it shows what we do and you know what we're doing on farm. And again, because we don't have as many people on farm as we normally do, or we didn't last year, we normally host kind of a lot of agritourism on farm.
People can come and see things, or we host meals on farms and a lot of that was kind of taken away. So we had to really put who we are and what we're doing through those social media channels. Through email marketing, too.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:10:10] Yeah. And that kind of touches on brand as well. You know, being able to have your brand and be able to engage with buyers or prospective buyers, you know, through the internet, especially on social, because right now it's a little bit more challenging to, you know, interact in person. So how would you describe the Evans family farm brand and how you interact kind of touching a little bit more on how you drive sales and increased buyer loyalty with your, your buyers and your perspective buyers who are looking to find out more information on you.
Jessica Evans: [00:10:39] What I try and push when it comes to our brand is some of that stuff that we have on our website, that honest pasture raised meat when we're trying to kind of come up with a tagline for marketing. That really stood out because not everything we do is a hundred percent grass fed.
And, you know, I explain the why to customers and we're completely transparent about that. And I find, or have found that that's what my customers really value. They want to know where their food comes from. You know, it doesn't necessarily have to be one way or the other. They wouldn't understand why, and if they want something different, I can point them in the right direction. You know, through our network of farms, if they want a hundred percent grass fed grass finished beef. I know where to point them. That's not so what we do on our farm and I can easily explain the why and you know, and that's totally fine. People just want, I think they want that honesty and that transparency, which is not really found I think you have the commercial meat section, you know, you see the Tyson chicken truck on the highway.
With pictures of chicken outside. And if you've ever driven by a Tyson chicken house, nothing with what it looks like. I think a lot of people are really fed up with kind of the greenwashing and, you know, the false imaging and they want transparency. That's something we try and communicate. Again, just showing images of our daily farm life sometimes things that I find mundane but it's just what things look like every day. You share a little bit of, you know, I say the good, the bad, the ugly, a lot of the good, a little bit of the bad, you kind of leave out the ugly. Not all customers want to see that part when it comes to full transparency. Not everybody's Farmers and that's okay too.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:12:04] Yeah. I think understanding your buyers, you know, and understanding what information is important, important to them and kind of letting them in like a sneak peek view of your farm, kind of telling your story, but also, you know, the story of the animals on your farm and how it's kind of comes full circle.
So letting them in on that, I love how earlier you touched on the agritourism component. As well, which I think is very interesting because thinking from an educational standpoint, there's probably a lot of kids out there who are curious about, you know, where their food comes from or even adults. So maybe tell us a little bit more about the farm camp.
I know during COVID, it's a little bit more challenging to have folks on the farm regularly, but what's the vision behind the farm camp and how were you able to educate youth on life on the farm and engaging with the local community as well?
Jessica Evans: [00:12:54] Yeah. So the vision of our farm camp was a huge piece of that. That's the educator in me. So in my California life, I was a high school teacher for eight years. And I do, I enjoy having people on the farm. We regularly have kind of professional groups on the farm, but to reach out to kids was important.
A general kind of problematic thing in the United States is the average Farmer is in their late sixties. So trying to bring, you know, if we want to keep agriculture in our country and keep our culture healthy.
We need to expose more kids to it. So that was part, okay. I guess, kind of push to that. But also to market to our local community, like within a driving distance of our farm, we would like to pull a lot more sales onto farm themselves through our on-farm store and its on-farm pickups. And right now our, our farmer's markets are Saturday markets are super successful, but they're almost an hour in both directions. Instead of kind of pull from a base closer to us to get people, you know, to see our face, to interact with us, to physically step foot on farm, I guess, kind of the farm camp idea pulled all those things together. And so we have kind of two versions of farm camp.
Our main farm camp will be kids. Six to I believe, 14 years old was the age group. With that doing age appropriate activity is all related to, you know, animal husbandry to ecology. Like we were able to reach out to our local soil and water office.
And they have a full-time educator. Who's got to come, you know, multiple times a week and she can do some of the soil health activities with the kids. They can make a plant and they can see the difference of rain and runoff between, you know, bare dirt versus dirt with grass in it. You know, just kind of a lot of that hands-on stuff for kids to get them exposed to that.
And then the interactive part of it, I guess, too, they kind of have a journal that there'll be keeping all week long. And at the end of the week, they will take photos all week long and they get to put kind of like photos of them at camp, in their journal. So it's a way for them to share that experience again at home and with family.
I guess it kind of helps ties again, all those pieces in with that. And then our. Our very last week, the farm camp is for the older kids. So to really get hands-on, we kind of, we're calling it our Farmer in training camp. So it's kids like 15 to 18 where they're working. Like they're going to build infrastructure on the farm.
They're going to be to process poultry. So they're going to be, you know, exposed to the very hands-on part of things on the farm. So many kids, especially in that age group, I mean, they love it. They want to see the fruits of their labor. They want to have their hands in the dirt, you know?
And so I'm excited for that piece too, to kind of have I guess both like the fun and play and educational side. And then the really hands-on side to that too, I think helps meet kind of, both of those are all of those missions in there are goals of farm camp.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:15:18] Well in blending your past experience as an educator, too, you know, with your current experience as a farmer, that's great to see that you're able to use that and that you're passionate about both and you can kind of work them in together well. Yeah. Kind of going back, I guess a little bit too, to partnerships, you kind of touched on working with other local farms.
and I know that that is an area not only of, you know, interests, but also, you know, it's a very beneficial on both sides to the other farms that you work with to Evan's Family Farm. So how do you view collaboration and networking with other businesses and what are some of the best practices that you have learned?
Jessica Evans: [00:15:54] Yeah, so we've done it in two ways. I mean, we've done it, I guess from a wholesale perspective, you know, like 30% of our sales is beef, but we probably only grow 10% of the beef that we sell. And so being able to keep that inventory up, like our sales far surpassed earlier than we expected our ability to grow certain species, particularly beef they just occupied a lot of land.
And so those have been beneficial, I guess, for both. And, you know, we feature a lot of the farms that we wholesale from on our website. Like again, back to that transparency and that people can continue to learn about that farm doesn't have, you know, they don't have a social media presence, they don't market, you know, directly at all.
So to help kind of, I just get the word out about how much agriculture is in our community. I think those partnerships help a lot with that. And then even just, I guess, sending customers to where they can find things that we don't have. So we do wholesale some things for our delivery customers, such as honey, you know, something that we don't grow, but our customers, you know, we wanted to kind of make one stop shopping available for a lot of our delivery customers.
We partner during the summer with some produce farms to offer just a general, like a one size box. Again, going back to that convenience, you know, customers are paying for delivery. Now they can get you know, they can get meat and they can get produce. And they can get honey, they can get a couple of different things, kind of all wrapped in one.
And then it helps, I guess, just split the marketing for, you know, multiple farms. You know, some of those produce farms will offer, you know, whole chickens. For example, we keep it simple to their customers. Just that, you know, mutual benefit where we don't have to, sometimes this farms, you feel like, you know, a lot of Farmers are very isolated and they feel like they're an island of their own, but we expect ourselves to produce everything, but our customers don't.
And so that's just like a pressure we put on ourselves strangely, for some reason. And the more you interact with customers, like they just want to know where it comes from. They don't think you have to produce it all. Like that's okay with them and you kind of hear that and there's that. Oh, okay. I'm okay. I don't have to do everything, you know, as long as I can kind of create this network and point people in the right direction, like that just helps everybody.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:17:44] For sure. Well, I think it's so important to think about not only convenience for the buyer, but convenience for the farmer too. So you need to save time, you know, how do you. Improve efficiencies on the farm, or how do you work with another farm to, you know, be able to provide products that they're interested in buying from that farm, but they can also buy it from your farm through a partnership.
So it's like you said, you're truly beneficial. What are some platforms. Or integrations that you use through your business as well. I know you touched on social and how important it is to do marketing. You also offer delivery and direct to market to consumer. So maybe tell us a little bit more about some of the platforms that you use as well as some of the integrations.
Jessica Evans: [00:18:26] So I use, I mean, everything on the Barn2Door platform for the most part, we've been kind of with Barn2Door from the very beginning. So it's been neat to be able to see the software evolve, to meet the needs of farmers in each piece that rolls out has been something that's been really convenient to us.
Even the ability to invoice a customer, so maybe they miss the order deadline, but they want to add a couple of things to their order. You know, they can email me. I can just invoice them for that item, you know, and add it on there really easily. The shipping integration has been huge. We definitely hope to grow that side of the business as well.
Right now we ship maybe a couple of boxes a month. But being able to purchase that, you know, straight through the platform automatically send the shipping number and stuff to the customer. It's not an extra thing that I have to do. And then keeping schedules organized because there's some days where we have multiple, you know, we have delivery and we have on-farm pick up and we have market pickup like all on the same day.
So being able to keep that organized because my brain can't do that. That key piece to scheduling and kind of pick lesson pack list has also been really essential because again, you want to offer convenience to your customer, but they only tolerate you messing up their order so many times before they're going to go somewhere else.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:19:31] Yeah, that that's helpful to know. Finding ways to, you know, like I said, that's the saving time, but also to ensure, you know, that they have a consistent experience across the board too. Do you use any of the other integrations? Like, are you familiar with the MailChimp integration and how has that allowed you to interact with your buyers?
Obviously through social, but through newsletters and emails and campaigns as well?
Jessica Evans: [00:19:55] Yeah, absolutely. We've been using the Mailchimp integration. We had already been using MailChimp, so it just made sense to link the two accounts, you know, once that became an option and it helped us really more to the databases. So kind of had an email list on MailChimp, but they weren't necessarily our Barn2Door customers.
You know, some people were before we were on having online platform to start in-person market customers. So that integration is super helpful. Not only just for like weekly order reminders we probably send a newsletter out like once a month with more detailed with pictures and happenings on the farm.
And therefore we can then, you know, not only can we do order reminders to maybe our market customers, now we can do kind of newsletter stuff to our online customers that, you know, they didn't have that in-person interaction. And so that really lets us kind of merge both audiences and market, you know, the multiple things that we do to that customer base as well.
That one's been really huge. Tax jar is amazing because I can never remember to file my taxes on time. So thank you for auto file that saves my life. This is for sales taxes. It's again, it's just one of those other to do things that, you know, your boots deep in the field, doing something else you don't remember to go calculate your sales taxes and send them every quarter.
And that integration has been asked him and then the QuickBooks integration coming out now, too. It's also super helpful. It's just, again, one less step to go through instead of having to, you know, download bank information into my QuickBooks, you know, and then tell it that Barn2Door stuff is sales or, you know, vice versa now. Even our, our point of sale platform and now Barn2Door are both integrated into that. So again, just things that make life simpler. Because being a small business and being an entrepreneur for those that know what that's like, you know, you're talking to sales and marketing and HR and quality control and, you know, well, those are all the same person that we were all those different hats. You know, again with accounting and things like that too.
So anything that makes us think simpler I guess just enables our growth as well. If I can't file my taxes on time, the business isn't going to survive very long. So, you know, little things that help do all those, you know, I guess just one, one source to put everything together definitely helps with growth as well.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:21:55] Speaking of growth too. You kind of touched on a little bit early on shipping and how you're looking to expand that. And you also have delivery too. So maybe share a little bit more about your experience this past year working. Direct to market, not only online, but thinking about how can we get these products door to door delivery to our consumers, or, you know, ship them if they're there outside of the delivery or pickup zone. So how has that been able to expand our reach as a farm, but also how are you able to save time as you add more to your business?
Jessica Evans: [00:22:25] Yeah. So, I mean, just having those organized and convenient and then limiting your radius too. So when I first, you know, I get big eyes and big ideas sometimes when we first started home delivery, you know, it gets tempting to look at your map of zip codes near you, and then draw like a gigantic hundred mile radius.
And I was like, wait a minute. I don't want to drive all those places. That doesn't make sense that doesn't save me time, you know? And that's another thing too, just with our network of farms. We have some farms that have been kind of mentors from the beginning to us that we, you know, sit down with like, Hey, when we were thinking of adding home delivery, I sat down, you know, with this other farmer, like, what would you say?
You know, what are your do's and don'ts, how should we start? You know, what's been your experience, what do you use? And so that was a huge piece too. And that was a key piece of advice we got from them was definitely to limit that. You know, customers that can't, you know, aren't in that radius. If they really want yourself, they're going to get you the farmer's market.
They're going to come pick up on farm and it's okay to not make everybody happy. It's okay to send somebody else to another farm that you can't reach. Like that's fine. Don't feel like you have to. Please everybody because you just to spend your life driving in circles. And so I picked a radius that was convenient for us kind of a direction.
We were already going with our wholesale route. So we only go for us towards Charlotte and kind of in a radius in and around that. Our market is in the opposite direction. It's North of us versus the South. And we don't have home delivery yet in that area. If there grew demand for it, we can add it, but so far, it's not something we have customers asking for.
So. We just keep it simple. That has helped immensely. We definitely push that particularly the off season when we don't have markets. We definitely try to advertise our home delivery a little bit more, and then also kind of bringing customers onto our subscription program as well to keep sale in an income in a revenue going year round.
We can't quite replicate what we do at our two Saturday markets, but hopefully we can get there one day. And shipping helps as well. I mean, we have some customers that are within driving distance that still pay for shipping. And, you know, again, it's just convenient for them. You know, there's, everybody values convenience a different way.
You know, whether they are willing to make the drive for the time, whether they just want it dropped at the door and that's fine, then that lets you kind of meet those people's needs too. And again, I went into that with big eyes and I said, sure, we can go everywhere. Like there's dry ice. I can ship anywhere it's fine. And then when I shipped a Turkey to California from here last year, I was like, all right, nothing. Wasn't the Mississippi. That was ridiculous. Like I could not make any money doing that. I need to keep it simple. So we definitely cut that radius down. And again, it was just after experience, you know, shipping a 25 pound Turkey with 10 pounds of dry ice to California is not profitable.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:24:56] And like you said, it's valuable experience, so, you know, you'll live and you'll learn and you realize, okay, this didn't work. We'll, we'll do it different next time. So definitely an experience I'm sure that you learn from pretty quickly there. So, I guess one of my last questions is kind of.
Wrapping up here. What final piece of advice would you have for Farmers who are looking to sell direct? Maybe they're a little bit curious about how to get started or maybe they are just now starting and don't know where to go in terms of growing at scale, how do they continue to grow at scale? You also mentioned the importance of recurring cashflow. So what would you say is your final piece of advice for those folks?
Jessica Evans: [00:25:36] I guess my piece of advice would be to kind of focus on one thing at a time. I mean, look at what you're already doing and what's most successful. Whether it's what product is more profitable for you or what sales stream right now is most profitable for you. If you do multiple markets or even using your MailChimp information or your customer information on Barn2Door or whatever platform you're using to see customers zip codes that they're ordering.
So if you're thinking of adding home delivery, You know, and you're thinking of trying to decide the radius will look where your customers already are. You know, where does your customer base your customer demographic tend to come from and kind of use of the data that you can, even some of your social media data, you know, if you've never clicked on that weird squiggly arrow on Instagram, it shows you your analytics.
It can give you valuable information as far as who you're marketing to, you know, who are the most people that like, or follow or interact with your posts, you know, that's who you need to direct your marketing to. So if it's, you know, if it's women and a certain age category, you're like, okay, these are probably the moms staying at home cooking, you know, then maybe you add things like recipes to your newsletter or, you know, things like that I guess when you're kind of gearing your marketing into them, probably convenience is key. Maybe they probably want home delivery. So that's where you go from there. So if you have a really wide following, you know, on social, that's all across the country. Maybe shipping is something to explore as well.
And then talking to other farms, I guess that would be my second piece, you know, I like to talk to strangers, so I've gotten lots of well meant and helpful advice sometimes not so helpful, but that's fine to you. They take a little from here and there. But learning from other people's experience. Yeah. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can ask them any, what works for them, what would they advise? What would they not advise? And you could, I think, learn a lot and help you make the right decision on where to go from there.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:27:16] Speaking of where to go. What's next for Evan's Family Farm?
Jessica Evans: [00:27:20] In like two days, we'll be closing an additional 70 acres to our farm. And then there's a 30 acre lease with that. So we're going to go from managing and producing on 10 acres. So managing and producing on 110 acres, which is very, both scary and exciting. But that's going to allow us to take over the growth and production.
Of a lot of the things that we've been partnering with. You know, we want to grow more beef. We just don't have land to do more beef. We want to grow more sheep and more pigs. And we, you know, just haven't had the land base to do that. So those partnerships were a little bit forced by our own limitations, but this definitely lets us start doing a lot more of that.
Of kind of producing our own things, as well as even increasing the agritourism side of things, you know, offering, you know, farm stays or, you know, the teacher in me being a, developing an internship program where we could possibly have like an onsite intern for the future. So those are things that we're looking forward to, for sure.
We're super excited about those possibilities. It's all ajoining land too. It was all part of the same farm, maybe a couple generations ago. So it'd be able to kind of bring it back together. I don't know maybe that's the like idealist in me or, you know, I'm reminiscing, but it's cool to just to think of it as one singular unit again, and to kind of use it continuously I guess for the same purpose and to. To improve it as well. You know, it's definitely been managed differently than we will manage it. So it'll be neat to see, you know, before and after, you know, in the coming years, it comes from regenerative management for that land.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:28:43] That's great. Well, congratulations that's awesome news to hear that you're continuing to grow and to expand. And I just love the creativity behind how you're expanding too. You know, thinking outside the box, I think is so important, especially as we look ahead, like you said to the next generation of farmers to being able to teach them and to educate them about regenerative farming.
So thank you so much, Jessica, for the conversation. I truly enjoyed talking to you and just learning a little bit more about your story as well as a little bit more about the direction that Evan's Family Farm has had today. So awesome.
Jessica Evans: [00:29:17] Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's been fun to share I'm happy to share our mistakes and our, and our successes at the same time.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:29:24] Other farmers can learn from your experience, like you said, and also to be able to kind of take some of those best practices and apply them to their farm as well. So thank you again.
Jessica Evans: [00:29:34] Yeah, thanks.