- [Elisa] And now I'm really excited to turn it over
to Mary Choate from University of New Hampshire
and she is going to be talking about
cultivating farm and food safety for visitors
and she has been working with Jada Lindblom,
also from University of New Hampshire Extension,
to create videos
of two farms.
And we're lucky today to have not only the videos
but the farmers here with us to share their experiences.
Mary, I'll turn it over to you now.
- Okay, thanks Elisa.
So, yes, we're really honored to have
two wonderful farmers here with us this evening.
John Moulton of Moulton Farm in Meredith,
and Nancy Franklin of Riverview Farm
in Plainfield, New Hampshire.
Just a little bit about both the farms.
We did little brief videos of each farm,
so you can get a sort of a farm visit
and then we'll also talk to the farmers live
'cause they're here and they have lots to share.
So Moulton Farm has been growing food since the 1890s.
They're located at the north end of Lake Winnipesaukee.
They're a year round destination farm.
They offer a farm market,
which you're gonna see in the video,
filled with local foods and products
made in their own farm kitchen and their farm bakery.
They also partner with other New England farms
and small businesses and in their farm market
they provide fruits, cheeses, seafood,
meat, poultry, and treats.
They also have a garden center,
a summer pick your own cutting garden,
a fall pick your own pumpkin patch, and a corn maze.
So they're quite the destination farm experience.
After we see the Moulton Farm video,
we'll have a little more of a discussion with John
and then we'll move over to the Riverview Farm
in Plainfield, New Hampshire
and Nancy Franklin's here from Riverview Farm
to speak with us.
That's in August to October
pick your own and more destination farm.
Visitors can pick berries, apples, pumpkins, gourds.
They can cut their own flowers.
And currants are a summer crop only
with picking in mid-July.
Riverview offers a corn maze
and their barn store has already picked apples, pumpkins,
fresh pressed cider that they make on the farm,
apple butter and jams that they also make at the farm.
And they also support local businesses selling maple syrup
honey, and cheese.
Riverview hosts small and midsize events
like weddings and picnics.
They have these popular outdoor dinners
called dinners in the flower fields
and dinners in the orchard.
So Nancy's gonna tell us about those.
So, a lot of stuff we're going to hear about today.
I'd like to start my little PowerPoint presentation
and the brief videos that we made of each farm.
So let me share my screen.
Okay, so,
cultivating farm and food safety for visitors
on your farm.
We're going to have a mini video tours of two farms.
As I mentioned, we're going to be visiting Moulton Farm.
The video focuses on the farm market,
but we're gonna talk about a lot more with John
and also Riverview Farm.
So we're gonna start with a brief video.
Oh, I have to warn you that
the video doesn't have any music
but there is audio when John is speaking
and there's some subtitles.
So you might hear me talking,
but don't think there's anything wrong with your video
if you don't hear anything except for me talking.
Okay so again, Moulton Farm,
we're gonna talk about their farm market here.
Okay, so this is a view of the farm market.
It has their own produce, their own bakery items
their own kitchen items, really delicious foods.
And they support local producers as well.
John's going to go over all the safety policies have
at the store.
- Right from the get go all last summer,
right from April of last year,
we immediately put up the signs
making people aware of the fact that
we were aware of the practices needed for COVID.
At some point, the mask and glove sign will come down
but maybe we'll have something
in between. - No, that's all we have left.
- And we have available gloves.
We've always...
For a year now, we've had gloves available for customers
who want them.
We've had sanitizer for the baskets.
If the customer wants them.
And paper towels available,
and important, a way to get rid
of that stuff so my staff
doesn't have to chase dirty gloves and paper towels around.
- All right, so John told us
how we can also sanitize the carts
with UV light, which is true.
It's really important.
Lots of signage
so people know what to expect.
- And we needed the addition anyway
because we've been so busy.
- But the addition was here during COVID
and we probably would keep it the way it is now.
And one thing that has worked
out with their addition is that we have one way traffic.
So we have two ways out
at the checkout counter and people entering the farm stand
never go near the checkout.
Good or bad, it just keeps folks separated from each other
which, again, was critical to have (indistinct).
- Right. It's really clearly marked getting into the store
and flow is indicated in the store as you see.
Lots of air, lots of light.
Right, and this is something else
John mentioned that they did a lot more prepackaging
of grab and go food.
So people didn't have to...
Less handling of the food.
Right, and this is what a lot
of farms have done is added facilities,
added hand washing stations,
making it easy to do the right thing.
- Well, curbside last year, it took off.
It was like a freight train running over us.
And our curbside worked either
as a call in or an email.
Both of which required a great deal of time to deal with.
And during the first few weeks of COVID,
we were just overwhelmed with curbside orders
because we didn't do curbside.
We'd never done curbside before.
And it was also overwhelming our checkout system for retail
because we had to tie up a terminal
to do the weighing and do the pricing
and to take the payments, et cetera, et cetera.
So, when you asked about curbside,
what we did is we developed a whole new center for curbside.
And this is our checkout area
for curbside with a set of doors right there
that we can go right out and not have to
intermingle with other customers.
And we have a curbside reserved parking spot right out here.
We had our own refrigeration, our own stopping place
for stuff that needed to be frozen or refrigerated.
But I made a good way to keep curbside away
from general retail.
And the customers simply had to sit in the car
and call in.
Along with that is we do have a CSA program
that we limit quite a bit.
We've got a few hundred participants
and that's where we want to be.
And we don't want to have any more than whatever it is,
330 people.
That's more than we want to handle.
And so what we do is
we have always used a half bushel basket.
That's what we define as a farm share.
But the half bushel basket
can be a dirty item
and certainly it can not be sanitized easily.
So we had picked up some plastic
half bushel liners that would fit
right in the half bushel basket easily,
and when the customer came in,
they could still see they had their half bushel farm share,
take the handles of the heavy-duty liner
and pick it up and they could go away.
And it saved a lot of interaction among us
and the customers.
- Right, so that was just the tip of the iceberg
of our tour.
So, John, I'm wondering
if you would answer a few more questions about your farm.
This is all stuff we talked about
but didn't get into the video.
For example, would you talk
about the dog policy
at your farm?
- Yes. We have posted out there yet another sign
that indicates that we all love dogs
but they are not allowed in the establishment per, you know,
just say per sanitation policies.
So they're posted
in a couple of places outside.
Our intent, we just don't get to it.
Our intent is to have an area
for our customers to take their dog,
whether it be...
We have a lot of picnic tables sitting around
on the property now.
If we can get five minutes
between planting and weeding and everything else,
we're going to establish a dog zone,
a place that folks can take the dog.
But there's plenty of open area
and usually you see the folks just walk off with the dog.
But they are not allowed inside.
And fortunately we don't have any
pick your own food operation going on.
We do have signs on the property
stating that it is a production area
and that pets are not allowed out on the farm as well.
But that's where we're at now, just signage.
- John, you talked a lot about, well, we talked a lot
about pavement and walkway safety and tripping hazards.
Do you want to talk about how you
what you do to try to help with that?
- Yes. I mean, we've been through it all
from strictly a gravel driveway
to now we have, you know
quite a few thousand square feet that are paved or concrete
and you can never be careful enough.
Folks do trip, folks do fall.
And you just have to avoid that situation
as much as possible
and paving or concreting is the best way to do it.
We try to keep everything level.
We don't have any steps, we use ramps and slopes
up to the building, away from the building.
But, you know, in all honesty, I had a lady fall.
I witnessed her fall last week.
She was out in our nursery area and she picked
up a piece of landscape fabric or mat and down she went.
She was not hurt.
We're fortunate she was not hurt.
And she was good about it.
She admitted that she has a bad leg, as she says
and she drags it.
And of course that she dragged it right through
the landscape fabric.
And it didn't take much to trip her up,
but, you know, our reaction was, we helped her up.
We made sure she was fine, you know,
interrogated her many times about her condition.
And then the crew just had to get more landscape
fabric spikes out and get that spot down.
You just never know.
A farm, farm stand, like many of us have
covers so much area outside of just the retail area
that there are folks wandering around.
- Right.
Now, you made some changes
to your corn maze last year, right?
And you're going to do something different this year.
I want to talk about that.
- Well, yeah, we made a big change
to our corn maze last year.
We didn't do one.
- Okay.
- And that is quite a change.
We've been in the corn maze business for a long time.
And it was due to COVID.
And we had been out of control for a few years in terms
of the crowds we'd been attracting in the fall anyway.
And that's the purpose of a corn maze
is to not only provide income itself
but to bring people to the farm.
And we had found our falls out of control.
We were not adequately prepared
for the parking that was needed.
We'd just been overwhelmed with people.
I guess it's a good problem.
So our decision was not to have one.
I had been very concerned about my staff out of the gate.
That was my concern, was keeping my staff healthy.
As many of you experienced last year,
it was very, very tense for many, many weeks, many months.
That was our decision.
Also, we're doing farm to table dinners
and farm to table breakfasts on a regular basis
and our COVID decision was not to do any of that last year.
Interestingly enough, all that's carried over to this year.
Part of the problem that goes with safety
and safety of your staff
is having enough staff to do all of these event things.
Do all of these, I call them external farm things.
We are still very much a commercial farm.
We are growing on almost 70 acres
and my decision,
and it was related to safety last year was, "Okay, gang,
all events are done, heads down, focus on the core business
and see what happens."
And it turned out to be very much
the right decision last year.
And we're actually carrying that forward this year.
I did buy the corn maze seed.
We will be planting the maze this year.
And as of right now, we'll have a maze.
And your question was, well, what will we do about that?
Well, one, we will have more toilets,
more sanitation stations,
and we are probably going to go to a
reservation pre-sale ticket system
so that we can control how many people
are going to be here at one time,
whether COVID is history at that point or not.
It still gets back to general safety and having good
healthy conditions for the people who are at the farm.
I don't look forward to that fall season a whole lot
because of the number of people we have to deal with
and the limited area that we do have
while still trying to maintain a strong core farm business.
I hope that gives... - Well, that's great.
- No. That's perfect.
That answered my questions.
One more thing.
I was really impressed with...
I don't know how much you want to get into this
but if you would talk a little bit
about your staff training and food safety.
You talked about that quite a bit with us.
What's your policy there or your...
- Well, we do have a licensed commercial kitchen.
So we do have, we do follow standards that are set forth
in safe food handling.
I have a general manager who is the watchdog for all that.
He takes care of everything
under the farm stand roof,
which includes the kitchen.
Of course, we have to abide by the safe food handling
requirements that are out there right now.
And I wouldn't even dare to quote exactly where we are,
but we do have our people trained in safe food handling
and we have to have the right amount of supervisors
on staff, you know, during any one of the shifts.
So we've always...
And the other thing that we do that...
In our retail area
and in our storage area,
we have probably 20 independent coolers and freezers.
In a modern farm stand design,
you probably wouldn't have all these independents
because they're not efficient.
You would have a engineered system
that tied all these systems together.
But the bottom line is, is that our farm grew rapidly
from the very late nineties to now.
And the expansion was not the result of good planning.
The expansion was the result of need.
Three times a day,
every one of our refrigeration units is logged
in terms of what is the temperature at that time.
And if there's any...
The crew, the retail crew who's doing,
and the kitchen crew doing the logging,
if the freezer refrigeration
doesn't meet the minimum standard,
that they have to let management know right away.
And this has proven useful for us over the years.
We can show a food inspector what we do.
We've had minimal loss or spoilage
because of a system failure.
And we feel that we're always putting out healthy product.
Within the kitchen, for safety,
my general manager, Jeff, purchased a date system
that's based on the computer in there.
And within our labeling processes,
the expiration dates are also applied
to many of the products that we're making.
And we have a very strict date code policy
on the big products as well.
- Right. Great.
I'm sure there's more you could tell us about
but I think we'll move on to Nancy's video
and I hope folks have more questions for John.
And if you put them in chat, we'll talk to both
of the farmers after I do Nancy's presentation.
So thanks so much, John.
So I'm going to try to share my screen again
and see if we can go back easily.
Okay.
All right, so that was John.
And,
now we'll see Nancy Franklin of Riverview Farm
talking about her operation.
And again, there's no music
there's only sound when Nancy's speaking.
So, and that's in Plainfield, New Hampshire.
And these are some beautiful shots of what people see.
Actually, what we'll see is,
well, this, they have lots of signage at the farm store
and information on how to move on to pick your own.
Lots of farm made products.
When folks come to pick the blueberries,
they'll see actually the blueberries and raspberries.
Of course, we got there early, before anything was out.
This is just early spring.
Imagine the corn maze and pumpkin fields there.
- Nancy, tell us what you
are going to do this year for customer safety
and for, you know, COVID, what's left of it.
- [Nancy] So last year,
well, normally we would have been open
seven days a week, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
Last year, we were open six days a week, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
We're going to keep the Mondays off.
That was nice.
And we're not going to be open at 9:00 AM.
It's probably going to go back to 10:00 AM.
And we haven't decided whether five
or five thirty maybe would be a better time, but not six.
- And what's your season for visitors?
- We start around the 1st of August.
We have late season blueberries, mostly Elliot
but there's a few slightly earlier ones,
rows of earlier ones.
And then we go through the end of October
and then our daughter, a weekend or two later,
starts up with her wreath making stuff.
But for the pick your own part, yeah, through October 31st.
And the reason why we extended the hours last year was
because we knew it gets busy here on the weekends,
and just to space people out so they could have more hours
during the day that they could come.
Closed Mondays.
It was nice for us to just sort of take care
of stuff that we would normally just try to
squeeze in somewhere or other.
But the real reason behind it was that,
because of Spotted Wing Drosophila,
we have to spray once a week
for that stupid little fruit fly.
Really annoying
cause there's a new generation every eight to ten days.
So typically what we would do before
was spray one part of the blueberries or raspberry patches
and close off the other part.
And then the next day spray that and sort of alternate.
So that people would be shoved to either
one part of the patch or another,
but by being closed on Mondays, Paul could go
out Sunday evening
because that's when this insect is out,
is in the evenings.
Go out, spray all the blueberries
all the raspberries at once
so that when we opened again on Tuesday,
people could go everywhere in those patches.
So they could be spaced out better.
We did like Mondays off.
And I know there was another orchard nearby
that said, we're going to copy that.
So they were closed on Tuesdays.
And I suspect we're all going
to be doing the same thing this year.
Because why should we work seven days a week?
- You're planning on keeping Mondays closed?
- Yeah. - Yeah, good.
- Yeah. Now we didn't do school tours last year either
which is usually kindergartners, maybe first graders
and the schools weren't going out either.
I don't know if that's going to resume
and if it does, maybe we'll still have a Monday
as an option for that.
It's usually like a 9:00 AM.
By 10, 10:30, they're done.
So, haven't figured that part out yet,
but yeah, we'll see how that goes.
So yeah, we did that.
And then in addition to having the barn set ups here,
we took what was supposed to have been just housing
for a tractor and made that a satellite of the barn.
So we had jams, maple syrup, honey, some bagged apples
a smaller kind of container for cider
that we would put ice in overnight
and then had cider in there,
another table, another scale set up.
We use Square,
is it Square or Square Up?
For cashing out stuff over there, too.
So, that also just helped to spread people out here.
We also, on weekends,
once we really got going with apple season in particular,
had a sign out here that said only seven people
in the barn at any one time.
And if you had a large party,
maybe just one of you from that party to go in
- [Mary] That's where she was just speaking to us
in that barn area.
And we're going to see across the way is
the extra flex space that she's used
for refreshments and additional sales.
- Can you talk about again,
just the hand washing station and the...
What you have over here,
the bathroom.
- Yeah, in the barn we have a bathroom.
And then during the season
we'll get a couple of porta-potties to go
about where the tractor is sitting right now.
- Okay.
- I think they usually put like a hand sanitizer
thing in those.
- Or hand sanitizers in the bathrooms.
- I think so.
- They usually do.
- What we did this last year in addition to that was,
we just also rented a couple of washing stations
to sit outside of those two.
So that would have like soap and water
you had to activate with a pump,
with your foot kind of stuff. - Yes, yeah.
So we had that too, just to make extra sure.
- Right, this was a charming sign.
- Not everybody likes dogs.
Not every dog gets along with every other dog.
I can't vouch for people's dogs,
whether they've had their rabies shot or not.
- Right.
- And first and foremost, we're growing food
and we can't have dogs lifting their legs to pee
- on your berries. on the berries.
Like who wants to pick those?
And when people pick, they go to the first bush
where they see color and they'll pick.
I was looking at the barn door one time
and this car gets out, this family with like a Saint Bernard
on a leash with an eight year old at the other end.
Takes that girl right over to the raspberry bush,
lifts his leg and pees.
I'm like, oh no.
This is why we can't do this.
And it just gets so busy.
Like even this one goes inside.
He's not happy, but it's like,
we can't have you out and around.
And not everybody knows how to behave
around a dog they don't know.
Little kids want to go and pet every little animal.
It's always good to warn people about the ground.
Every so often, walking in the orchard,
there's a woodchuck hole.
- Oh, my.
- So, yeah.
People need to be aware that,
you know, we can't control everything ground wise
that's out there.
Yeah. I mean, over the years, you kind of figure out.
Like if we ever find deadly night shade out there,
it's like, we gotta get that out of there.
Cause little kids will think it's some little fruit.
I had a woman call me one time.
She was up in the raspberries, which are up at front
that way towards 12A.
And she's calling me from her phone,
"What are the blueberries that are in the raspberries?"
I'm like, "There are no blueberries in the raspberries."
Forgot now what it was that she picked,
but it's like a poisonous thing.
"Well, my child's eating them."
No, do not.
No, no. Don't.
There's, there's no...
- She was up there?
- Yeah.
- And called you down here?
- Uh-huh.
- Oh, that was good.
- Yep.
- Right. So if there's apple cores and other kinds
of food stuff left around,
bugs are going to find it.
So that was our little overview of Riverview Farm.
That was great, Nancy, thank you.
So now I'm going to ask you a few questions that we didn't,
that we talked about in person,
but we didn't get them onto the video
if you're up for that Nancy.
So some things we didn't talk about were how you,
how you did the corn maze this year,
or last year and how you're going to do it this year,
if it's the same or different.
- Okay. So our maze is maybe three acres in size.
It shares a field with pumpkins
and we alternate back and forth
one year and the next, switch sides, (indistinct).
And we have an artist friend design it.
And last year, instead of having dead ends,
we just made it one long continuous winding path
so that people wouldn't be getting
into a dead end and suddenly coming
upon other people who may or may not have been masked.
We told people to wear masks
in around the barns and around the parking areas.
But when they were out picking, they were probably fine.
But still have a mask with you in case you ran
into somebody you knew or had to help somebody or whatever.
So just the continuous path seemed to work out pretty well.
It's not the huge draw, I don't think.
It's kind of a secondary use
of that field to put some crops into.
This year, I think we're going to go back to dead ends,
hopefully.
And it's going to have actually some
of the same characters this year that we had last year
but then additions to that in other places.
So I think we're going back to the way it was.
We haven't really gotten to where it's anywhere near
up to where we have to rototill the paths.
Yeah. So stay tuned.
- Okay.
- But hopefully things are better by fall.
That opens around Labor Day weekend and continues.
- Now you did venture into curbside pick up a little bit.
How did that work for you?
How did you do that?
- Well, because we use Square,
people would put an order through there
and so it would show up for us that way.
We didn't do email or calling.
People would put their order in
and pay for it that way, too.
And we were paying attention,
listening in on these different webinars
that extension was having
leading up to like in the spring
and seeing what other people like Moulton's were doing.
And in a bit of a panic.
So we did have kind of a curbside pickup for the front
of our apple barn with the cider presses and cold storage.
But honestly we had maybe 20 people the whole season
that did it that way.
Turns out people really wanted to be outside.
So we had a lot of new time, new customers here.
We gave out an awful lot of directions
to where everything was.
So yeah, curbside was, I don't know if we'll,
maybe we'll keep it up this year
but I wouldn't expect it to get any bigger at all.
We're really pretty much pick your own.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- Would you talk about your outdoor dinners,
what you did last year
and what you're going to do this year?
- Last year they were canceled outright.
Even if it was someone...
Amy, our daughter, is the one that does all that stuff
and she partners with a caterer out
of Vermont, Artisan Eats Vermont,
of Vermont,
and she like has one group where it's like,
they're all in their own little cohort, their own bubble.
But Amy was still like, nope, we're just not
not at all that year.
This year, she is back to doing them again.
She started off a couple of weeks ago.
She had a tea party that was in the late morning time.
I think she does maybe a couple or three tea parties
but then it's dinners in the orchard which,
I don't know that schedule,
but she does have some set up
and it's typically eight people
and one person will make the reservation for the groups
So they all know each other.
She only started this probably two years ago anyways,
but she would have one or two dinners
where you didn't have to know everyone else in your party.
You could just make reservation for one or two people
and up to a limit of whatever it was, eight or ten people.
She's thinking about maybe doing that again this year
but I don't think she's really opened
that up yet as a possibility.
So she's kind of keeping that out for maybe later on
in the summer or an early fall thing.
But yeah, works out well.
- And would you tell us a little
about how she managed the wreath making classes this year?
- So this year, yeah.
She still had the classes, but it was kind of
like the dinners where you had to be
with people that you knew.
She had fewer people per class.
She could do some,
more than one class per day
but she always wanted to make sure
the barn was aired out in between,
which takes probably just a few minutes.
But yeah, so she really did cut back on the wreath
making classes part of it.
I would imagine this year it's going to be back to normal
because yeah, she's got all adults who, I'm sure,
hopefully, will be all vaccinated.
but maybe we'll still continue with the masks.
You know, it's, that's a November thing.
So we'll see what we're doing.
I'm a little anxious about
letting go of the whole mask thing
until children can be vaccinated.
I mean, this is very much outdoor activities
that we do around here
but as long as they're still vulnerable
because they can't be vaccinated yet,
I don't know.
I think we might still really ask people to
mask when they're in around other people, too.
Unless that changes by the time we open.
We'll see.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- Looks like we got a ton of chat questions.
I guess I'll start at the top.
Let's see what we have.
- Do you want me to keep track of chat and
- Sure.
- I can kind of monitor the questions
and between you and Nancy and John and others,
everyone can chime in.
- Sure.
- Okay, I'll start with one that's for both John and Nancy.
What type of insurance policies do you have
since you both have staff and visitors on your farms
and did you have to change any of your policies for COVID?
And while you two think about that,
I just want to say, this has been fantastic.
Really appreciate you sharing everything.
For those of you who might've had
a hard time seeing the videos,
we will post links specifically to
the videos on the website.
So John, we'll start to start with you.
Tell us about your insurance policies
and then Nancy, you can chime in.
- The insurance policy, the insurance,
the exposure very seriously.
So we meet, I meet every year
with our broker and we've had the same broker now
for a number of years.
I don't know what to say other than our broker
and the company we're using is very aware
of the activities that we have here on the farm.
We know we have this exposure
and probably high chance for damages
so we consider ourselves to be insured.
And obviously our insurance rates are based upon our size.
So we are audited every year where the auditor
is looking of course at our labor, our payroll,
and our sales.
So, unfortunately, as a farm that's going to invite
the public onto our property,
we just have to bite the bullet
and buy a fair amount of insurance.
- Yeah. Nancy.
- So we use Farm Family Casualty Insurance
and have several policies, different types.
Yeah. So we have liability insurance and it's very similar
to what John was saying, where it's an audit every year.
You sit down with our insurance agent and go over
what's new, anything different, nothing different.
There wasn't really an increase for COVID,
but we're careful anyways.
That liability insurance,
I wish parents would sometimes really understand
that they really seriously have to watch their children.
There's even a terrorism clause in this insurance policy.
If you start reading the fine print, like, oh my gosh
we're covering a lot of stuff here.
So yeah.
Yeah. We're, I think we're pretty well covered.
And that's also why we have signage up about, you know
this is a working farm
so be aware of the uneven ground, the irrigation pipe,
stay away from the pond and the river.
We had an incident many years ago
with a very independent cat
and he had been injured.
I can't remember if he still had stitches on his neck
or what, and it was back when we used to do strawberries
pick your own.
Parents were out picking strawberries.
Son was throwing cat up in the air
and cat defended himself and bit the kid.
This was before you really had to worry about rabies.
Like it wasn't a requirement to get vaccinated for rabies.
That came probably a year or two later.
So this kid ended up,
his oral antibiotics or whatever he was getting
actually weren't working
so he had to be hospitalized.
I was in a panic
and that's when we sat down with an attorney and said,
okay what do we need to do to keep from being sued?
And he said, you know, you gotta warn people
just like the ski areas do where they say
if you fall and break your leg or something, oh, well
that's on you.
So that's why we have that sign at the entrance
to the retail barn that says, you know, working farm
watch your children be careful and all that.
Now on the other sign, Where it's what we're picking now,
I also put in a little apple tree shape and said
please do not climb the trees because we don't want people,
we don't want them falling out of the trees.
Also, we don't want them ruining next year's crop
which is in the works when we're already in the works,
when we're picking apples.
So, you know, we don't want them breaking branches
or all that stuff, but yeah.
Spread the word as much as we can
why we want them to be careful.
- Yeah. Yeah.
That's important.
And Nancy actually had some questions
about how you're informing people.
So we might circle back to those
but you already started to answer those.
So I'll move to a question for John
which I think is also relevant to Nancy
which is what are your staffing challenges?
What were they during COVID and what are they now?
- It's a good question.
You know, and staffing and safety go together
because good staff members tend to be more safe
or understand the dangers or risks in any of their jobs.
We are lucky.
We have a very stable labor force.
What was interesting during COVID is that
we had just opened at the beginning of the COVID season
or whatever you want to call it.
We had been open about a week
and then the seriousness of COVID hit in March
and not knowing what to do,
we immediately met, reduced our hours,
and we told our senior staff members that we understood
if they did not want to work
and not want to meet with the public.
Several of them took us up on that.
So that immediately created staff shortages.
The good thing that happened was
the college kids that are showing up from college
because the colleges were closing down.
We were able to backfill with our regular college kids
and some new folks.
We do have,
in terms of safety,
we develop protocols and policies pertaining
to COVID testing,
pertaining to isolation, quarantine.
And again, I have a great, great group
of cooperative employees.
And then as is publicly known,
we went through the whole season
from March up until the middle of December
with our closing date being New Year's Eve.
And we had an employee who did not feel well
and per our protocol and requirements, we said,
well, you can't come back to work until you are tested.
Would you please get tested?
And this employee did.
And wham, at 11 o'clock on a Friday morning,
we found out that it was a positive test.
Within an hour, We informed our staff of this.
And then by five o'clock that afternoon
we were shut down for the rest of the year.
That was because we followed our own self-imposed protocol.
That was a challenge that I hope I never face again.
December is not prime time for the farm,
but certainly the monetary loss
at that time was far more than I ever would have expected.
And should that occur during our regular summer
or fall season, it could be quite, quite costly.
We've already rented a separate box office
and the farm crew will be operating independently
of the retail and kitchen crew.
They'll have their own sign in system,
their own meeting point each day
and we'll get them separated.
And then we'll get some of the farm crew folks
cross trained to handle some retail duties
if we need them.
Are we expect expecting to have COVID issues?
No, but one thing we have learned is to be prepared
for who knows what might happen.
I don't want to go through a shutdown again
but it's what we felt we had to do.
And we were very forward with our customers.
We announced it immediately
that we'd had a positive test
and that any customer that wanted to call us
could contact us in some way.
And we responded to quite a few
inquiries as to when this person worked
and what this person was doing that day.
So it was quite an experience.
- In the summertime we tend to have
high school and college students.
And then we lose the college students in the fall.
One of our, and then we have some in the retail barn
especially then we have different people.
One of them is a friend
of ours and she was asking me early on.
So, so what are you doing to make sure
that we're going to be okay?
And so I had explained all the different things
we were setting up and the plexiglass
and all those other hand sanitizer, satellite
she says, oh, okay, well
looks like you've worked working on it.
So that's good.
We were fine.
We have one employee who's excellent.
She was going to go off to Dartmouth last year
for freshman year.
But when Dartmouth came in with these, you know
advertising all the different restrictions
that were going to be happening,
she decided to take a gap year, which was great for us.
Cause she was really good.
She's a field hand and just smart, energetic, great.
She's going to be going off to college this year.
Yeah. And we also had a manager for a few years.
He'd worked for us as just a regular employee
for a long time.
Over the winter, he decided to go into construction
where he could get not only weekends off
and maybe better pay,
but he also had a retirement 401k stuff
that we did not offer.
I think we were going to start offering health insurance
because we really felt we should be paying for that.
But he got that with the other thing too.
So we're already short handed.
We could really use a manager.
As far as summer help, we're okay.
But come fall, I think we're going to need to find
another two or three people.
So usually for us word of mouth works the best.
If we have to advertise in the local paper,
I'm going to get some people
that we might just have to let go right away.
They don't really have the experience
or show up when they should or they decide
this isn't what they thought it was
and they don't show up at all.
Yeah. Usually word of mouth works pretty well.
So hopefully we'll be in better shape then.
- Yeah. Thank you.
I think hiring good people is an issue everywhere.
So we have more questions about the signs and here's one
I think meant for Nancy
but John by all means jump in.
So people want to hear more
about your signage and in particular,
do you have a hold harmless clause stated on your sign?
- No. When we were first getting
into pick your own strawberries, we went
to another local place and right off you enter the driveway
and there was this huge sign
don't don't don't don't
no, no, nope.
Not at all welcoming.
You know, you just wanted to turn around and leave.
I try to word things in a nice way
but that certainly gets across the point.
On the other sign, it says what we're picking down there.
We also say, yeah, no dogs anywhere.
You know, keep them in your car in the shade.
We can get you water for your dog
but it cannot be out and around the farm.
The children must be supervised at all times by
the adults that they came with.
In other words, we are not your babysitter.
So stuff like that.
No smoking in the barns or the fields, that sort of stuff.
We don't state that it's your fault if you get hurt.
Hopefully that's understood.
- I think Nancy makes an excellent point
about signs because I, too, Nancy,
have seen these negative signs at farms.
I think you can do a lot of retail damage and resentment
and even almost challenge.
You know, you're challenging the person.
We believe in signs.
We have a lot of signs
but we try to work to make them positive.
You know, our dog sign starts off, we love dogs.
But, you know, and our mask sign,
we never required masks in the farm stand,
but our signage begging people
and telling them about we want to feel safe.
We want them to feel safe, all this stuff.
I honestly think we had 99% mass compliance from day one.
And the couple of folks who wouldn't wear their mask,
even during the governors mandate time,
I mean, there were just very independent minded persons.
And of course I'm saying that politely here in public
because I could say it impolitely
if we weren't on the screen.
They never intended to wear a mask
nor did they want to.
So yeah, we use a lot of signage.
In fact, we were even criticized because somebody
didn't feel welcome because we did require a mask.
Well, so be it.
I mean, we do a lot of signs
and I was lucky.
We have right in the next town, in Center Harbor,
a relatively new business.
And they crank out these relatively inexpensive
custom made signs.
Right overnight, man.
I was over there every other day
at the beginning of COVID
and she just treated us promptly and the price was right
to make all these different signs.
- That's great to hear.
Yeah. Jada pointed out in chat
how it's a delicate balancing act
between getting important messages across
and sounding unwelcome and both of your farms
do a really great job on that high wire act
of communicating and educating while also being welcoming.
I think we have time for maybe one or two more questions.
Here's one for John.
So you mentioned having done curbside
but shutting down the kitchen.
And here's the question about
did you consider doing takeout for breakfast and dinners?
How did you make your decision on that?
And then sort of a follow up is
you talked about how you're kind of
taking it slowly this year.
You're going to do the corn maze
but probably not doing other events or dinners.
What's your thinking there in terms of moving forward
with events at some point?
Or not, or just deciding it's, you know,
taking too much away from your core focus?
- You know, that's a good question.
And it's a big debate we're having among my entire team.
A lot of the planning of course takes place months ago
that we made the decision.
Those of you out there who've asked about the staffing,
you probably are focusing in
on what the real problem is.
To do it safely for the staff and for your customers,
you need more staff.
The reason we've cut the events out is that
A, we are concerned about health standards,
but B, we've been so fortunate to see a very large increase
in our core business that we can't take on these events
either economically or safely.
Really, that's probably why we're doing fewer events
because we were a big event farm.
I mean we were sitting around every year
coming up with workshops
and farm to table dinners and breakfasts
and suddenly, due to COVID,
due to COVID,
we were inundated with core business.
It was like, Aw man, thank goodness we had COVID
to fall back on
to say we couldn't do a farm to table dinner or breakfast.
We had many requests and are getting requests every week
for private dinners and private events.
We just can't do it.
So we have to look at our business plan.
We have to see where we're going, but let's face it.
I mean, COVID has been the driver
and we don't know what the next turn is going to be.
You know, we used to bring in 50...
In 2019, we had 50 something tour buses in
and we kind of weren't real crazy about them anyway.
So when they didn't show up last year at all,
we were like...
Well, two of them showed up.
They begged to come.
And it was like, hallelujah, no tour buses.
We don't know what to do this year.
I mean it...
I'm so happy to hear Nancy say I don't know,
because we're in that position too.
How do you turn away business?
You, you just, you're turning away.
You're wanting to do the best job you can
with the best business you have.
And then those other event things
maybe don't contribute a lot to the core business,
but it really is about keeping your staff healthy
and not overworked
and doing things that just puts a lot of stress on them.
- Yeah. That's a great point.
Great closing words.
Before we officially close,
I just want to turn it over to Nancy and then Mary
to see if you have some closing words, Nancy,
about where are you going next?
And it could be, I don't know.
And then I'll turn it over to Mary to wrap up.
And then I'll say a couple of end remarks.
- Hmm. Yeah.
Some of that is I don't know.
Some things I think we are planning for to bring back.
We have the Max Maple Creamies
down the road from McNamara Dairy.
And they usually come in with a really cool food truck
and do the Maple Creamies here
but that's a long line of people going for those.
Last year, they didn't come because they set up
a drive-through situation at their place,
which was good and yet, at the same time,
we had cars going there first and then coming back here
and they're trying to make an acute right turn
up our driveway when somebody else
is trying to come in.
I'm surprised no one crashed out on River Road,
quite frankly.
We also have one way traffic
but sometimes somebody doesn't read those signs
and they're really confused.
I think we're going to see
if we can get the maple creamy truck back.
So some things like that, yes,
we're going to bring back and other stuff,
it's like, we're still waiting to see how things go.
Yeah.
Our children are saying, you know,
every time we get new customers,
they seem to stay and they'll come back again.
I'm like, okay, so,
we don't have quite the honey crisp crop
that we had last year.
So I hope we're going to have enough to
keep everybody happy, but yeah,
we're kind of getting prepared for it might be crazy again.
Yeah. That's where we are.
- I just want to thank Nancy and John so much
for letting us come on your farm
and interview you and film you and also appearing tonight.
I think you had great information to share
so really appreciate your time.
And also thank you to Jada
for being our film master with her smartphone,
which is amazing photos and videos with that.
I also want to put in a plug for UNH Extension,
to all the farmers who are on the call.
Don't forget about us.
We're here for all sorts of help from food safety, you know
to plant guidance, farming guidance.
There's all sorts of experts
at UNH extension and UVM extension.
And we're ready to help.
So give us a call if you have any kind of questions.
- Great. Thank you.
And let's see, I'll close with one more slide,
which is to let you know that
as of now we have one more of these get togethers.
It'll be, we're skipping next week.
And on Tuesday, June 15th, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM
we're gonna be moving back to Pennsylvania
and talking with a farm that does farm tours
as well as overnight stays.
On our website here, you can register for that.
And also, somebody asks how long it will take
to put up this recording.
I'm going to say by Friday.
We usually try to get it done in a couple days
but sometimes it takes a little longer.
Certainly by Friday, the (indistinct) will post
not only this recording,
but also the excellent videos
that Mary and Jada and John and Nancy put together.
And we'll also list resources,
links that were mentioned today
as well as contact information.
We'll send you an email when all that is posted.
You can visit our website at any time to also take a look
at some of the resources that we've already got posted
from previous sessions.
So with that, I want to especially close
by thanking Mary, thanking Jada, John, and Nancy
and all of you for joining us today
and sending in such excellent questions in advance.
Sorry, we didn't quite get to all of them
but feel free to reach out.
We'll be sharing...
Everyone who participated today will be
sharing their email addresses.
And we welcome you to reach
out and follow up with questions.
So thank you all.
And hopefully we'll see you again soon.