Saturday, October 17, 2009

Farmers Market Treats

Well I arrived this morning at farmers market with the bank's clock logging 22 degrees! Yes, that's right. After being there for 17 years, I have never seen it this cold in a fall market. Usually the mornings are in the 40's. Slow to start, it picked up and folks admired my new photos of our pigs listing over like ships in their favorite wallow. One customer asked to buy the poster! I had to laugh as I struggle on my own to market this farm on a shoestring-and that pic was taken with a cell phone. Ah, technology! Small farms typically have neither the funds nor the techno savvy to launch a 'marketing campaign' and thus we all do the best with what we have. Our 'marketing' has morphed over the years from trifold brochures made on my IBM huge computer, to poster board pics mounted on a display, to photo albums, to flyers with at least 5 recipes for the meats I was selling each and every market. Things have changed so much over the years with an ever-changing repertoire of cheese styles and meats-we used to raise the only certified organic grass fed beef for market. And brought recipes for that too. It just became too much. Why this explanation? Due to a lack of a marketing budget, back in 1998, we needed a website. So I took a course and made one. It too had undergone many changes, mistakes, improvements. So when my last hosting package became close to expiration-with my archaic software- I decided to move my site and re-design. Herein, the apologies. Our site www.sheepcheese.com is down as I re-build it. It should be live again in the next few days.

So after market and a longggggggggg shower, I decided to treat myself to some goodies and delve into the website. I bought a Sarabande, made by Dancing Cow Farm, a bottle of Lunetta Prosecco, and a lovely little almond buttercrunch cake from Farmhouse Kitchen for afterwards from the farmers market. Cheese was fantastic, wonderfully meaty flavors married with the subtle sweetness of the prosecco and the cake-well, heavenly.

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