Tag Archives: lamb

More Tips for Direct Marketing Farm Products

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On Friday I shared some lessons learned from the last few years of selling lamb live and direct to our customers. Today I’d like to share a few more thoughts about direct marketing to your customers.

Oh yeah, and some adorable pictures of Penny playing with one of our bull calves over the back fence.

  • Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Or your eggs before they’re laid. Or your lambs before they’re grown. That’s why we don’t take deposits more than 4 weeks out on animals. You don’t know what will happen. We’ve had our chicken flock suddenly decimated by predators. We’ve lost sheep to freak accidents in storms. 

This is just another way of saying that you need to have a good understanding of your supply and demand and be honest and up-front with your customers. Farming is a risk. It’s not all in the farmer’s hands. The beauty of direct marketing is that your customers can become partners in your risk-taking. But believe me, you only want willing customers. Don’t promise if you can’t deliver.

  • Treat all customers the same. If you direct market by word of mouth, keep in mind that your customers know each other too. They’re going to be talking to each other about you, your farm, your prices, and your products. They’re going to know if someone got a better price, if someone got a better product, or if someone got a dozen eggs after you told them you didn’t have anymore. Sure, everyone likes to think they’re special, but at the end of the day, everyone respects being treated fairly.
  • Listen to your customers’ input. We’ve adjusted our weaning and feeding programs slightly over the last two years to coincide with having lambs ready for the main holidays we know our customers are celebrating. We’ve also culled and added breeding stock with an eye toward both our management expectations and our customers’ carcass preferences. Now I did say “listen” not “follow” here. We’ve been asked to do a few things, like no tail docking, which we have determined were unacceptable for our farm. But because we know it’s an issue of interest for a large part of our customer base, we make sure when making a sale to point it out so that everyone is making a well-informed decision.

  • Cultivate demand even when supply is low. Yes, you need to keep point one up there in mind and use some common sense here. Always operate with integrity! But you never know when a regular customer will move (we’ve had that happen), or have a drastic dietary change (we’ve had that happen), or find someone who meets their year-round supply need instead of your seasonal offerings (had that happen too). We always give out more business cards each year than we know we’ll have lambs. And we keep a “waiting list”, if you will, of customers we couldn’t serve. We also keep in touch with other local farmers that might have what the customer wants in the short-term.

  • Cultivate relationships with other farmers. We try to keep tabs, keep numbers, and keep track of the specialties of other small farmers in our area. We have someone we send folks to for chickens (breeding stock), someone else for goats, and someone else we recommend for strawberries and pumpkins. And those farmers send us customers that want lamb, beef, and breeding stock. We’ve seen over and over the last few years that there’s waaay more demand for direct-from-the-farmer food than there is supply. Collaborate, don’t compete! It’s great for your customers, it’s great for your family, and it’s great for your community!
Are you a customer or a seller? What’s your best tip (or biggest pet peeve) about direct marketing? And be sure to stop over at Friday’s post to see more of our experiences with direct marketing here at The Lowe Farm.

Tips for Direct Marketing Farm Products

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We completely sold out of all our lamb this year. Every single one of them, right down to the littlest runt, was gone by the end of our lamb harvest day. That’s a good year. Here’s a few lessons we’ve learned over the last couple years with the farm that might be of some help to you.

  • Sort and mark sale animals first. We sort all the lambs out from the breeding flock, and then use washable paint to mark males and females–one green dot is male, two green dots is female. We keep animals for sale in a smaller field, near the house, where customers can get a good look at them and they’re easy to catch for closer inspection.
  • State accepted payment upfront. We tell everyone cash or bank check only when they call or put it in bold print at the bottom of any ads we run. Don’t wait until someone’s driven all the way out to your place and decided they want to buy something. There’s nothing worse as a buyer, than not realizing you need to go to the bank for a withdrawal and it’s Sunday afternoon. I don’t care if it’s $100 for lamb, or $3500 for a piece of equipment, relationships are smoother if you just state it up front and stick to your guns.

  • Require deposits to hold anything.We take 50% deposits, no more than 4 weeks out. (A lot of our customers are purchasing for a specific holiday. and don’t want to end up without, but aren’t ready to take it right now.) We mark the animals with a letter or symbol to id it for the buyer so they can be sure they get the one they paid for and picked out. We note the # of animals, deposit paid, amount due, and id symbol on the back of a business card and give it to them.

We’ve gotten burned on not taking deposits before. It’s not worth it. Just state your policy up front and stick to it. If it bothers them that much, you probably don’t want them as a long-term customer anyway. In the words of Joel Salatin, “they either get with the program, or get it somewhere else.”

  • Don’t bring strange animals to your farm for your customers. Two words: Hoof Rot. Two more: Never Again. We’re glad to try to keep up with our neighboring farmers and refer folks to them directly if we don’t have what they’re looking for. (Think Macy’s from Miracle on 34th Street!) But the risks to our own operation, and our reputation as well, are just too great. We sell what we have and let others sell what they have.

  • Include your kids. One, it teaches them about the business aspects of the farm (and life!). Two, they learn about people. And three, it creates a family friendly atmosphere and welcomes your customers’ families more than anything you could say out-loud. We have a lot of customers that come alone the first time, and then bring wives, children, cousins, aunts and uncles, and even grandparents back with them the next time because they know they’ll be welcome. It makes for wonderful, long-term relationships.

I’ll have more tips to share on Monday!

Do you direct market–and not just livestock–anything? What have you learned about it? Have some favorite tips to share? It’s a learning process, and we’re definitely looking to improve the experience for us and our customers!

{And in the mean time, there’s just a few more days of special savings in the Carhartt Outlet. Use code: OUTLET40 to save an additional 40% off outlet purchases! Did you need some new work clothes? Now’s the time!! Expires 11/11/2012.}

Lamb Harvesting and Laura Ingalls Wilder

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We’ve had a crazy busy week this week. I was at a conference in Richmond for two days (that’s about 2 hours from home, each way) and driving back and forth. We had Church on Wednesday and soccer practice on Thursday.

And then on Monday the Cowboy had his American Heritage speech finals–and WON! So on Tuesday we celebrate with mid-week taco night.

And now on Friday we have lamb “harvest.” For us, that means we’ve sold all our lambs and the buyers are coming today to pick them up. After they purchase the live lamb from us we allow them to self-process here on the farm. That means we provide a shed, a bucket, and running water, if they’d like to…um…make their lamb into lamb chops themselves. I might talk about this more later, but today we’re up to our boot tops in…muck.

I did just want to share that as super-excited and proud of the Cowboy as we are–we’d also like to mention that the Ladybug also did awesome on her speech too! She got a 93! That’s her grade for the speech and for the presentation.

This is the first time our kiddos have done anything like writing or giving a speech and we are so proud of them! (I’m also completely over my skeptical outlook on making K5 kids give speeches. This has been a great exercise and doing this every year will give them wonderful experience with public speaking!)

The Ladybug was Laura Ingalls Wilder. I made that costume too and it wasn’t very hard either, actually. But I have to say–that style of dress used A LOT of fabric! Over 4 yards between the dress and the bonnet. (I got that peach calico on the clearance table for $2/yd!) There’s a little bit of growing room in there (because I didn’t have time for a lot of fitting like I do with her regular clothes) but the length and even those simple gathers at the yoke really take a lot of material.

And I can’t imagine how they had the time or the patience to do all that sewing by hand! No wonder they only had two dresses each.

This weekend we’ve got soccer, farm chores, house cleaning to get ready for company coming in next weekend. Nov 2nd is Grandparent’s Day at school and then we have the American Heritage dinner where the Cowboy will do his final speech presentation–so we’ll have all the grandparents in town.

Do you have big plans for the weekend?

Fall Farm Chores

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We’re moving into fall farm chores quickly with the good weather lately. This weekend we were sorting lambs for sale from the breeding flock, checking and trimming hooves if needed, and dosing them with an external parasite spray. It’s something like Frontline for your dog, but helps with flies, bots, mites, lice, and a whole bunch of other icky external pests.

The Ladybug was our de-licer apply-er this weekend.


We don’t actually have trouble with most of those, most of the time. Thankfully! With our hot, humid climate and mild winters we’re ripe for it, but flies are usually our biggest external pest. Our Zebu cows are pretty resistant to flies compared to other cow breeds and it’s hard for flies to bite sheep through their wool. So this is something we only do on an as needed basis.

But in a wet fall (like this year so far), when they’ve been sheared, it can get frustrating. And a sheep that’s hiding from flies and pests, or busy stomping and snorting all the time, is a sheep that’s not grazing and resting–which means not gaining weight in preparation for breeding season and pregnancy over the winter.

My girl was doing some great practical learning out there. Counting forward and backward by 3s, 5s, and 10s for dosages. Reading a syringe and meniscus. Reading package directions and drawing fluids without air bubbles.


As I mentioned, we also sorted out animals for sale from animals for breeding. We’ll be selling meat lambs next month and most of them are already spoken for. There’s a few reason for sorting them.

One, we want to control our breeding program and decide who’s leaving the flock (culls) and who’s staying in. We also want customers to be able to see who’s for sale easily. It’s hard for strangers to visually sort them when I say things like “No, that white one’s not for sale, but that other white one sort of to the left, right next to that white-ish cream one with the big eyes, is.”

Mr. Fix-It and Speedracer were working in the barn together. Right now Speedracer needs constant supervision to keep him on track, so he works best one-on-one. Otherwise he’s off in la-la land hunting frogs or fancy rocks while everyone else is working.


Two, we want to make sure that different groups are getting the right nutrition for the right time of year. Most of our grass is warm season grass so it’s starting to fade. Splitting the flock eases the impact on the reduced grass, and lets us give the lambs some extra nutrition to build them up before they’re sold in October.

We got some really high quality hay to supplement them on their grass for the next 30 days.

And THREE is a biggie for us.We want to be sure that we have complete control over the group of animals that are being sold as meat so that no one gets dosed with anything that requires withdraw times that won’t be met and exceeded. We don’t let an animal leave the farm until it’s been completely “clean” for at least 45 days–sorting animals into different fields means there’s no accidental dosage from a mis-read or missing ear tag or something.

We’re also finishing up the chicken house and bedding down the hens for the winter. It’s really starting to look cozy in there!


I’ve said before that we’re not “organic” by definition, and that we always want people to come out and see how we operate. We try to use a safe, low input system. But infection and parasites can kill animals, so if we think we need antibiotics, or a chemical wormer, or something else for our animals’ health–we give it.

If you’re buying straight from the farmer, ASK! Don’t assume–ASK!

The farmer should be able to tell you with complete certainty exactly what was given (or not given!) and when. I know for 45 days they’ve gotten NOTHING. Before that, I can look up each animal and let you know what may or may not have happened to him/her, so you can decide.

That’s the beauty of buying directly from the farmer–you can know and you can decide!

{By the way, this goes for ALL farm products. Please don’t assume it’s organic or “chemical free” just because it’s a u-pick operation or from the farmer’s market. ASK. If they’re organic, I’m sure they’ll be proud to tell you all about it!}

The Undrama Lamb Drama

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Soooo, yesterday was Tuesday right? That seems to be the day for farm drama around here lately. Must be because it’s one of our two busiest night with piano for the Ladybug and then church coming up on Wednesday. We had to make an extra long loop from school to piano practice yesterday because someone forgot her books, and when we stopped at home to grab them I noticed that our Hog Island ewe was grazing and her lamb was no where in sight.

That is a Clun Forest ewe with a new baby, not a Hog Island ewe with a new baby.

Then I notice that faaaar across the field there’s a Clun Forest ewe that is apparently nursing a tottery little one. And I thought–hmm, she didn’t turn out to be a good momma after all and that Clun went and “stole” her little one right out from under her nose.

Here you can clearly see how hard it is to fence sheep in. Wool is an insulator, so it has to be REALLY hot or they push right through. Someone went right through the middle line. Then everyone else followed, I'm sure.

But as long as he was nursing, we rushed off to piano practice and planned to deal with it later.

So the boys and I got back and headed out there to investigate the situation and low and behold, there’s our Hog Island with her sprightly lamb. That “little” guy is all legs. I think I saw him earlier and just didn’t recognize him!

THERE'S the Hog Island ewe! And look at Mr. Long-Legs here!

But that Clun was still out there with…someone.

His momma is a bit shy, so he's already learned that he has to keep up with her.

Turns out somewhere along the way I must have miscounted and we had one left to lamb. I guess it’s easy to get mixed up when I don’t have my clipboard right in front of me. Since I thought that Hog Island ewe was the last one, I just jotted it down on the calendar and hadn’t gone back to do my real paperwork yet, so I just missed that there was one left. A Clun ewe lamb from last year.

Not only did she breed her first season, but she delivered without help and she’s mothering just fine too. Excellent!

Up close you can see that he's still a little yellow because she's not even done cleaning him off just yet.

What an exciting end to the season! This means that every ewe in the field has at least one healthy lamb with her. We had one stillborn twin and lost one twin. We have 17 ram lambs and 3 ewe lambs. Yes, I went back to my paperwork last night after all this “drama.” We’re not expecting any more surprises. Which I’m sure Mr. Fix-It will appreciate since I’m heading off to the Titus 2:1 Conference Friday morning and he’ll already have his hands full.

20–What a good round number!

What’s your busiest day of the week?