Exponential Farm Growth - Four Years Running, Farmer Spotlight: Honey Bee Hills Farm
We're excited to spotlight a certified organic produce Farmer, and one of our newest Farm Advisors, Liz Mason of Honey Bee Hills Farm in Prospect Hill, North Carolina. Listen as she shares her story behind becoming a Farmer, her decision to sell direct online, and how she's managed exponential growth.
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Rory: 0:26
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Rory, your host for today's podcast. We've got a great conversation for you today with one of our newest farm advisors, Liz Mason of Honey Bee Hills, located in Prospect Hill, North Carolina. Welcome Liz. Welcome to the show. It's really great to have you here. And it's great to have you as one of our newest farm advisors in the farmer advisor network. Could you maybe just start by telling us a little bit about your farm and what you produce?
Liz Mason: 0:51
Yeah, absolutely. So, we're located in Prospect Hill, North Carolina, which is the kind of north central part of North Carolina near kind of Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area. We grow about 10, depending on the season, 10 to 15 acres of organic produce. We grow year round. We grow a little bit of everything and a lot of a few things, but we grow all sorts of different annual produce. We're actually planting our strawberries today. So it's a long process of planting strawberries in October, taking care of them all winter long and trying to make sure the deer don't eat them too much. And get them ready and pollinated and ready to bring to market in, if we're lucky, late April, but most years in May.
Rory: 1:33
Great, is there anything that you guys are really excited about coming up with the fall season upon us now that you guys are excited to be offering to your customers?
Liz Mason: 1:41
Yeah, we've got for the first time this year, we've got a lot of different winter squash, some different pumpkins, gourds, some crazy squash that we got into for the first time this year. This year, we took a big leap into Brussels sprouts, which is another customer favorite. And so we went and got a small planting of Brussels sprouts to almost a quarter acre. So goal this year is to never tell anybody, "sorry, I'm sold out of Brussels sprouts".
Rory: 2:07
Could you maybe talk about what you were doing before you started your farm?
Liz Mason: 2:11
Yeah. So, my husband and I both worked in international development consulting. We were primarily working with the U.S. Agency for international development as contractors, and we specialize in monitoring and evaluation. So that's kind of the part of the job where we go out and look at the results of the projects and say, you know," Are the schools being built? Are the children actually learning how to read? And assessing the outcomes of foreign development aid in other countries. So we've been doing that for awhile and we're looking to move back to the U.S., and spend some time here for family reasons. And we ended up this property here in Prospect Hill. And had a gap in our employments we're in between contracts doing these inter national development careers and got bit by the farming bug. And then one thing kind of led to another, led to a book, led to talking to the extension office, and getting lots of help from lots of different places and figuring out that we really enjoyed and were successful at growing produce.
Rory: 3:10
That's awesome. So you talk about what the early beginnings of your like, and maybe learned from some of those experiences, as you were to build your farm out?
Liz Mason: 3:19
So our first farm our first year farming, I guess I should say was about a half acre plot and everything was set up. It was about four or five 50 by 100 foot plots. So we grew on that the first year about halfway through our first year, we bought our first high tunnel so that we can continue to grow into the winter. And we did a lot of things at the 100 row foot scale. So we had a hundred feet of radishes and a hundred feet of turnips at a hundred feet of lettuce. And we just started there and, with coming into farming with absolutely no background, no knowledge, no family history, we had to learn everything. So you spent a lot of time on YouTube, spent a lot of time listening to podcast. Once we started doing farmer's markets, we were talking to other farms and people were super helpful with sharing their experiences and helping us figure out what might work for us. And so, we started from the ground up and just really focused on figuring out what worked for us and how to do it better and how to be more efficient.
Rory: 4:17
Could you maybe talk about how your farm has changed since then and how it's grown, especially kind of on the business side? I know you guys now have some employees working for you. So obviously you've seen a lot of growth since you first started planting.
Liz Mason: 4:28
Yeah. We've doubled in size every year, for the last four years, we started about a half acre and now we're up to about 15 give or take. And so we hired our first employee in year two which was a huge education 1. From the recruiting standpoint, but then 2. From the paperwork and business owner standpoint, we'd never run a business before. We'd always been salaried employees somewhere. So figuring it out. How do you hire somebody? How do you do all your reporting? How do you file your taxes was a steep learning curve. I was full-time and my husband was going between contracts. And then very quickly he decided to join me, full-time on the farm. In year two, we hired our first employee which was a very steep learning curve as far as how to recruit somebody. Second, the paperwork and business side of it. How do you hire somebody? How do you file your taxes? How do you register with employment? Do you have to have unemployment insurance, all sorts of questions one after another. And then, the third thing, learning how to manage employees. And so our first year we were a very flat organization. We all did the same thing we're all harvesting and processing and doing things together. And as we've grown, we've added a farm manager role. And so working with my brother-in-law who manages our teams, working with him, he's working with the crew and figuring out. How to run an organization more than just, a garden and turn it into a business.
Rory: 5:47
What would maybe be some of your advice to a farmer that might be just starting to hire some additional help on the farm?
Liz Mason: 5:52
I think you need to know a lot about yourself and what you like to do and your management style and how you're going to work with your team. You know, It's never just as simple as hiring somebody, but it's about finding a person who fits in with the culture that you want to build as an organization to be able to achieve your goals. Which, if you've never hired anybody before, that might sound a little silly, but thinking through how you want to structure things and who's going to do what is super important to building the team to get the work done.
Rory: 6:19
Definitely. That's kind of almost an area of your farm brand that you don't really think about maybe from the start, but how your employees are kind of an extension of that.
Liz Mason: 6:26
Yeah, building a team. And figuring out what people are good at too, has been an interesting thing. When we first started hiring people, we just thought of the harvest as big activity, whereas really there's a lot of little different things and, somebody might not be super good at harvesting, but maybe they're really good at creating transplants and seeding. We had one woman work for us. Her secret super power was weeding. She was the best at going out and making a bed completely weed free. And so, figuring out what people's strengths and skills and interests are and figuring out how to structure your team can be really super useful.
Rory: 6:58
That's a great skill to have too, weeding. I feel like that's the one job that nobody ever wants, so that's good to have somebody around that's really good at it.
Liz Mason: 7:05
It was magical while she was here.
Rory: 7:06
Yeah, I bet. At some point along that line, you guys decided to transition your products to be able to sell them online. Could you talk about what went into that decision of moving online to sell your farm products why specifically you chose to do that with Barn2Door?
Liz Mason: 7:20
At the beginning of our pandemic, two of our five farmer's markets, the physical structure required them to close. March is a time of year when we're already planted, right? The crops are in the ground, produce is going to come up no matter what, we've already hired staff, we've got people on board and we've made these commitments. So what do we do now? So our first pivot, we did two things simultaneously, the first was to offer home delivery and we started offering home delivery, just to our customers who were around our markets that had closed. But then we realized there was a larger demand and with people, a lot of our customers were folks who were unable or uncomfortable going out in public. They were having things delivered to their homes anyway, and they were excited about the opportunity for farm fresh, organic food to come to them. So the home delivery expanded naturally at first, originally for our farmer's market customers and then into a broader audience. And then the other thing that we saw a huge demand for, we decided to start offering pre-orders and so letting people order from the farm in advance, they could grab their bag and go, they didn't have to wait in line. They could come before the market, they can come after the market, they could avoid the crowds and the rush, where there were ones. And so, we had a segment of our customers who were really interested in pre-orders. My very first iteration of attempting to do these things was a Google form and it was fine, kind of. I then used square for a while to organize our sales through their online platform. And it was okay. But when we started looking at making home delivery and pick up a permanent part of our business, we really needed a software that was flexible and understood the nuances of farming. And I looked at a number of different softwares and Barn2Door was by far the best fit for the things that we wanted to do. And so now a year and a half later, I have five different pickup sites at different times throughout the week. We have four different delivery routes that are based on zip codes and delivery times. And it got really complicated, really fast. And we appreciated the way that Barn2Door makes the data management side of it, easy, the inventory management, easy, and the reporting that comes out of the system works pretty well for our team.
Rory: 9:30
A big part of your business is your CSA program. And like you said, you're doing pre-orders and delivery. How do you set that up to make it as easy as possible for them to buy from you?
Liz Mason: 9:38
Yeah. So, we had dabbled in CSAs the past at a pretty small scale of about 10 households and had retired it, cause it really wasn't working for us from a management perspective. One of our requirements when looking for a software to use, was that it made the CSA process easier as opposed to harder. And the feedback that we've gotten from our customers, I think we like Barn2Door because all levels of customers can use it. We have customers who want to go, and they pay for it and they never have to think about it again, and it's just done and they don't have to worry about it. We then have customers who get the smallest size share, but they really want more produce. And so they go into the system every week and they order add on items. And the Barn2Door software just allows, on the back end, everything gets combined. So when we're packing the orders, we just get all that information in one, and we're not looking at multiple places for it. And then, a third thing is, the newer feature where you can pay for the subscription as you go, which is great. Some people want to pay up front and we offer them a discount for paying up front. And then folks who want to pay by the week, they just put in their credit card information and it's like any online subscription where it gets billed and you don't have to worry about it going forward.
Rory: 10:49
What's kind of the feedback been from your customers has that kind of made the process easier for them?
Liz Mason: 10:53
Yeah. I think for the people who just pay once and never interact again, they're satisfied. With whatever system we chose it really makes it easier for people who want to interact with the farm on a more frequent basis and get those add on items. It also makes it easier for customers who go in and out of the CSA program. So we run a year-round CSA, but we split it into three seasons. So a lot of people want the summer produce, but they don't necessarily want to sign up for the winter CSA, which I get . I really like greens and roots, but if you don't like kale, you're going to get a little bored sometimes, and so this week we actually transitioned all our summer CSA to our fall CSA. And what using Barn2Door has made possible is that our folks who were in that summer CSA, but didn't want to sign up for the fall CSA, they went on the website today and they just ordered a basket of whatever they wanted delivered. And so they can still be our customers. They can still interact with the same platform without having to make any changes of being a CSA customer or not being a CSA customer.
Rory: 11:47
That's awesome. You can keep them around still, not necessarily have that change of seasons mean that you lose your customers. It's great that you can still engage with them and have them still be buying from you. So we've kind of talked a little bit about your delivery program and it sounds like it has become a pretty major part of your business. How did you go about establishing that program?
Liz Mason: 12:05
So the first thing that we did, we had about a week notice before farmers markets closed. And so that last market that we went to, we asked everybody to give us their email addresses and said, "we're going to be offering delivery to your area. We'll send you an email, we'll try to stay in touch". I want to say that was maybe 30 people, it was pretty small. After that, we went onto social media and advertised specifically the communities around the few markets that were closed. And out of that process, we have people coming and asking, "oh, well, , I'm not in Hillsborough, I'm in Durham. Can you deliver to me?" And we're like, sure, we'll do that. Well we grew our audience through social media for awhile. And then, we've done a little bit of advertising on Facebook. And then we also advertised last year on our local NPR station.
Rory: 12:48
So you mean you've done a mix of both organic social media posting as well as the paid ads?
Liz Mason: 12:52
Yes. Oh, we also, our big physical advertisement is that we wrapped our van. So our delivery van has some cool graphics on the side of it for our Goodness Grown Goodness Deliveries slogan.
Rory: 13:04
Well, I know you guys recently signed up and have been using the Routific integration to manage that delivery program. What's kind of your experience been with Routific so far?
Liz Mason: 13:13
Yeah. So, we really liked the integration with Routific. And you know, the fact that it's a one button click to move our data from Barn2Door into the routing software. You know, We've had a little bit of challenges with internet access where we are. I don't have a stable data connection. But in general, you know, we were using a different software before. And, using routing software has been great, definitely saves time.
Rory: 13:36
Mmhmm. That's good to hear. I think definitely something we're hope to continue to work with them on just optimizing that more and more for Farmers. So we definitely want that feedback from farmers, the good and the bad and hopefully take that make it even better. So, I guess we kind of already touched on some of your social media and how you've gone about advertising and your vans that are decaled, which is awesome. But also through your social media, the email marketing, could you maybe share your approach to social media how you choose which content to share with your audience?
Liz Mason: 14:03
I try to do one social media post per day. Six days a week, I will sometimes take Sunday off and get a little rest. I like to take pretty pictures and show, there's a lot of views to see here on the farm, which is nice to share. you know, I like to share a little bit about our process and what we do, how we farm, it's important to us that we are organic and that we follow organic practices. And our goal is to take care of the earth and grow, high quality nutritious food. So trying to share a little bit about how we do that. And I think also just a little bit of transparency goes a long way. I post a lot of pretty pictures, but there's a lot of not pretty stuff on a farm. Historically we've had salad mix year round and a lot of our markets, we're the only people with it this summer. We're one of very few farms with it in the winter. And we just lost all of our lettuce to a insect that came in and ate it pretty much all within 48 hours and destroyed it. Kind of sharing a little bit about " okay, so we don't have lettuce at the market this week, and this is why and this is what happened and this is how we deal with it organically. And this is what we're doing to try to make sure it doesn't happen again." But, it's not always pretty and it's frequently not easy and cool to be a farmer. Sharing both sides, I think people appreciate that. People like having updates about like, what's coming next and what crops are here. you know, also understanding why certain things aren't available at different times of year, either just because the seasonality of it is possible to grow at what points of the year in North Carolina or, you know, the the challenges we face in losing a crop to disease or to pests. This summer we had very little rain and we actually ended up tilling some crops in because we didn't have enough water in our well, to be able to water them. And so, there's a lot that goes on. It's why sharing and letting people know where their food comes from is a good way to connect with your customers and your community.
Rory: 15:43
What's the feedback from your community been on a lot of those things?
Liz Mason: 15:46
People have been really supportive. I feel like in general, people want you to succeed, and especially if they understand where your failures and weaknesses have happened and what you're doing to address them. They're still going to be interested in your farm and, seeing you succeed as a farm, and come back once that crop is available again. It's been overwhelmingly positive. I think it's also been interesting to have conversations with people at the farmer's market about " oh, I didn't know this was that hard," or "I didn't know that was a challenge." And so the education side of it has been really interesting because, I've only been farming for four years, right? So 5, 6, 7 years ago, I didn't understand the seasonality of vegetables. Right. And why can't I go to the farmer's market and buy a cucumber, that's grown in the field in November? And so education's been a huge thing for us as farmers and being able to share some of that knowledge and understanding of the seasons and organic and stewardship has been a really interesting part of the farm and something that, you know, I think we're blessed to be able to share with people.
Rory: 16:49
And that's really cool that you guys have been able that through social too. That people don't to go your farm and go to the farmer's market and talk with you there, but able to conveniently provide that a different way, and then hopefully that them making purchase from you down the road.
Liz Mason: 17:03
Two years ago, three years ago, we had all these plans about how we were going to be open to the public and people were going to come out here and we were going to have a farm stand. And then, last spring, when the pandemic started up, it was a hard stop for us. And so social media has given us a way to reach out to people and connect to people and give them that connection to the farm, even though, we're not necessarily set up this point in time to be able to welcome them in person, on site.
Rory: 17:27
So you guys are certified organic. How does your organic certification established loyalty and trust among your buyers, then also contribute to your overall brand?
Liz Mason: 17:36
The reason that we initially signed up for organic certification was the signaling aspect of it. It makes it very clear to customers that we have a certain set of standards and, we farm by those standards. There can sometimes be some misconceptions about what organic actually means. And so, also being able to help people understand what our organic practice is and what makes it different than, some conventional practices or other ways of farming that are in between the two.
Rory: 18:05
Definitely. So how do you kind of use that certification, to help you communicate with buyers? Are you actively trying to promote that?
Liz Mason: 18:12
It's definitely something that our organic certification that we talk about. And I talk about it on social media. I talk about it with customers at the farmer's market. For us, it's just an easy way to communicate, what the quality standard is that we follow.
Rory: 18:26
Around your farm brand, organic is a word that kind of translates a lot. What would be some of those other words that you try to have associated, with the Honey Bee Hills brand?
Liz Mason: 18:34
Yeah, I think high quality is important to us. So, we like to provide high quality produce, food safety is super important to us. We do also do some wholesale and in order to do wholesale, there's all sorts of different rules and regulations that you have to follow. The good agricultural practices gap is one of the gold standards here in the U.S. for wholesale. We have not become gap certified, because it is costly process and it's not something that need right now for the small amount of wholesale that we do. But we are GAP compliant. And so, we've taken a lot of additional food safety steps that smaller farms don't necessarily go through. So, food safety, I think it's super important to us. And I think to our customers as well.
Rory: 19:17
Well going back to some of the ways that connecting with customers, have you utilized the MailChimp integration to reach customers through email?
Liz Mason: 19:24
Yeah, It's been great. We use MailChimp for two weekly newsletters and I was actually using MailChimp before we switched over to Barn2Door. So, it's a platform that I like and I've used for a while, and so, I felt lucky that that was also Barn2Door's chosen email newsletter service to integrate into, and so it's really nice that anybody who purchases something in my store automatically is signed up for my general weekly newsletter. I don't have to do any additional work to add those contacts. And so that's great. It just happens automatically. So, I send out a Monday newsletter with kind of goings on about the farm the new products we have in the store, any updates about which markets we'll be at, or details for deliveries for the week. And then I also use MailChimp to do an email every week to our CSA members, which includes what's going to be in the CSA, any recipes or cooking tips, and then also an integration back into Barn2Door with some links on if there's anything that they might want to add to their CSA for that week. And so, the buttons that can be added into the emails that highlight certain products to them. Super useful because I can highlight the products and then it makes it easy for customers to find exactly where to purchase those in the online store.
Rory: 20:31
That's really cool. You make those recommended products your ad-ons and hopefully nudge customers towards adding on some extra produce to their regular CSA. Do you guys actively try and collect more email addresses to try and grow that audience for the newsletter?
Liz Mason: 20:44
It is on the website that Barn2Door built for us, so it's on all those pages that people can sign up. And then I also use the Facebook integration for MailChimp, so it posts to our Facebook account, a link to the weekly newsletter so people can click on that and sign up that way.
Rory: 21:00
And then in terms of the return on some of those newsletters, have seen much success in terms of those newsletters actually translating to sales and people clicking on those product recommendations and things like that?
Liz Mason: 21:09
I think about 80% of our online sales come within six hours of the Monday newsletter that I send out. So there's a really direct correlation between sending out my weekly newsletter and people placing their weekly orders for delivery or pickup.
Rory: 21:25
Would you say of goes for both of those newsletters that you send out? The CSA one and your general farm update one?
Liz Mason: 21:30
Yes. Most of our orders come through the farm update. And then the CSA people tend to order throughout the week. I have a lot more contact with the CSA folks because we have a private Facebook group where we share recipes and what people are cooking for the week, and then I run into them at the farmer's market and things like that. So the CSA group tends, to be interacted with a little bit more than our larger email lists.
Rory: 21:51
Yeah, that's something I think a lot of people find the CSA or subscription format does enable you to have that recurring interaction with customers. Could you maybe speak to that and how that has helped ensure you sell all your produce and how having recurring customers and recurring engagement kind of locks in your audience a little better?
Liz Mason: 22:07
Yeah. So I think having a subscription option is really nice to get people into a weekly interaction with the farm. And so, some people we have the subscription is the only thing that they interact with us on, and they get their weekly delivery and that's it. We have another equally large group of people who really like to add things onto their orders. And so they have our green subscription or they have the small produce subscription. And then they add things on. And so being able to interact with them on a weekly basis and send them email updates about what's going on with the farm is that thing that jogs the memory of like, 'oh yeah, I need to go put those things in my cart. So, the subscription format is really nice for us as a farm because it creates those longterm relationships. It also helps smooth out our sales. So, when you're really reliant on farmer's markets, they can be weather dependent, for example or this weekend was the UNC v. Duke football game, and so all of a sudden our foot traffic at the market plummeted to almost zero at 11:30, because the game started, so subscription can help us know, in advance what that demand is going to be, spread it out over the season, and make it a regular thing. The online platform allows us to manage it in a way that makes it a little bit easier, like if somebody wants to skip a week or double up, they're going to be on vacation this week, they can double up the week after, and it helps us manage that data. The CSA subscription has also allowed us to expand into some interesting crops beyond just the basics, things that people may not necessarily pick up, like if you go to a farmer's market and you're picking your five vegetables, it may not be the thing that you pick up, but if it shows up at your house, and you have the challenge to cook it or eat it before it goes bad, all of a sudden you might find that you like this new thing, even though it's not something that you would have necessarily picked up at the farmer's market. And so helped us as a farm try new things. And with very few exceptions, we've always gotten positive feedback on those more interesting vegetables and, offer them in the future again. So that's, been really interesting able to diversify the things that we grow.
Rory: 24:10
And it sounds like you guys don't give customers the option to pick and choose what's going to be in their CSA, so how does having a set box help you manage your inventory and make sure are all those products, even if it's something that people wouldn't pick out at a farmer's market.
Liz Mason: 24:23
Yeah, for our produce CSA, we offer two different subscription sizes, so people who are not picky eaters or are interested in vegetables across the board, they'll get the larger subscription, and then customers who want fewer vegetables will get the smaller option. Our process as a farm for packaging things is relatively streamlined because all the bags are the same, we can set things up and do them assembly line fashion, and gives us a production plan for the week that as long as everything grows properly and as long as we can harvest it. And as long as my powers are prediction on Sunday night, when I'm making all these things up holds true, we can go through and create these set bags for everybody for their delivery day, or pickup day.
Rory: 25:00
So, as a final question, what do you kind of hope to accomplish next at Honey Bee Hills as you guys are continuing to grow, which is awesome to hear that you've had such consistent growth year over year. But what do you hope to kind of tackle next?
Liz Mason: 25:11
Yeah. So, I mean, we've, essentially hit our physical boundaries here on the farm. We broken land on almost all of our acres that we could plant. And so, you know, for us on the farming side, now we're looking at efficiency and density and crop health. How do we maintain our momentum? Have fewer crop losses? Have higher yields? You know kind of those more technical aspects of farming. We're definitely looking to continue to grow our CSA program. We don't think that we have maxed that out at all. We have more that we grow and more that we would love to offer our communities. You know, And then another thing that we're really looking at going forward is reducing use of plastics as much as we can. And so, we've switched over to paper-based products wherever we can. We're trying to minimize our single use plastic here on the farm, in our farming practices, and so figuring out how to support home delivery, how to support pickup options and farmer's markets, it's an interesting challenge in the food realm. Just because our food systems are super based on plastics, at least specifically organic food are based on use of plastics, and so we're trying to figure that out and move forward and decrease that where we can.
Rory: 26:14
That's great to hear. I'm excited to hear how that keeps going for you guys. I want to extend my, thanks to Liz joining us on this weeks podcast episode. Here at Barn2Door, we are humbled to support thousands of farms across the country, including farmers like Liz who implement sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities. For more information on Honey Bee Hills, visit honeybeehillsfarm.com. To learn more about Barn2Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm, go to barn2door.com/resources. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Bye.