Breaking Ground
posted on
October 2, 2015
We are breaking ground on a commercial kitchen.
This facility is being created in the basement of our house and will enable us to achieve a number of things.
- It will provide the room in which to hire employees to help with preparations of cooked foods. Demand is growing for these products and is proving a challenge for Susan to keep pace. She is looking forward to the relief!
- It will enable us to improve the quality of your life, by serving you better. Preparing a good meal in a reasonable amount of time is a daily challenge for every family. We can help, by offering you eight or ten trustworthy, tasty, and nutritious grass-based foods, that can be ready to serve in half an hour.
- We expect this facility will enable us to strengthen our business model. Doing business exclusively through farmers markets is risky. Sometimes they are great and sometimes terrible, depending on variables out of one's control, like: art shows, football games, seasonality, and weather. We are hoping by emphasizing prepared foods, we can establish on-going relationships with families that extend throughout the year, via on-line subscription.
So, we proceed with high hopes and no assurances! But isn't this normal in life? Whether in jobs, relationships, or pleasures, we take risks for improved outcomes. Sometimes they don't work out, but often they do. And if we don't take those risks, what does life become? We will keep you apprised about our new kitchen. The intention is to improve your lives and ours.
One of the many benefits of having Brendan Prendergast on-board is we are now grazing odd places, like laneways and drainage ditches, which takes extra management to execute. As our stocking rate increases, it becomes all the more important to find extra feed. Our stocking rate has increased about 30% over last year, due to growing cattle numbers, and we are concerned about feed for the winter. In the above example, five extra days of feed for the ewes was realized through Brendan's good management. Five days here and five there, and pretty soon a difference is made.
Last Sunday's dinner: kale frittata (with eight pastured eggs), out-of-date tenderloin (pan-fried with beef fat), and the last real tomato of the season. So simple and so good!
With faith in broken ground.