Ahhh, to have the morning to myself! I slept in until 10 today, which is unheard of for me but sometimes a girl's exhausted. Not milking until 8 o'clock tonight. At this moment the Monahans and the Neilsons are meeting to sign papers! Fraga Farm will become Fraga Creamery and the business exchange will begin tomorrow. For me, this means helping out in every way possible. We're just two weeks away from kidding time and before too long I will be spending long nights in the barn with my hand up a goat.
Here are some ideas I have for the new business:
New packaging...new company means a new label. I think it should be simplified and made more elegant. It needs to have curb appeal to distinguish itself from other cheeses in the case.
New kinds of cheese...although I am far from a cheese expert yet, I do think Lis is right that we should make a slicing cheese like gouda.
Expand the herd...the Monahans have 35 acres, which is more than 10x the space of Fraga Farm, and Lis has been talking about upping the herd from 40 goats to 75. From a milker's perspective I think this is totally do-able.
Locally source the feed...whether it's hay from the neighbor's organic hay field (more on that exciting project in a future post) or getting spent grain from a nearby organic brewery, I say let's get the goats the best food possible from as close as possible, organically.
Farmer's Markets...I'm still not exactly sure how to sell more cheese at the market. Signs help. Yesterday we had a sign that said "try our Camembert" and lots of people came over to try it and proceeded to buy some. Samples are huge! Especially because our product is so good. Last night I found myself on a website that teaches you how to sell things to people. All the tactics struck me as manipulative, but I do think I could work on my sales pitch a little. We could have some pictures of the goats. Bring in a baby goat for petting?
Yesterday I went to the People's Co-op Farmers Market with Larry in SE Portland. We had a pretty good selling day, considering it's the middle of winter. I like working that market a lot. Being back in my old neighborhood of SE Portland, I always see a handful of friendly faces at the market and enjoy interacting with new customers. Plus I get all my groceries for the week.
So today is a big day! Although all I've done so far is eat some yogurt, take a bath and do a load of wash. My friend Laura and her husband finally got their dream farm today! The county accepted their offer to expand the plot to 10 glorious acres!! I couldn't be happy for them and look forward to when we're all partying it up farm-style in Washington County!!!
Since I'm talking about ideas for improvement and tomorrow is the first of the month, here are some more ideas for home and self improvement that I would like to take care of this month.
Go to bed earlier
Hang some hooks in the downstairs bathroom so I have somewhere to put my bathrobe
Get the studio room set up and working
Figure out how to use this excellent, ancient sewing machine sitting on my desk
Exercise more
Bake more bread, figure out how to make a real fluffy, crusty loaf
Start making cheese!!!!!
Okay, I know I've been using this blog more as a personal diary than a blog, but I swear I will do a good old-fashioned blog post real soon about all the kinds of delicious cheese we sell with pictures and all that good shit. Until then, you can read my babbles or not!
Love to you all.
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