All of our customers buy directly from us here at the farm. Customers give us money, we give them an animal. We sell live animals only. That avoids extensive liability and food safety issues. If they want it processed by someone, we sell them the animal and then arrange transport to an approved facility for butchering and they pay the butcher directly for the processing at that inspected, approved facility.

Last week I explained that our Fall lamb harvest is mostly Muslim customers buying for Eid (the celebration of sacrifice). Supplies of fresh, whole lamb are limited in this area, so they want to buy early so they are not left out when the holiday gets here. However; most of them live in the city and want to self-process, so they want to reserve their animal early, but not pick it up or process it until the day of. About two months before the holiday, we start getting calls. Lots of calls. It can get confusing quickly.

{DISCLAIMER: There’s a lot of legalities involved in meat processing and food safety, so be sure to do your own research! We’re not experts or offering advice, we’re just sharing our experience.}

Here’s a breakdown of the simple system we use to keep track of our direct-market Fall lamb sales.

All you really need are some business cards, envelopes, a receipt book, and sheep marking spray.

Direct Marketing Ground Rules

• We only sell live animals. (See above.)
• We only sell animals born and raised here. We will not pick-up animals from anywhere else and bring them here for customers. (We got burned on both ends of this–made a poor choice in purchasing and ended up fighting off foot rot for 2 years and the customer wouldn’t take them because they didn’t look like ours. Never again.)
• We don’t sell animals sight-unseen. You have to come to the farm, pick your animal, and leave a deposit to reserve an animal. This way there’s no misunderstanding of what you’re paying for. No one gets to say “oh, it’s smaller than I thought it would be.”
• We take deposits as reservations, no verbal reservations. ($50 per lamb.)
• We only take deposits/reservations up to one month out. Farming is too iffy and feed is too expensive.
• No refunds after the holiday date. Prior to the holiday, no problem. I can find someone else to buy. But after the holiday, my market just closed and my feed bill just went up because now we’re into hay season.

 

See our post Tips for Direct Marketing and 5 MORE Tips for Direct Marketing for some details on these “rules.”

Managing Deposits

We just use envelopes and business cards.

On the envelope we write:

• Customer’s name and phone number
• Pick up/processing date
• Total due
• Total deposit paid
• Remaining balance due at pick-up
• Blank space for animal identification

 

On the business card we write:

• Total due
• Total deposit paid
• Remaining balance
• Pick up/processing date
• Blank space for animal identification

 

The business card is for the customer. That’s their record of which animal they picked and what they still owe. Their deposit goes in the envelope, which we keep until pick up.

For animal identification, we pen the lambs that are for sale and each customer goes out with us and chooses their own animals. Each customer has a number (First customer is #1, Second customer is #2, etc.) and we use the marking spray to put their number on each animal they choose. Then we write the number in the blank spaces on their card and envelope.

Customers bring their card back with them to verify with us at pick up.

I pre-fill receipts before pick-up day and stick the customer copy in the deposit envelope.

We have some customers that come and buy for several families. They can take multiple numbers, but we assign them all to the same person on the envelope and card. We don’t sell sight-unseen, so the person on the envelope is taking responsibility for all of them and deposit is paid for all of them.

As far as on-farm processing goes…

We do not charge for on-farm processing. We sell the live animal and allow them to do their own processing here as a courtesy. Not all of our customers choose to do so, usually just repeat customers. We do charge $25 per family (meaning per assigned #) as a waste disposal fee. We dispose of processing waste by composting.

We provide a space, a hose with running water, and a bucket for the waste. Customers bring all other supplies themselves and are fully responsible for all aspects of the butchering process themselves. We’ve never had an issue.

If the customer buys anything else on pick-up day, such as chickens or eggs, there’s room on the envelope to write it down and I enter the sales receipt later. Most of our customers don’t care about getting a receipt, so we just fill out the receipt for our own records.

That’s our simple system

We make sure to honor deposits by never touching them until the animals are handed over, and we make sure to collect money for live animals before any processing takes place to ensure we’re removing ourselves from the processing aspects.

Here’s a couple great resources on our shelves that you might want to check out…

Farm Fresh: Direct Marketing, Meats & Milk by Alan Nation

The Legal Guide for Direct Farm Marketing by Neil Hamilton

Small Scale Livestock Farming by Carol Ekarius (Can’t recommend this book high enough! A manageable little bite of everything you’ll want to know to get you started!)

Starting and Running Your Own Small Farm Business by Sarah Beth Aubrey (We’re working through this one, again, right now.)

If you have any questions, I’d be glad to answer them! I’m not sure how much y’all want to know about this part! {smile}