Big Launch Just around the Corner!

It is finally here! After years of developing our unique "farm model", followed by months of soul searching and writing, the day has come to take this model to the world! This coming weekend, Feb 17 and 18, we will be at the Mother Earth News Fair in Belton, Tx for the official launch.  Exciting Days!

For those who have received the "executive summary", there has been one fairly major change in the layout of the offering. We spent the last couple months floating this around potential investors and colleagues from the executive world, collecting feedback. This feedback has convinces us to change this offering into a straight "farm franchise" approach. A model that people understand already, accept, and are comfortable funding and using. I had tried to stay away from "franchising" becasue of negative experiences in my own past with franchises (from the franchisee side), but after careful consideration, it just makes sense. At the end of the day, this IS in fact a franchise. Explaining it in any other way just confuses people.

So, Farm Franchise it is...  Lots of work to do, but we are now looking for partners, investors, and initial clients to get this rolling and launch 100,000 farms across america!

Update on the Fire Damage, Cost, and Consequences

It is getting close to two weeks since our "kitchen" fire.  Here is a rundown of what this means going forward.

Damage:
Surprisingly light overall. The actual fire damage is limited to the heater/air unit itself, one light fixture, some wiring and some plumbing. Smoke damage is actually the worst. It appears that everything inside made of plastic is ruined, not cleanable due to the toxic nature of the electrical/plastic smoke. This includes plastic shelving in the fermenting room, plastic devices and tools, etc. Any food items are obviously ruined due to toxic smoke exposure. Wood used in cheesemaking is also "suspect" and must be tested, also the cheesecave itself.

View into the fermenting room where the fire started.

End of the kitchen against the fermenting room, shows fairly severe smoke damage all around

Fortunately most of the pumpkins and melons were already gone, the ones left are now ruined from toxic smoke fumes.

Here is the long view of the kitchen area

The source of the fire is inside this heating unit. Flames were shooting out from inside and caught the plastic front on fire. As the burning plastic from the front grill dripped down below, it landed on the plastic water pipes. As the pipes burned through, water sprayed out and doused the fire, extinguishing it completely.

You can see the smoke on the exterior fins of the heater unit.

Cleanup Cost:
We have an estimate from a local fire recovery business, at $8000 to $10,000 for a complete cleanup.  this is obviously beyond our budget so we will need to do cleanup on our own.

The good news is, cheese season is still a few months away, so there is time to proceed with cleanup without a huge rush. By the time cheese season rolls around, the kitchen should be back in operation.

The biggest consequence, other than the cost of replacing items inside and cleanup, is the delay in announcing our new products. Actually, this is perhaps the deepest cost. We had several products in testing but not yet finished for production scheduled for this year. These are now delayed indefinitely until we have appropriate work area.

Products now delayed:

Non-Toxic De-Greaser based on vinegar, essential oils, and baking soda
Organic Lip Balm from our bee wax
Non-Toxic Deodorant
Organic Oil based Anti-Acne Face Scrub
Frankincense Essential Oil + Full Resin Extract at naturally occurring proportions
Lard and Goat Milk Soaps
Chemical Free Baby Bottom cleaning system (Baby Wipe Replacement)

That gives an idea of the products under development... these are things that we use ourselves and were in the process of developing the packaging, sizing, and consistent recipes for resale. Some of these we can pursue without the "kitchen" work area, and some we can not. We will do our best, but it is safe to say that our schedule of monthly new product releases for 2017 is going to be tough to meet.

The good news in all this is, no one was hurt. Damage can be repaired, things can be replaced. We are prayerfully thankful that no one was around when the fire broke out and ultimately no humans nor animals were injured.

I'd also like to give a SPECIAL THANKS to the kind generous individuals that have donated directly to the farm during this trying time.  We deeply appreciate your gifts and touching words. Tragedy has a way of bringing out the best in neighbors, and we have some very kind neighbors!

Thank YOU!

(If you are interested in donating funds directly to our farm to help recover from this fire, you can do so with the "DONATE" button on the right of this page, under the weather report. If on a phone, click below on "view web version" first.)

A Significant Setback Strikes - Fire

This has been a sad week. On wednesday we experienced a small taste of realization of one of the worst fears of rural life.

Fire.

The heater inside the farm kitchen/fermenting/storage room caught fire. No one was hurt, and the building itself is fine, but lot of cleanup and repairs are needed before it can be usable again.

Best we can tell, some sort of debris got inside the heater unit. It is an electric heating element inside a window air conditioning unit. We had not run the heater yet this winter. We were not actively using the farm kitchen for anything during the off season, and the same unit handles the storage area for winter feed, so we let it drift down to almost freezing.  Then, this week, flipped the heater on to start making soap.

Well, several hours later I noticed water running out the floor at the end. Not good. What we found inside was the front cover of the heater / air unit had burned off from the inside, dripped burning plastic on the water pipes below which burst and thereby put out the fire. It is obvious from the areas burned that the fire started inside the heater unit and flames were actually blown out the vents. Most likely, some sort of debris accumulated inside or perhaps some sort of critter built a nest. Hard to say until we dismantle it all to see whats inside.

Nevertheless, we are heartbroken. The building is fine and no one was hurt, so that is worth celebrating. Yet we have a pretty massive cleanup to do, then some wiring, plumbing, and fixture repairs.

This is going to put a pause on the new products planned for February. We will do our best to stick to the plan, but life just got significantly more busy.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

A New Beginning - 2017 is here

Life.....

2016 was a crazy year in so many ways. It seems that every aspect of life was touched in a deep and earth shattering way during this last year. No stone was left unmoved, none. Little Sprouts Farm has experienced more turmoil in 2016 than any other, and our family has also. 2016 was a year that, on Dec 31, you think, "Really?".  But now it is over.

So now we move into 2017, leaving the turmoil of last year behind, we face a new start, a new beginning.  For this farm, 2017 is a promising one. We have been preparing for this moment over the last several months. Now it is here! Let's take a moment and run through the new changes that start now, jan of 2017:

A One Stop Shop for all your health needs

Instead of just offering great food, we have decided to expand into other areas of life. As you may know, we have personally faced a variety of serious health challenges, and the successes of facing those is what gave birth to Little Sprouts Farm. It is still true that animal products are the central and critical aspect of health, that has not c hanged one bit. We are fully committed to bringing to you the things that allows our family to experience health when medical science had nothing left to offer. BUT, there is more. We not only changed how we eat, but how we live. The things we use on our home, and products we put both in and on our bodies have a lot to do with health. Everything from toothpaste to laundry soap to fish oil to probiotics to snacks. It all matters. So we have spent the last few months making relationships with the companies that produce what we used ourselves, so that we can offer it all to you.. as a package. We want to be the place you go to fill your diet and your home with health.
We are not seeking to be just another retailer.. but a trusted source of both information and products that are personally tested and utilized by our own family. that is our commitment to you, we will only offer what we use.

Focused Food offerings

We have reworked out food offerings for 2017 for a variety of reasons. While we cancelled the milk herdshare, we are replacing it with a upsized raw cheese offering. We have teamed up with Taylor Sausage to bring a variety of meat products like salami, broths, etc. Everything is still made to our exacting specifications, using all organic ingredients and traditional processing, but outsourcing allows us to expand at lower labor costs.  We have added Guinea Fowl and will bring back a steady supply of both turkey and chicken (yes... the famous Little Sprouts Eggs are returning!). We are also investing heavily on our own brans of soaps and other personal care products... most made from our own animals.

Share the Knowledge

Our first of many books was released on Christmas eve on Amazon. We are now in the process of documenting the business and operational model of farming that we have developed, so that others can easily implement the same model on their own. This model is innovative and disruptive, positioned to bring small family farms back into operation all across america. In fact, our goal is to see ten thousand small local farms launched over the next few years. It is time to stop complaining about the food system and healthcare, and do something about it! It is time to rebuild America from the ground up.

Road Show - Complete Package

In February we start the road show, the first even to be the Mother Earth News Fair in Benton Tx.  There we will formally announce the line of books and ebooks, plus open the door for investors to join the movement to restore the american farm.  This is much more than just books, this is an entire program designed to make launching a farm easy and safe. Similar to a franchise, this will be a  pre-packaged model, sized through computer prediction to meet resources and requirements of the individual. We are not just teaching people how to start a farm from scratch, but actually empowering them to do so at low risk and a predicted expected return on investment.

On a personal note.. financially we are extremely challenged. With our source of capital dried up months ago, and our savings gone, we are relying on the month to month income from the farm to exist. Had we been able to prepare for this, it would not be an issue, but the sudden change from cash flow to no cash flow has been quite the challenge to live through. There is no full resolution in site yet, we are taking things day by day and trusting in the God that led us to start this farm to provide. We know if this is an effort in line with His will, it will succeed, and trust in that even when we can not see the road for the fog.

And that is how we end 2016 and start 2017... in a fog. What will tomorrow bring? Next week? next month? Who knows. In my younger days, I could plan everything out clearly... but as the wisdom of age sets in we come to realize that life is a bit more about providence and random luck than it is planning. At the end of the day.. either God is in charge or He isnt.. and if He is, then all that happens is overseen or brought about by Him.

I have finally learned what it means... "We do the work, He brings the harvest."  so....

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;

New Farm Advertising Campaign

We have done very little advertising for the farm since we launched Little Sprouts some 6 or 7 years ago. The customer list has grown slowly from a dozen to a few hundred in that time by word of mouth, interviews, etc.  But as we approach 2017, and have left the off farm income behind, there is a desperate need to speed things up.

So, we have launched a new advertising campaign. It is primarily based on "doodle" add, where a hand draws the story on a whiteboard in a video.  I personally love that format! It is entertaining, crisp, simple.  So here we go!

At this point, all of the ads are made in-house, with some special software.  It has been a learning curve and challenging, but below you can see the first results! Yep.. I know.. it looks amateurish. That's ok.. we are amateurs! Constructive feedback is appreciated, but lets keep in mind that no professionals are involved.. so keep expectations realistic!

The Ads themselves are, for now,  graphics and music. The combination of audio and visual tells the story without narration, well that's the goal anyway... so be sure to turn on the sound as you watch.

Save The Children

The Little Blog that Could

As 2016 come to a close, we are amazed at what this little blog has accomplished. Started just to document our struggles in building a farm from scratch coming from corporate america, it was reached many countries and grown in popularity.  Six years into documenting our journey, December 2016 shows us approaching 8000 readers per month. 

While by internet standards, this may seem pretty dismal, to us it is phenomenal! From zero to 8000 in 6 years with virtually no paid advertising, from a tiny family farm in southerm oregon, its amazing.  And on top of that, to see the list of countries that visit our blog regularly, its humbling!

Our prayer is that we remain diligent to use this voice to heal families and farms around the world, and turn this earth a bit more back to the paradise it was meant to be. 

Thank you for following along our journey. Each of you, whether a reader or a customer, is precious to us. YOU matter to us more than we can express. 

First eBook Released! - Join the Revolution!

The small family farm is one of the key aspects that built America. Once upon a time, small family farms covered the landscape from seas to sea, producing good local food for the masses.  Today, not so much. Today the small farm is hard to find, and when you do, it is supported by off-farm income!

The reason? many actually... But the bottom line is, the conventional model does not work! With the conventional model, even organic, much of the profits of farming is passed along to other industries. Sustainability is an elusive thing with so much dependence on "imports" from outside of feed, fertilizer, labor, etc.

The answer? We have been working on this for years now. Producing a small farm model that can show a profit while producing healthy local food.

Now (drum roll please) we are sharing our model with others, with you. We are producing a series of downloadable books explaining every aspect of our model, in enough detail for you to implement a system that WORKS on your farm.

the first eBook is available for download now! It is not entirely "polished" but we didn't want, this information is just too important. So we are releasing it now, in its slightly unfinished form, and offering free updates as it is matured.

More books will follow as quickly as possible. For now, please consider buying a copy for yourself.

http://littlesproutsfarm.blogspot.com/p/books.html

New Lower Prices !

We have finally received our first batch of products made through our new streamlined processing.  And you get tremendous savings!

Little Sprouts is now utilizing Mohawk Valley meats and Taylor Sausage to do the processing of all meat products. This has greatly streamlined the process ad lowered our cost for all processed products, which we pass along to you.

In addition, our  new approach (started in early 2016) of growing our own feed for animals has lowered our feed cost dramatically. the project is a success! that also lowers the finished product price to you while preserving a decent living income for the farm.


 For example, dinner sausages have dropped over 40%!

Please take a look at the new prices in the online store... you wont be disappointed.  Virtually all meat products have dropped in price significantly!

Exciting Changes in the Online Store

With all the new products we are offering starting with the December delivery, we have made a number of changes to the  online store. It is now easier to navigate and find things, easier to discover new items. There are many more categories, with fewer items in each category.

Please take a moment to browse through all the categories to see all that we now offer to bring your family the life you deserve.

You will also notice a new category: CLOSEOUTS! This is where we will put items that we are no longer selling, or that have changed and we need to move some stock to replace.  These products are often offered below costs for quick sale.

New Product Overview

As promised, we have been working very hard to expand the value that we can bring to you, our loyal customer. 

Health starts with food, yes, no doubt there. But life is more than the foods we eat and liquids we drink. Life  includes the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, the products we put on our skin, EVERYTHING MATTERS. That is the lesson we learned. 

Many people have come to us, wanting to duplicate the healing we have enjoyed. Yet, often, their experience is different from what we testify to. One reason that can be, as we have learned, is to concentrate on only one part of life.  Just buying clean healthy meat is good, but not good enough. TO achieve the maximum health benefits of a healthy lifestyle, you must change everything into a healthy lifestyle! Nothing held back . That is the commitment we made to ourselves and it worked!

So now we wish to bring this to you.. in a convenient form. You could research, shop around, trial and error... as we did. Or you could just start where our experience has lead us.  We have already weeded through a myriad of products of varying qualities and sources to arrive at the short list we use now.  You do not have to start from scratch!

So far, we have managed to bring the following products, ready right now for your order!

• Liquid Castile Soap from Dr Bonner's
• Nordic Natural Fish Oils
• Rising Tide Sea Vegetables
• Zum Healthy Laundry Soap and surface cleaners

And more are coming! If all goes well we will soon make available:

• A natural and healthy deoderant that WORKS without stickiness
• More fish oil products
• Clay based products for detox
• A toothpaste that is incredibly effective and tasty without chemicals

 Our commitment to you is this.. we will only bring products that we make ourselves, or that we use ourselves. We do not want to by "just another retailer".. we are here to serve you by pre-testing and researching  whats out there that we cant make, and bring you products you can trust for a whole life healthy experience!
 

We invite you to start today, with some of these products.. delivered for free right to your door the first week of each month. Join us in a path to healthy life in all aspects... nothing held back, to achieve the utmost of a pleasant, productive, long life.

Mistake found - Meat prices now set properly

I discovered a huge problem in our online store, a mistake that ended up showing certain meat prices at almost double the actual price! (no wonder those were not selling!). It was purely a computer error...

The good news is.. it is fixed! so please take a moment to browse the pricing in the online store before your next order.. you may be pleasantly surprised!

Busy Busy!

The lack of blogging here might seem to be representative of.. not much going on to talk about. BUT in reality, its exactly the opposite. When there is no blogs created is becasue there simply isnt time to write about everything that is going on! it means SUPER BUSY!

I'll try to catch up a bit this afternoon to fill you in, but lots has been going on, mostly good. And in the background there is plenty of personal stuff, including another family wedding :)

Videos now on Facebook Page

For convenience, I have copied our video library to the facebook page video library, so that those members or public that prefers facebook over our blog site, can explore the videos on that system

For now, there is only the first video, but as we add more they will be posted to both places.

If you have not had time to watch yet, we urge you to take out 20 minutes and watch video 1.. "Cheap Food".

Comment and feedback welcomed and appreciated.

One of the slides from the video. This first one is a narrated and annotated powerpoint, about 20 minutes long. Great place to start!

New for 2016 - Shipping! Idaho to be the first !

Exciting news! we have decided to focus our new offering of nationwide shipping on ... (drum roll please) IDAHO!

Why Choose Idaho?  well.... I like idaho :)

We welcome citizens of Idaho to join Little Sprouts Farm, and enjoy all the benefits the local southern oregon customers do with only a few exceptions. (there are a few products not available for shipping across state lines).  You will participate in the same membership, online ordering, biweekly delivery, and good food for better health!

Here's how it works:

Become a farm member (either free or paid... your choice) by signing up online
Choose "out of area, ship to" as your delivery preference
Then follow through the signup as if you were local!

You will receive an email reminder a few days before your scheduled delivery.
Go into the online store, order as much or as little as you wish
pay online through paypal or online check OR send in a check for your account
Your order will be packed and shipped vis UPS on the assigned monday
the actual shipping costs will be added to your account
You should receive your order, still frozen, on wednesday or at latest thursday

That's it!

Shipping costs are very low, since we can use UPS ground instead of a faster more expensive option. We have successfully packed for frozen delivery at these low rates. There may be some dry ice left in the package, so please be careful when unpacking!

We are excited to welcome customers from Idaho! We hope to set up personal visits to the main areas of Boise, Twin Falls, and Coeur d'Alene from time to time to meet you in person and answer any questions. We truly want this to be a personal farmer - farm member relationship and are committed to making that happen.

-------------------

In fact! --- we are interested in opening up a farm in one of these areas. Yes.. a second Little Sprouts Farm! This is only the idea phase, but we are looking for investors, land, and business partners towards that end. If you are interested in having a local little sprouts farm or supporting a local one, please contact us!

Video for Medford Food Coop

We recently had the privilege of being included in the video spots for the Medford Food Coop!

Website Updates!

Ta Da!

Finally, after  what.. 2, 3 years? We have finally taken on the task of updating our website. It has grown horribly out of date as the farm business progressed, and somewhat confusing.  Hopefully we are correcting both.

You will notice a new set of pages, and updated information all around. The goal is to better explain how we work, why we are doing this, and what to expect as a customer.

Even if you have been a customer for a long time, we encourage you to browse around the website.. ask any questions, and provide any feedback you have.

Thanks for your support!

Blog posts with pictures on facebook again

I "think" I have the link fixed between blogger and facebook so that facebook posts will contain the pictures from the blogger posts instead of just the logo image.  

The fix was mostly from here:

http://www.mybloggerlab.com/2014/07/how-to-fix-facebook-post-thumbnail-in-blogger.html

although i had to do a little changing to their code to pull actual images instead of thumbnails.

Hopefully the facebook page will be more interesting now!

NewsFlash -- Little Sprouts Meats now available at Medford Food Coop

That is right.. for the first time ever, Little Sprouts is going to begin offering meats through a retail outlet, namely the local Medford Food Coop!

Starting this Thursday,  July 2, Some of our USDA inspected meats will be available for purchase through the Food coop in Medford.  The Little Sprouts team will be there throughout the day to offer information, and FREE SAMPLES of some of the meats to customers.

We invite you to stop by to say hi, sample the meats, and take some home with you.

Little Sprouts meats are quite special. Our meats are "all of the above", meaning we feature everything you need in one product instead of forcing you to pick and choose which benefits are important. Have them all!

• Pasture Raised
• Humanely Treated
• Organically Fed
• SOY free
• GMO Free
• No Antibiotics
• No Hormones
• No Vaccinations
• No Chemical Parasite Control
• Heritage Breed
• Locally Raised
• Small Farm Produced

We stand behind our meats as well as all of our products as the healthiest we can make. PLUS they just taste great. The texture, flavor, freshness, and quality is second to none.

We hope to see you Thursday!

Whats been happening at the farm?

LOTS!

Spring is here, and we are so busy with the stuff of farming that havent had time to post.  I will try to catch up over the next few days...

Little Sprouts newsletter launched

This month all of our members received the first ever official little sprouts newsletter!  We have been searching for a labor light way to keep better communication going with members,  especially as things change and expand rapidly this year.

We settled on a service called mail chimp,  which automatically converts blog posts into a neatly formatted email newsletter.  No extra labor!  Once all set up....  All we do is keep blog posting the new news and automatically it is distributed to all members!  Best part is... It's free at our usage level.

We started out thinking monthly,  but are considering  changing to weekly distribution to keep everyone more up to date.  Any feedback here is much appreciated!

Soon I will post a link in the blog site so that blog readers who are not members  can also subscribe to the service.

Stay tuned! Exciting year ahead!