The Business Venure Update

I know I haven't posted much in awhile, and its been mainly business stuff... blah blah blah...right?! Well hopefully with it being about that time, I will have some great gardening stuff up again soon. So don't give up hope on me, seed starting will actually be starting this week, so bare with me!

With that said, I am making headway on the business. You've seen my fund raising stuff, we've had $15 donating so far, and that $15 feels like $1 Million! It gives me the warm fuzzies that people actually care about our product, and what we are trying to do for local farms in the community. Sustainable living and farming is hard work, there is no simple mass production options here. To see people understand that, and want that in their lives means a great deal to this country, and our survival!

The point being is this weekend we had a contractor come out to quote building the new kitchen so we can expand, offer more products and begin stocking local coffee houses and businesses as well as helping you. The actual building is going to cost $26000 and the appliances will be $6000 still. That covers everything we need! Honestly, $32k is great. We were looking at a store front, and with construction costs on 1700 square ft, it was going to be over $68k not including appliances.

Though we are taking out a loan to do a lot of the work, we're going to have a fund raising raffle benefit at some point. We would still love to raise the money for the appliances alone, and that will leave us in good standing. We want to be able to buy a CSA share in several of the farms we buy from each year. That will be a couple thousand up front this spring, but it will help keep everything coming in FRESH and affordable. I really don't want to change our prices, I think they are more then fair. :)

So if you want to donate, please do through our Etsy shop listings, or just buy our products! The money goes right back to what we do. You can email me if you would like to donate to the raffle. We'd love to have items available to give away.... art, treats, services, ect. We'd simple sell raffle tickets at $5 each and they would chose which item they were going for. The plan is to send a PDF file 'raffle ticket' with individual #s. Then on the day of draw we'd announce winning #s here, on facebook, and on etsy for each item.

I will for SURE be doing 2 items myself. I'm planning on a gift basket of jams... AND for the locals, their very own canning class w/ friends for up to 8 people in their home, all materials included! That's regularly a $200 value!

So think if you like to donate, or would like more information on when the raffle should be. I will list more information here as it gets closer. We'll hammer out the details in the next month or so. So watch out for a list of potential items you can chose from!