Winter 2024 Project and Pasture Update

Good morning, and Happy St. Patrick's Day! ☘️

While the official arrival of Spring is marked on the calendar later this week, we've been the benefactor of nearly a month's worth of Spring-like weather here in Northern Indiana.

The farm production team isn't complaining as it's afforded them some sunny, refreshingly crisp days to complete their daily animal chores and checks, and winter and early spring projects. They've been working on shade structures for the laying hens, putting finishing touches on our new chicken brooder and overseeding the pastures, among many key projects.

But they aren't the only team members that have been busy innovating and improving through big projects. 

Our operations and fulfillment teams (a.k.a., the folks responsible for so carefully packing and sending out orders and keeping inventory on hand) are putting the finishing touches on their winter projects during what is a really busy period of the year.

Here's a behind the scenes look at what we've been up to:

My brother Blake (pictured below with Max and two of his personal helpers) has been instrumental in a big construction project where we've added a second loading dock.

Kathryn Molloy, our warehouse manager, demonstrated incredible leadership in working alongside the warehouse team to establish a second packing line (seen below) that was immediately put to good use during our February Winter Beef Sale.

It was a massive undertaking that included reorganizing our entire workflow, while also moving some packing operations into a newly renovated area.

The outcome: during two of our highest order volume weeks ever, even more than during COVID, things mostly went off super smoothly.

Last but not least, we completed a significant expansion of our on-farm kitchen which more than doubled in size to accommodate our growing team.

After all, this is not only a place for our team to foster friendships each day during lunches and breaks, but also where we host monthly lunches by "Chef Spencer" and our semi-annual pie cooking contest (🥧 which is coming up again this week!).

As you can see, we stay busy. 😊

I hope you enjoyed this look inside our farm, and we sure appreciate your support as we grow, evolve and transform the broken food system.

Have a great holiday today.

Your farmer,

Blaine