MARKETING: If you’re growing berries for profit, here’s a fun berry tip you can offer via your farm newsletter or the free recipes you hand out to berry customers. In the summer, freeze berries and use them to chill fruit drinks. For most berries, freeze them untouching on a tray, then the frozen berries can be poured into a freezer bag for future storage and will stay frozen without sticking together.
Growing berries sometimes means lots of fresh fruit all at once. Most berries such as blueberries and strawberries… even grapes and cherries, have a great texture when frozen whole. Your customers can also put fresh berries on kabob or popsicle sticks and freeze them for summertime snacks.
If growing berries is a major crop for your farm, other recipes to seek out for your customers are handcrafted berry soda pop, berry syrups, and of course the familiar berry jams, jellies, pies and muffins. — www.MicroEcoFarming.com
VALUE-ADDED: The season for harvesting and selling herbs is here.
If you’re selling herbs or other crops to make into value-added products, Mountain Rose Herbs is one of our favorite and only affiliate wholesale sources for bottles, jars, tins, tea bags, cotton muslin bags, misters, jugs, lip balm tubes, powder containers and lotion pumps and so on.
If you’re interested in viewing their products for selling herbs, this link goes to their main site, then click on “Products” at the top.
This long established company supports organics and local eco-farming around the world in multiple ways, including donating and supporting higher eco-causes.
Their products are often made of recycled materials and very socially and environmentally sensitive, which is something you can pass on to your customers, letting then know your packaging is eco-friendly, when using them for selling herbs.
Mountain Rose Herbs also sells ingredients sometimes needed by those selling herbs who want to formulate their herbs into products that need waxes, aloe vera, and so forth.
— www.MicroEcoFarming.com
MICRO ECO-BUSINESS: Here’s a quick update on our full story of a mini-renewal of the original USA Homesteading Act where land or lots in or near small rural towns are being given away as an incentive to repopulate rural communities.
Many states are participating, and here’s a link specifically to the Kansas land giveaway. See our full story on finding farmland at www.MicroEcoFarming.com
MICRO ECO BUSINESS: Besides the organic apple-a-day, The Center for the Micro Eco-Farming Movement is working on a report on quality and affordable health care insurance for small business farms — urban to rural.
We welcome legitimate information from real farmers or small business owners. We don’t welcome ads for insurance disguised as articles by real farmers or real small business owners.
Right now, here is an excellent PDF from the non-profit Center for Rural Affairs on how health care reform helps with small business and rural health care now and in the future. — www.MicroEcoFarming.com
TRENDS: Micro farming can look towards trends that will effect other small businesses to guide their way.
This quote is from the Trends Research Institute, which accurately predicted many events, including the current growth in micro farming:
“Craftspeople and small manufacturers that can establish a reputation for quality products will be able to build thriving micro-brands, while marketers who can amalgamate micro-cooperatives into true local commerce organizations will carve a solid niche for themselves……”