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220 Years Strong: How this Generational Farm Started Selling Direct with Hopkins Farms
188 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we learn about a rich family history, discuss subscription boxes, and the process of home delivery with David and Candace Hopkins of Hopkins Farms. Hopkins Farms is a generational farm located in Cairo, Georgia that provides a fresh, local Farm to Table food service delivered directly to your doorstep.
https://www.hopkinsfarmsinc.com/
https://barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to Farm Success Factors
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome 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, save time, and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
00:00:25
Speaker
And welcome to the direct farm podcast. I'm Rory, your host for today's episode.
Meet the Hopkins Family
00:00:29
Speaker
We've got a great conversation for you today with one of our newest farm advisors, David and Candace Hopkins of Hopkins farms located in Caro, Georgia. Welcome David and Candace. It's great to have you guys here. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
00:00:42
Speaker
Hey, thanks Roy. We are glad to be here today. Maybe to start out, could you tell us a little bit about Hopkins farms and what you guys produce today? I know some of the guests we have on the show are just starting their farm. That is certainly not the case for you guys. Could you tell us a little bit about the farm? Well, yeah, sure. I'm David Hopkins, like you said, and it's my wife, Candace. We're in Southwest Georgia, about as far South Georgia as you can go.
00:01:08
Speaker
Literally, the Florida line is about 10 miles south of where I'm sitting right now. We're about 30 minutes towards the Tallahassee and a small little farming community called Reno. Hopkins Farms has been here forever, but right now what we're producing today, we have
00:01:25
Speaker
bell pepper in the ground, just really a bunch of different kinds of pepper. In general, we have bell, cubanelle, scotch bonnet, habanero, hunky, just any kind of pepper you can think of. We got pepper, we got tomatoes, eggplant, squash,
00:01:40
Speaker
greens. We always got some greens around kale, collards, a little bit of cabbage. I've been planting peanuts all day. We got 200 acres of corn that we've been working on fertilizing today. Just anything you can plant that's produce wise, we definitely try it and have been trying it for a long time. That's a lot of products you just listed off there who are working on the farm and helping you out with that.
00:02:03
Speaker
Main people is his family. My father, Terrell Hopkins, my brother Ben and myself, and then Ben and myself have two wives, Terry and Candace, and they help us with the books and we do all the work outside and all the dirty stuff. We have probably about 30 people on our payroll that they're here all the time. We try to keep them around and then
00:02:22
Speaker
When it's time to start picking tomatoes and pepper like that, we actually have traveling workers. They start in South Florida and then come to Georgia and then go to North Carolina. It just depends on what time of year it is and whose turn it is, start picking stuff. Wow. That's, that's awesome. So you guys have a really big operation there and you've been doing it for a long time. You guys have really deep roots in Georgia and a really long family history on
History and Evolution of Hopkins Farms
00:02:45
Speaker
that land. Could you share some of that history and about how long you guys have been there?
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, the way it's been explained to me, our family has the original deed to the farm that we received when Oglethorpe was establishing Georgia and handing out land grant. We have it in a safety deposit box, still here 220 years going and it's still farmed under the same family. It's grown a little bit since then, but we're still here and still gonna keep going. I think I'm gonna be the fourth, if not fifth generation on this same piece of land.
00:03:17
Speaker
just because, you know, everybody on that fifth generation, everybody was a farmer. You had to be a farmer just to live. You produced everything you had. Yeah. That's awesome. How has it changed? I mean, obviously that's 220 years is an insane amount of time, but what are some of the big changes over that course of time, especially maybe in terms of like products the farm has been producing? When my granddaddy was coming along or when his parents were doing it, they had
00:03:43
Speaker
sugar cane and chickens and they didn't really get in the produce yet but the sugar cane was for cane syrup. We used to grow a bunch of sugar cane and my granddaddy would cook all the cane down make the syrup or whatever and he'd sell the juice and he did that and then they were so close to Tallahassee, Florida and that was a big you know populated area compared to Cairo, a small town that's close to us. In Georgia they would take chickens down there on
00:04:09
Speaker
take live chickens and had a bunch of chicken eggs they'd sell. My granddad kept doing that and then he had the opportunity to buy a piece of land in Cairo back in town and him and my grandmother moved up there and he started growing produce. So beans, squash, just greens, any of that kind of stuff. We kind of got in the tobacco business a little bit and
00:04:32
Speaker
60s, 70s came along, we started growing more okra and more beans. My dad did a lot of peddling, my granddad did a lot of peddling. They sold a bunch of collards and greens on the Atlanta farmer's market, and we kept getting deeper in the produce business. Whatever we couldn't grow produce on, we'd try to do a little row crop and do cotton, corn, peanuts, stuff like that.
00:04:52
Speaker
We just kept diversifying so much that we just throw everything out there and hope it all sticks to the end. You know, you lose money over here, but hopefully you get something over there that's going to make you enough to keep going the next year. That's good. It's worked out for 200 years. That's awesome. That's a really funny way of looking at it. And has it always been, I know you mentioned farmers markets there, has the farm always had selling direct to consumer as a focus and has that always been something you guys do?
00:05:19
Speaker
Direct to consumer hadn't always been the focus that kind of started when I came back and started doing the farm to table, but we would always sell the farmer's markets. There's the Atlanta farmer's market and then Thomasville, Georgia on the road a little bit. We have a produce broker over there and they handle all our pepper and eggplant stuff like that. My dad handles selling all the tomatoes, but anybody that would come by and want to buy something more than happy to sell it to them. We don't, don't care who it is. Don't worry.
00:05:47
Speaker
He definitely not turning down any customers. All it's gonna do is go bad in the cooler. And I know you did, you went to school over Auburn, correct? That's right. I went to Auburn University. And what did you study there? I was a horticulture major with an emphasis in fruit and vegetable production. So was there always an expectation to take over the farm where you expected to be that next generation? And was that something you were excited about?
00:06:14
Speaker
From my dad's perspective, it was always, please find something else to do. But the summertime came around and it was, hey, what are you doing? Get up, let's go to work. I grew up out here. We lived in town, but we always came down here every weekend when I was a little kid in elementary school. Middle school, I got old enough to start working and I picked a back all summer long when I was a little kid. Picked squash, did any kind of field work, I did it. And then I finally got old enough to know how to drive and be responsible enough to drive and started taking care of
00:06:44
Speaker
all the planting and then we got us a sprayer and I started spraying everything. So I've always done all the row cropping stuff and then my brother took care of the watering of the vegetables. It never rains under plastic. All our tomatoes and eggplant and everything else is growing under plastic so we can at least control a little bit of aspects of the weather. I mean we can't control if it's gonna rain or
00:07:05
Speaker
what the bugs are doing or anything else, but if we grow it under plastic, we can at least water it. Yeah. Candace, I'm curious about you. Is this something that you just fell into? Was there any expectation that you would just join the crew here? We got married in 2014. I was working. I went to school for extra tech, so that's what I was doing. And then once we had kids, I stayed home and then I guess I got more involved once I started to stay home.
00:07:30
Speaker
I do the you know computer style everything but yeah it just kind of fell in my lap but I love it so it's worked out so far.
00:07:38
Speaker
That's awesome. So you mentioned the X-ray tech there. That's what you were doing before the farm. And David, did you go straight to the farm right out of college? Oh yeah, I didn't. There was no stops. I graduated. What are you doing Monday? Going to work. Yeah, straight into it. That's awesome. I know we have another fan who actually went to not the same program at Auburn, but a similar one. But how did that program kind of help better prepare you for running your farm? And what did, what were some of the things that you apply from
Education and Experience in Farming
00:08:05
Speaker
that program?
00:08:05
Speaker
My time at Auburn was all about problem solving. If I ever had a problem with a clash, I could figure it out and just might have helped me stuff like that. I did get a little bit of, you know, knowledge from it, but you learn everything you're going to learn, putting your hands in the dirt. And then, you know, I'd try a little bit on my own. I'd do a little test plot over here and it wouldn't work. I know it's always good to be able to change it just a little bit or try to experiment on your own, but what are you going to learn at school versus what you learn actually in the field is completely different.
00:08:35
Speaker
It's, it's interesting that you say that too, because I feel like more and more now you run into farmers that are just starting that they didn't go to school for it. They're kind of doing it as they, as they go and expanding and reading books and going to other farms and trying to pick up what they do. So it's interesting that you say that and kind of a cool experience for you that you had family members who got to be that knowledge for you. Very beneficial to have. I guess I got a hundred years worth of experience staring at me, looking at what
00:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, probably has its positives and negatives. There's always, well, I want to do it this way. That's too bad. So I think especially in terms of the business side of things, what was that education piece like? Did that, was that something they dove into? Because I think something that we find a lot of times is that something farmers are missing is a business education side of learning how to farm.
Transition to Direct-to-Consumer Sales
00:09:29
Speaker
Business-wise, it was always, you know, we pick it, pack it, sell it. And, you know, I told my dad, I was like, I want to take a box and put a bunch of different stuff in it and sell it to somebody. He said, you can do that all you want to do. That'll be fine. We're focused on a whole semi-load of bell pepper leaving here, not a box of, you know, a mixed box of stuff. So I just kind of got out there on my own and started doing that. The first week I sold one box to one lady after I'd sent 60 something letters in the mail. Hey, I want to start doing this. Are you interested in buying?
00:09:59
Speaker
And then after that, it took off a little bit when I'm doing a whole lot kind of kept growing and just anything we could do, we'd still try to sell to anybody right now. What kind of led you to sign up for Barnador in the first place and where did that interest come from?
00:10:13
Speaker
signing up for Barnadore, we don't really know. What was it? It was in 2020 when everything went down. That's when our business just exploded and we were just super, super busy. So what we were doing just wasn't working for us with how many customers we had. One of our customers actually sent us a link to the Barnadore and I just started researching it and
00:10:37
Speaker
Anyways, just learn more about it. And it seemed like a perfect fit for us. What were you guys doing before? Just curious. We had a, uh, some cat, I don't remember who the guy's name was. He made websites for a living and he'd done some work for my cousin for one of her websites for another family business. And I told him I needed a website and I wanted to start selling stuff online. And he made me one.
00:11:02
Speaker
And it worked for a little while. When you had 30 or 40 people, it was fine. It would use PayPal. There was no organization, wouldn't sort it out for you. We had to go through each name by names and we couldn't organize it all together. And then we found one the door a little bit easier when it's all this locations getting this. So then how was that transition? Cause I'm sure that was a big transition for you guys, just migrating systems and things. How did that go?
00:11:31
Speaker
We did like the onboarding and it was like, as soon as that just everything was worked out. I don't think we have like any problems. It just, it was so easy. And that was good because we were coming through a super busy time. We did that in the middle of being so busy. Yeah, definitely. And I'm curious, how did that go for your customers too? How did they deal with that, that change or that switch?
00:11:54
Speaker
I don't think anybody had any trouble except the older generation that didn't really do it online. The older people, they'd always call me like, hey, David, I want this. And I'm like, okay, I'll write it down.
00:12:05
Speaker
You know, please send me an email so I can remember this. Yeah. It's not the only thing that I do all day long. We didn't lose too many people. We got them used to starting to order online. And then now I don't think I have anybody calling me except maybe one or two more older people that still claim that they don't have a computer or internet or anything, but they still hear about us. I know what's in the box every week.
00:12:25
Speaker
You know, I think something, you said something earlier about when you originally went to your father and said, I want to, I want to put together a box and sell that directly to some people. And he was like, yeah, go for it, but this is still going to be the priority. I think a lot of times with a farm that's a generational farm, sometimes the selling direct to consumer can be a pretty big step and a new thing for a lot of farms. What would maybe be your advice to somebody that is a more generational farm like yours or that's been around a while and has been doing things a certain way, but
00:12:55
Speaker
Obviously, you guys have made a really good transition to selling direct. What would be your advice to them? My advice is you need to go ahead and do it. I mean, everything is going this way and the more people we can get involved in doing this, the better it can turn out for everybody. I feel like they'll get used to buying directly from your grower. Knowing who you're buying your food from, I think that's a pretty big deal.
00:13:20
Speaker
The stuff that we're packing and selling doesn't come off our farm all day every day. The times that it does, I know I've seen this pepper plant from a seed all the way through the greenhouse, setting it out in the field. I laid the plastic. My brother's been watering it, taking care of it, fertilizing it. We wash to get big, wash to get taken care of. We know where it's coming from and we truly care about it because it's our livelihoods. We have to have this to keep going.
00:13:44
Speaker
But the people that they hadn't started doing direct to consumer yet, if you have the opportunity to do it, it doesn't take them one time to just get one person involved. And then hopefully they have a good experience and they'll tell somebody and then they'll tell somebody that even sooner or later you have you full-blown direct to consumer business. You don't have to worry about the guy that's selling all your other stuff for you. You're selling it yourself and not paying him money just to talk on the phone.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And I think something that's really key there is I feel like the quality speaks for itself. When people try products that are grown that aren't shipped across the world to get to their grocery store or something like that, you can really tell the difference and that makes a big difference for folks.
00:14:26
Speaker
When you're getting something from us, two days at the most from it coming out of a field and being packed on my doorstep forever. If it's coming straight off of my farm right now, I'll pick it the day before we put it in a box to sell it to you. If it's coming from Florida, you got a day to get up here or if it's coming to North Carolina, you might have a day day to have. But it's, you know, as quick as it can get from the farm to your table is what we're trying to do.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's the goal. Well, you guys have also done a really good job of keeping a super simple product inventory on your online store. You guys utilize the box, like we've talked about here, doing a farmer's choice type of bundle and some subscriptions. And that's how you sell all your produce. So how is that simplified things for you, especially Candace for you on the, on the store management side of things? How has that kept things simple for you?
00:15:15
Speaker
I feel like for a little bit, we thought, should we give the customer from the option of what they want? But we just can't, we can't make that happen. And so we do let our customers know that it's like, there's one or two items or, you know, that they just don't like, we can substitute that out and they can leave a note in the box when they check out. But other than that, we just, we try to keep it simple.
00:15:39
Speaker
because that's just, that would be too much on, on everybody. Yeah. And it sounds like with how much you guys are growing the, the box, if you were doing choice, people would have so many choices. They have so many options and it'd be just more or less, it'd be hard to find your box in the truck once you pack it all. And so then they're like, Oh man, I couldn't be in Tallahassee when I was supposed to be in Thomasville.
00:16:00
Speaker
that would definitely create some problems. I know you just mentioned that you thought about doing some like a la carte or like individual ordering. Have you guys always pretty much just done the boxes and been able to stick to that? Pretty much when I started doing it the first time I cleaned.
00:16:16
Speaker
I'm pretty sure the first box I offered was a $50 box that was a full one or a ninth bushel that we pack eggplant in. And I was targeting like bigger families that had three or four plus kids. I was like, this is good for six people. I got a couple of people to do that. And then they're like, do you have a smaller box? So I now started doing a half bushel box and that was for three or four people.
00:16:38
Speaker
And then I started packing boxes for another man in Albany. And he showed up with a bag one day and I said, what are you doing with that? He said, well, I'm going to sell this to the people that just have one or two people. We're going to do a bag option or whatever. And I said, that's a fantastic idea. So now we do bags. And I think our bags are our biggest seller. The real thing is though, not everybody cooks as much as they used to. We're bad about that too. We don't get to cook every night. We're
00:17:04
Speaker
too busy. Everybody's too busy. So the bag's a good option. If you're gonna cook one or two meals a week, you know, it's perfect for you. You got enough produce to do that. We started doing that and it's, it's been good. Do you guys ever run into any problems with like we keep saying you guys grow so much. Do you guys ever run into issues of people saying like, I don't know how to use any of this. And if you have run into that, how do you get around it?
00:17:25
Speaker
I tell them our secret family recipes to every single item that they say they don't have any idea. And nine times out of 10, it's a green, like mustard, turnips, collards, kale. The Hopkins family is bad about
00:17:39
Speaker
having a family get together and having a pot of grains. There's not a time that we have a sit down family dinner and somebody didn't cook a pot of collards or something for our dinner. And everybody's like, what do we do with these? You know, we're not from around here. We're from up north or something. I was like, let me tell you how to cook some collards. I've been there talking to them for a little while and just share with them how we enjoy them. And I'll tell them what Candace does at the house with kale or something or any kind of vegetable in my
00:18:03
Speaker
My mother, she helps us on the, you know, farm to table thing. She does some delivering and I'm sure she shared all of her family recipes too. So we just always try to share, you know, we cook it ourselves so we try to give them a good idea how to use it themselves.
00:18:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's really key because I know a lot of farmers will include recipes like that in newsletters or on their social media.
Subscription Boxes and Customer Engagement
00:18:24
Speaker
You guys are the best at knowing how to cook what you produce because it's what you're eating every day too. And I think that's the same for protein farmers. The rib eyes and the pork shoulders, that stuff gets sold. At what point did you guys, you started with the box and now you offer the box
00:18:39
Speaker
as a subscription so people can get that kind of every single week if they want. At what time did you guys decide to start doing subscriptions and what is the result of that, Ben? Subscriptions weren't even an option before we did Barnadore. I think we just started doing Barnadore. Subscriptions were an option. We had people that wanted them every week and said, hey, I'm going to get one every week. Just make sure you remember to put me on the list.
00:18:59
Speaker
And that happened nine times out of 10, but every now and then, like, oh man, forgot to do that one. So we always make a couple extra boxes just in case. But the subscription things, it's worked out good to keep people coming back and we really enjoy their support. That's good stuff too. And on the management side too, Candice, it simplifies that process as well for you. Oh yeah.
00:19:21
Speaker
Definitely. I mean, I don't know if we have a, we don't have a huge amount of subscription people, but, but it does make it easier for those that want to get every week. Yeah. That's awesome. So then you guys also with the launch of a lot of your direct to consumer stuff, you started delivery as well. How did that kind of start up and what was getting started with delivery like?
00:19:42
Speaker
I'm going to say delivery started with people forgetting to pick up their boxes. So it was like, Hey, I got your box for you. And when we first started doing it, we weren't collecting the money upfront, you know, I didn't.
00:19:54
Speaker
was depending on you to give me your money when I give you your box. And people would, you know, sometimes forget, which is understandable. People are busy, they work, do everything. So I was like, hey, where are you at? I'll bring it to you. And then finally it was like, hey, we're going to start offering delivery for this price on top of your box. You don't have to worry about coming to me. I'm going to bring it straight to you. And then we started doing that. And I think delivery, we do about half and half. It's been good too.
00:20:19
Speaker
You know, we got to drive a lot of our tarnation sometimes, but we got our zone and narrowed it down and people understand where we're going to go to and where we can't go to. So we try to accommodate everybody regardless. If it's a little too far, we'll still try to do it. I'm curious on the growth of that. Did you guys do a lot of zones at first and then kind of rein it back in or what was that experience like?
00:20:40
Speaker
We did, we had it just basically, I guess we just said anywhere. And then once we got a lot of customers, we were like, we can't really do that. It was a lot. So we had to narrow it down. Yeah, definitely. And it's a lot of time. Do you guys, have you guys charged a delivery fee to compensate yourselves for that time? Or do you build that into the cost of products or how do you go about that?
00:21:03
Speaker
We started doing delivery. I think it was like $5 a box or something. And then during COVID, which was a crazy time, but a blessing for us. It got like, we were having to do like, I don't even know how many deliveries. It was ridiculous. So we were like, Hey, it's $10 to deliver now. Do you want it still? We'll bring it to you. But we went to $10 with the way fuel is right now. It's got to stay at $10. We can't be driving everywhere for nothing. That gas costs a little something putting that car.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And your time costs a little something too. Yeah, Kansas time is very valid. I have to be wasted easily. I was curious too. I know sometimes farmers up their delivery charge, which is completely reasonable. All the costs associated with doing delivery, none of those are going down. But I think sometimes the consumers don't react in a great way. How did they kind of respond to you guys raising that delivery fee?
00:21:54
Speaker
So we had some people that were happy about it. We had some negative reviews for some people that were just all the way too far away that, you know, they got too big and they don't care about the little people anymore. We're like, we care about you. We just can't drive 45 minutes to bring you a $10 box when, you know, when it's costing us $10 worth of fuel. You can't make everybody happy. You do your best. And we love all our customers and want to do anything we can to make them happy. We just, we realize that we cannot make everybody happy.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's definitely a good mentality to have. And similar to what we were talking about with all the options that you can put in a box. I would love to make it like a grocery store where you can get exactly what you wanted every time. But the logistics and piecing together boxes and this and that, it would just, you know, maybe in the future one day I'll have enough help and enough sense to be able to do that. But right now I just can't figure it out.
00:22:50
Speaker
So I'm curious, what would your advice be? I think a lot of farms right now are realizing the potential that doing home delivery has and how much that can kind of add to their revenue. I'm curious, what would be your advice to a farm that's thinking about starting up delivery?
00:23:06
Speaker
I'd do it. I mean, it depends on what kind of area you're in too. When you think about South Georgia, we're pretty much rural areas. I mean, we got a lot of back roads, a lot of small towns. Thomasville is a decent size town. Cairo is not that big. Tallahassee is huge, of course. I always looked at it as that's one more box I could sell versus somebody coming to me. So why not go do it? If it doesn't take you a whole another hour to go do that, you know, your money ahead doing that, and then you might even sell another, you know, piece of a box that you were breaking down.
00:23:37
Speaker
to do that delivery instead of just, you know, having to donate that or dumping in the, the pile of, uh, mulch or whatever. Yeah. And I, you just mentioned Tallahassee there. Cause I know a lot of farms, they, there are in rural areas, but if there's a good big metropolitan area nearby, like that, they can tap into that market. Is that kind of what you guys have done with Tallahassee and how has that gone for you?
00:24:02
Speaker
You know, I don't have any idea how I got started in Tallahassee because I started in Thomasville. I guess it was all word of mouth. Somebody was like, hey, do you come to Tallahassee? I was like, sure do. Where do you want to be at? My sister works for a business that has a location in Tallahassee. I was like, hey, I want to use parking lot. You know, one day a week, I'll be out of the way out back. Don't worry about me. He was like, yeah, sure. Come on. So we started doing in Tallahassee and Tallahassee has been good for us too.
00:24:25
Speaker
Is that where you see the most growth out of all the areas that you're serving with delivery and everything? It fluctuates up and down. Some leaks will have the most boxes in our small town of Cairo. Some leaks will be in Tallahassee and sometimes in Tallahassee. It just depends with the school systems or people in school or they out of school. Right now, towards the beginning of the year, when we get started back after Christmas and the new year, we take a month off or really a month and a half off.
00:24:53
Speaker
We take that off and then there's a big influx and it comes up and then kids get out of school and everybody starts traveling. So it's going to go down. Summer gardens come in. People still have a garden around here, so you kind of lose a little bit right there when they come back into school in the fall and picks up a little bit and kind of climbs all the way to November to Thanksgiving. So it just, you know, it depends on week to week who's in town, which schools on spring break and summer vacations and stuff like that.
Social Media and Community Building
00:25:18
Speaker
I wanted to talk a little bit about your guys' social media because you guys have a pretty strong following on Facebook and Instagram. What's your approach there? How are you guys managing social media? I do. I guess I do most of the social media. We're all of it. So I don't know. I feel like.
00:25:36
Speaker
A lot of our following comes from like, we try to, or I try to post like more personal stuff, like of our families and like what David's doing during the day or what Ben's doing. And I feel like that really grabs people's attention. So I try to do more posts like that. Instagram hitting as big as Facebook, I don't think. I need to get on Instagram more, but it's a pretty big one. We got a lot of stuff going around here all the time. There's always something to find to see what we're doing around here. We always get something.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's really true of a lot of farms is that there's always things going on. It's just a matter of grabbing your phone and snapping a picture of it. That's right. Just take a picture and figure out what you want to say in a minute. Yeah. But Candace, to what you were saying too, I think that authenticity of what's going on with your family that kind of
00:26:24
Speaker
Really actually getting to see the farmer and what they're doing is so important because it's almost I think in today's day. It's almost as important as what David what you were saying with being able to grow the things and that you have so much you contribute to the entire process of your customers getting that pepper. It's almost like the customer kind of gets to see that through social media.
00:26:45
Speaker
I'm curious with you guys with your email marketing as well, have you guys utilized the MailChimp integration much and do you use email marketing to stay in contact with those customers and keep them up to date on everything?
00:26:58
Speaker
Yes. And we send out an email every Sunday night through MailChimp, like our weekly newsletter, we call it. And it basically has in there, it will show you our different options and then we'll put in there what we're going to offer that week in the box. It's got a link to go to our store so they can buy something rather to, you know, make it easy, make it simple. Just click on it. You can purchase right here. We don't want to have too many steps. You don't have to go anywhere else. Just click and ready to get it.
00:27:26
Speaker
Well, you guys are the newest additions to our Farm Advisor Network. What are you guys excited for about joining the team? We want to soak up some information from other people too and kind of learn what they've done to make their farm to door or their farm to table program successful. We're always in for new ideas. We're in South Georgia so we can pretty much grow anything. We're always looking for more stuff to put in the ground.
00:27:53
Speaker
We got probably 40 different crops right now, cows and everything else. So I'm, I like to find a barnador company or a barnador farm that's doing beef. You know, I want to start selling some beef and I want to maybe one day get maybe some poultry, maybe some chickens or something to start selling chickens too. Just whatever, whatever we can find to keep going. We want to, we want to keep going and keep growing.
00:28:15
Speaker
I know you guys partner with some other farms to kind of offer produce pretty much year round, I believe. Could you maybe talk about how you've gone about establishing those partnerships with other farms? Well, when I started it, started the farm to table, as I called it, or CSA, I learned about it in Auburn, Alabama, when I went to school over there. So we're, you know, going through, I can scrap up some and, you know, put in a box.
00:28:38
Speaker
and then people said well you know why'd you stop I want to keep going why why'd you quit and I was like well guess what the way the world turns of it got too hot and that pepper burned up now I'll get too cold next and that pepper's gonna freeze so well where we're at we can offer two crops a year and we'll start picking pepper and tomatoes and stuff and
00:28:58
Speaker
Probably about another three weeks and we'll be able to pick for maybe a month, maybe five, six weeks at the most, depending on the weather. We're always at mercy to the weather. The way it works on the east coast.
00:29:11
Speaker
produce starts in South Florida at the beginning of the year. When Florida comes in, they start picking. About the time they wrap up, maybe one or two weeks left and picking, it'll, our stuff will start coming on and it'll be ready for us. And then we pick our whole turn. And then when we're about to start wrapping up, hopefully it all works out. We'll be just about finished and North Carolina come in. So they'll never have a break in the produce. You know, we,
00:29:38
Speaker
kind of share the market. We have a relationship with people up and down the east coast. My dad's been fortunate enough to do it for his whole life. He knows just a pile of people. He can go anywhere riding around. He enjoys his Sunday afternoon drives. But we know people in South Florida that we can buy tomatoes from because the guy that's come to pick our tomatoes, he's working on a farm down there right now picking tomatoes and he'll be up here in like I said two, three weeks.
00:30:05
Speaker
So if I need tomatoes, I can say, hey, I need a pallet of tomatoes for this week and he'll send me a pallet. So I can have fresh tomatoes from him. And then when he leaves us, he goes to North Carolina. So I know where he's going up there and he's actually started farming on his own. So he has a little bit of pepper and tomatoes up there in North Carolina too. So it just, it moves and it's, it's been easier and we can offer this thing year round. We don't have to shut down. We have to quit during the winter right there when it freezes out us.
00:30:32
Speaker
And it freezes out in North Carolina. Everything goes to Yucatán Peninsula or Mexico. Yeah, that's
Future Plans and Expansion
00:30:38
Speaker
awesome. And I like how you kind of have used that and used those partnerships and those relationships to extend your own growing season, which is really cool. I guess looking ahead to the next year, what do you guys see as what's next for Hopkins Farms? I know you guys just moved into the house there, but what else is kind of on the horizon for you guys?
00:30:56
Speaker
Well, we have another child coming in August, so we're kind of waiting on that right now. We may get through this spring crop and start laying plastic for the fall crop. Hopefully everything will work out and have good markets and everything. Keep going. We're looking forward to another year of being able to do this. I'll come home some nights and just be mad as fire this day. Just way different than I had planned this morning.
00:31:21
Speaker
But at the end of the day, I'm glad that I'm doing this. I'm glad I got my wife with me, that she supports me and lets me complain to her every now and then. Got two little boys that maybe one day they'll want to do it, but hopefully they got better sense than I am. That's probably exactly what your dad said. That's exactly what he said.
00:31:40
Speaker
Candace, how about you? What are some of your goals for the year ahead? Other than having your baby? Yeah, that's a pretty big one, but pretty much what David said, just hopefully we could grow our farm to table business a little more, get it back to now. Obviously it won't be back to where it was, but we'd like to find some more markets to get in. We actually do a frozen vegetable sale now too. And we're trying to find some more places to go with that and just keep growing and keep expanding our name and finding people that would like to enjoy some fresh produce.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. I want to extend my thanks to Candace and David for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Here at Barned Door, we're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country, including farmers like the Hopkins who implement sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities.
00:32:25
Speaker
For more information on Hopkins Farms, you can visit hopkinsfarmsinc.com. To learn more about Barn to Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm, you can go to barn to door.com slash resources. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week.
00:32:45
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Direct Farm podcast. You can subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts to automatically download new episodes. For more free resources that you can read, watch, and listen to, visit farntador.com slash resources. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you again next week.