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Telling An Authentic Story with Ashley Clark: Keeping Maple Traditions Alive
202 Plays5 years ago
Hear from Ashley Clark as she shares how her seasonal Family Farm, Sacred Roots Maple, sold out after adding shipping and delivery options for their customers.
Show Notes:
https://www.sacredrootsmaple.com/
https://www.barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to Farm Success Factors
00:00:03
Speaker
to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers to save time and to increase your direct farm sales and business.
Interview with Ashley Clark on Farm Essentials
00:00:23
Speaker
We're glad you're here.
00:00:25
Speaker
Today we are having a conversation with Ashley Clark from Sacred Roots Maple. It was great to connect with her to learn more about her family story and how their farm's history is rooted in keeping maple traditions alive. Their focus on price, quality, convenience, and brand has empowered this family farm to share their story, expand their reach, and ultimately increase sales.
00:00:47
Speaker
I'm delighted to introduce you to Ashley, one of our newest members of the Farm Advisory Network. Welcome, Ashley. Great to have you here. Why don't you introduce yourself, how you got into farming and selling direct online? Yes, thank you so much for having me, Alyssa. I was really excited to be a part of this today. We got started at the beginning of the summer. We have been trying to sell our products
00:01:09
Speaker
online, just using social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, lots of word of mouth. I'm sure we'll get into it. But when we bought the farm from the original owner, he had a lot of connections as well. So we were able to continue that. But we were starting to notice things were becoming a bit hectic. We were getting orders from like multiple places and just the sticky notes in life were just, it was just getting a little bit crazy. And we really
00:01:36
Speaker
I felt like we wanted to be able to streamline things to make things really simple, not just for us, but for the customer because it's so much easier to be able to go on a website for me speaking personally, go online, click, purchase, and be able to get my product when I want it. And I really felt, we felt that we wanted to move in that direction to make things easier for people to be able to access maple syrup, good quality pure maple syrup, not just going to the grocery store.
00:02:02
Speaker
I love how you touched on the importance of providing quality products that are also convenient to purchase. Both are essential to a large majority of potential customers when they are looking to make a purchasing decision.
Sacred Roots Maple: Founding and Evolution
00:02:13
Speaker
Tell us more about the story of Sacred Roots Maple, how it was founded, and how the business has evolved over the years.
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, the property that we own, we purchased it. So we bought the farm in the home in 2016. But Ben has actually been involved in sugaring for 20 plus years. He actually started as a young teen working here at the farm with the original owner.
00:02:36
Speaker
just learning about the property, learning about the trees, the process. So he's really been involved very closely with the entire process of triggering. And so for me, when I met Ben and I married Ben, it was a brand new experience for me. I didn't really grow up drinking regular.
00:02:52
Speaker
pure maple syrup, it wasn't really something I gave much thought to. But when we got married and we purchased the farm, it just really became our lifestyle. We've been able to jump really quickly into the process of replacing all of our regular sugars with maple, just making it a regular lifestyle for us and being able to live on the property with our farm.
00:03:14
Speaker
right here has just been such a blessing to be able to truly live out that lifestyle of, you know, living off the land and being able to gain resources from our property and being able to share that with other people. So we really love that full circle of having these maple trees, being able to take care of them. We call them a tree shepherd because it truly is being passionate about the trees. Yes, it's not animals, but these are our
00:03:39
Speaker
our property pieces and we just really, we really love them and we want to be able to keep their health top focus as well as being able to optimize the productivity of what they can produce.
00:03:53
Speaker
Great to hear that what started as a passion project for your family has turned into a thriving business and how over the years you remain focused on your roots, taking care of the land and trees while providing quality products for your customers.
Maple Syrup Production Methods
00:04:07
Speaker
I know you and Ben take pride in being able to start and finish the cycle of creating maple syrup directly at your farm. Walk us through that process.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So we, we live on 68 acres of a maple farm. So we have so many maple trees. I can't even quite give you a good number, but it's just a wonderful location to be able to do this. And so we literally from start to finish are doing everything right here on the property. So Ben cuts and splits all of the wood, not just for the sugar house, but for our home as well. So he's out in the woods often like logging and finding wood that we can use. And then we also.
00:04:44
Speaker
collect only the sap from our property on our farm. Don't take sap from other farms. We really pride ourselves on being able to do everything right here on this farm. The sap comes directly from our trees right here and everything flows right into our sugar house. For the most part, we do have to sometimes collect the sap
00:05:00
Speaker
and other locations on the farm, but we're able to have all of this that brought in. And then we actually continue. So we are up to speed with the newest technology with the maple industry. We use the lines and the vacuum system and we have a reverse osmosis, but we still use a wood fired evaporator because A, we have so much wood that it just makes the most sense for us. But we really do think that it impacts the flavor of the syrup. So we really love to be able to just keep everything right here on the property.
00:05:30
Speaker
And then obviously we do all of our bottling, our canning here, and we make all of our products that we have, like maple cream, maple sugar, maple melts here as well, all by hand. It's really, it all starts here, it all finishes here, and it's something that we want to continue. We've talked about if we were to expand, what would that look like? But to us, we're right at the size that we like because we keep it all here, do the work here, and really be able to keep that story that we really are passionate about.
00:05:57
Speaker
What a unique and inspiring story. Being able to see the product go all the way through that process is something that you can share with your customers and is at the core of your brand identity.
Building an Online Farm Community
00:06:08
Speaker
With your commitment to living simply while keeping Maple traditions alive, tell us about what motivated your decision to grow your business online.
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think a big part, I absolutely love being part of the online community because you can meet so many great people and hear their stories. And I think that's the part that I really feel is what connects people to farming. I think that there's this huge disconnect often, but once people can connect with a family or a group of people and hear their story,
00:06:38
Speaker
they feel like they're also part of the experience and the process too. So yeah, people aren't necessarily coming out and tapping our trees and making the maple syrup, but they can get to know us by visiting us or reading about us online. And they feel like they're part of the connection. So maybe when they order a thing of maple syrup and it's sitting on their table for breakfast, they're able to talk about, Hey, like this is from upstate New York and this is how they, they boiled this to make this. And it gains more of an appreciation and
00:07:06
Speaker
I think that's something that we really find valuable when we're looking for farms to connect with or buying our meat or other products locally. We try to really hear that story so that we can support that group or that family and continue that process.
00:07:22
Speaker
Establishing an online community and sharing your farm story with them gives your customers the ability to not only connect with you, but to interact with you as well, from communicating through social media channels, to newsletters, emails, and ultimately your website, where they can purchase directly from you. What was the experience like working with the Barn to Door team to build your site and e-commerce store?
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, I really, I think for me, I really appreciated that initial getting to know the person that I was working with. They took time to hear about us. They took time to learn about us so that they could then take that story component or just learning more about us and adding that into the website and the store concept. So to us, that was really valuable. We had, I had a phenomenal experience. I was the one that mostly dealt with.
00:08:10
Speaker
The bond to door staff and I had such a great experience. I'm not super great with the web design and all of that So they were super patient They were flexible with my schedule knowing that I have a small child and that we're busy So it was just a really great experience from beginning to end and still even now getting the support even just this week and we had a ton of sales over the holidays and I had some questions that came up and
00:08:33
Speaker
And if they couldn't find the answer, they tried to find it from someone else in the staff. So we just, we speak very highly of that because we've had such a great experience. It's wonderful to hear how you're experiencing such great success with sales this year, especially over these past few weeks during the holidays.
00:08:53
Speaker
On this podcast, we love to talk about levers, price, quality, brand, and convenience. Things you can do to build momentum for your business and keep growing. Tell us about what levers resonate with you the most.
Brand Storytelling and Pricing Strategy
00:09:08
Speaker
a great question. I think the brand, again, I come back to just our story and our lifestyles. We're a young couple, a young family that just really have a passion for taking care of the land. I think when I talk about the meaning of our name, we truly hold our faith and our values and beliefs
00:09:25
Speaker
in this place of being able to live that out and also just living that out with our property and the land and taking care of what we've been blessed to have. So I think that's that story or that brand you'll call it that we want people to be able to feel connected to. Yeah, I just think there's something really special about that.
00:09:41
Speaker
So I think with the price point with all of the maple, I think it's tough because it's easy to go, let's say, to the supermarket and get a bottle of maple syrup and not maybe spend a ton of money. And so sometimes when people go onto our site and they look at the price of a quart of maple syrup, they're like, wait, why is this so high? But again, we are trying to convey that story of the process of what it takes to make maple syrup. It's not just mixing a bunch of different maple from different farms and companies.
00:10:09
Speaker
we're actually making it from start to finish right here on the land and bringing it to completion. And that price point is the entire process. And so I think having that ability to convey that through the site and being able to convey that to our customers is so key. So they realize, hey, I'm not just getting like a really great quality product, but I'm also educating myself and understanding how products are being made.
00:10:35
Speaker
and wanting to be able to continue that process and buying locally and supporting small business. How have you conveyed the quality of your products to potential customers? Tell us more about Ben's 23 seasons in Maple and how you carry out the entire process from beginning to end on your farm.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think again, Ben's experience were so blessed to have that amount of time and years he spent underneath learning from the original farmer that had this farm through the experience and then just further education. Ben went to school to be able to learn how to take care of forest management and just taking care of the land.
00:11:15
Speaker
I think that speaks again to that quality product as well. But also putting our story and educating people out through social media, through our website, letting them know, hey, we have a lot of experience and time under our belt that we are giving to this industry. We're passionate about that.
00:11:35
Speaker
Passion and quality truly go hand in hand. Being able to communicate that brings your customers into your story and helps them better understand and appreciate your products and your brand.
Engaging Customers Year-Round
00:11:46
Speaker
Many farms we serve have seasonal businesses. Tell us how you engage customers year round with Sacred Roots Maple.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, this is actually a question sometimes people ask like, what do you guys do when you're not making the maple syrup? Because obviously we start making maple somewhere around probably like end of February and latest into April. So we spend a lot of time educating people on what we do in the off months. So.
00:12:11
Speaker
Again, as I mentioned, we split and cut all of our own wood, so that takes a good chunk of time. We also have to spend a lot of time out in the woods doing just line management and taking care of the spouts and the lines and making sure everything is well connected so that things can properly flow and things can go well when we actually hit the season.
00:12:31
Speaker
We also spend some of that time, whether it's going to events in the community, we're really invested in our local community that we live in. And we love to be able to, whether it's through markets or just talking through different events, sharing our story and sharing the process and the products. And then also with the holiday season, it's always fun. Like just this year, for example, with the holidays, we put out our maple staple, which is a box of maple products.
00:12:57
Speaker
that you can ship anywhere in the US for $50. And so we took like some of our favorite products, just like a good box of things to get started with the maple experience and made it really accessible to people so that they would be able to experience it during the holiday season. And it would also be an opportunity for us to continue sharing our products with our customers.
00:13:19
Speaker
How has your decision to start implementing delivery and shipping options for your customers enabled Sacred Roots Maple to expand its reach?
Expanding Reach with Delivery Options
00:13:28
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. In fact, Ben and I were just talking about last night because we're getting out some shipment. We want to have a map showing all of the different states we got to ship to this holiday season because I think actually last night we shipped one box to Hawaii and that was like so exciting because I feel like we've hit so many different states and it's just so much fun. But working with Barn to Door and
00:13:47
Speaker
being able to get connected with different shipping options has been huge for us. Just being able to gain access to learning about different sites that help with shipping and in the process of being able to have the mail carrier come to our house and pick up our boxes versus us like bringing everything in a truck to them. So just from that whole experience of setting up this website in our e-commerce store, that's opened up the door for us.
00:14:12
Speaker
so much to be able to ship easier, to ship faster. Also, it's helped us to want to ship smarter too. So how can we optimize what fits in different boxes? How can we make sure we're using packaging material that's eco-friendly? So it's just been a really great process since being able to start our website and then just launching us in a really great direction.
00:14:35
Speaker
I noticed on your website that Sacred Roots Maple offers a wide variety of products that are also packaged differently based on size, product type, etc. Explain the vision behind diversifying your product offerings and how it has allowed you to bring in more customers.
Product Diversification Strategies
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah. So again, because we purchased from another farm that Ben was able to really work closely with, he actually was able to learn from someone who has been in the maple world for such a long time. So he was able to help learn and show us how to make different products. And then we were able to take that and say, okay, how can we then present this awesome thing that he taught us how to do and keep pushing it forward. And then also to educating people that maple doesn't just have to be like on pancakes. That's a big thing for us. We're,
00:15:21
Speaker
really big into cooking and baking, like we pretty much live in the kitchen all the time. And so we're always figuring out how can we use maple in this recipe? How can we use it in that? How can we put maple cream on a salmon or incorporate maple cream on a burger for a sweet and savory experience? So there's just so many creative ways. And I think
00:15:41
Speaker
I think what it does is it allows Ben and I just to have fun in the kitchen and then want to share that with other people. Because I think that's what it's all about. Just letting people know, hey, you don't just have to have this on pancakes. Here's how you can use it. And maple is such an amazing natural sweetener. It's full of different properties and really healthy minerals. So there's just so many things that we could expand on with that. But it's just, again, educating people on how to use it and have fun with it.
00:16:07
Speaker
I just, I never thought I would be like scrubbing maple sugar on my body, but maple sugar is really great for skin and then combined with, I use an organic coconut oil. It's just, it's so funny. The first time I made it, Ben actually tried it in the shower and he ate it because it is literally just two ingredients. But again, it's so good for your body and it's super simple to make. And it's just really fun to get creative with it.
00:16:30
Speaker
That educational piece is crucial. Being able to not only entertain your customers, but to also educate them on all the ways they can use your product is a great way to establish buyer loyalty.
Advice for Farmers Entering Online Sales
00:16:41
Speaker
What's your final piece of advice for farmers selling direct to consumers? And what's next for Sacred Roots Maple?
00:16:49
Speaker
I think definitely don't be afraid to take that next step. We were really hesitant to jump into creating a website in the store because we were a little nervous, honestly. We are the only ones that make our products and make them all by hand, so we don't really use certain equipment that you could buy to make products. We were nervous about making more and having to get that out.
00:17:12
Speaker
But don't be afraid to jump into it. You can handle it. It's going to take work, but it's well worth it. And if you're going in the direction like we did with Barnet and Door, you're going to have a lot of support. You're not going to be alone in the process. And as for what's next for Sacred Roots Maple, I think we just are continuing to make a solid product that we're proud of, that we use, that we can share with other people.
00:17:35
Speaker
We are in the process of adding on a new kitchen into our sugar house and adding on some space with that. So we're excited to jump into more maple creations and to continue just taking care of the land and doing what we're doing already. I think that's like a big piece for us, just staying the course and offering maybe some new maple packages to people, but continuing in that direction.
Closing Remarks and Future Plans
00:18:01
Speaker
So again, that was Ashley Clark from Sacred Roots Maple.
00:18:05
Speaker
Here at Barn to Door, we are humbled to support thousands of farms across the country, including farmers like Ashley and Ben Clark, who keep maple traditions alive while supporting their local community and providing quality products for their customers. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week.