The Green Ranch in the News

Country Guide

Feb 2010

Twitter and the modern farmer

For Tim and Carla Shultz, BSE was a game changer, just as it was on so many other farms.  Overnight in May, 2003, the Shultzes had to rethink every hope they’d had and every move they’d made, and they had to wrestle again and again with the question: Could they survive?  As it turns out, the technology that would help to save them hadn’t even been invented yet.  Earlier that year the Shultzes had started farming at Osage, Sask., feeding 80 head of cattle on the farm an hour southeast of Regina. Young and determined, the couple had known all along that they would have to do things differently to stay viable. They just didn’t know it would have to be quite so different.  But they aren’t looking back. After starting on a shoestring in their 20s, the Shultzes have grown their farm into a successful custom-grazing operation, now running over 400 head. They’ve also diversified, getting into market gardening and producing everything from beef to chickens, lamb, eggs and even their own local organic flours.  They’ve also gotten into direct selling, targeting restaurants and foodie consumers. And they’ve done all that even though Regina’s Restaurants and suburbs are all an hour away.  At the heart of their success is a tool that more and more people use daily, but

which few tap for its full business potential.  It’s the Internet, and Tim is frank about its importance to their farm. It has made all

the difference, Tim says. “The decision to take our store and farm online took us from just another farm to a real business.”

Consumers can shop online at www.thegreenranch.ca, placing orders that Tim delivers to Regina each Friday. But that’s just the start of the relationship.  The Shultzes then keep in touch with all their customers via Twitter and a weekly e-newsletter. “Having the website means we can watch the hits to our site grow. Our mailing list grows every week,” Tim says.

The Shultzes are also involved in CSA — Community Supported Agriculture — a type of crop share that splits the risks and benefits of farming between the farmer and the consumer.  CSA members often use the website to order and keep in touch.

With the business finally hitting its stride in 2007, the Shultzes rechristened their farm The Green Ranch. 

going live

Creating a website can be easy. There are countless free templates and hosting sites, as any Google search will reveal. But Tim found that “free” comes with a price.  Free templates and hosting sites are often inflexible, they’re clunky to update and they end up producing websites that almost make it look like you know what you’re doing, but not quite.  “I had always wanted a web presence, but really didn’t know how to go about it,” Tim says. “I used some free sites on the internet to try and design a website, but realized that I would

never be happy with a basic template.”  Then, while browsing an online forum for market gardens Tim discovered Small Farm Central — a website design and hosting company focused on farms and direct selling. With the use of Small Farm Central’s design and support staff, Tim says the site is as easy to update as doing basic word processing.  It’s that updating, Tim says, that is crucial to a credible web strategy.  Staying current is most important if the site acts as a marketplace,  Tim says. “The No. 1 thing (in online selling) is keeping your online store up to date. Nothing turns a customer off more than not being able to get what they ordered.”  For The Green Ranch, this is especially challenging because of the seasonal nature of some products, and the curve balls Mother Nature can throw. If Tim and Carla don’t keep the website updated, their customers can’t keep track of what crops are coming on.  It’s challenging too because the website can need updating at the very time when they’re busiest on the farm. If they’re in the middle of harvest, for instance, the last thing they may want to do at the end of the day is sit down at their computer and work their way through complex web coding to let consumers know what crops they’ll be selling the next day.

Yet staying current is worth it, Tim says. “I’ve been on many farm websites and noticed that their last entry was over a year

ago. Usually when I see that I just close out and keep searching.” So does everyone else, says Simon Huntley, lead developer at Pittsburgh based Small Farm Central.  Timeliness is one of the key criteria that your customers will use to rate both your website and your farm, Huntley says. The website doesn’t have to be flashy, but if the most recent post is a blog report you filed six months ago, consumers will wonder if you drop the ball on your food production too.  Besides, says Huntley, who also runs a

small local-food-based farm in Pennsylvania, consumers are starved for other ways to keep up with what’s going on in the countryside.  Newspaper readership is down, and many small papers have closed completely.  Costs for launching a website through Small Farm Central typically range from $100 to $350, depending on the amount of consulting that’s needed. After that,

there’s a fee of $20 to $50 a month depending on the number of services that are used.  “If you’re thinking of going to Internet

marketing, start collecting email addresses now,” Huntley says. “Even if you aren’t going to get your site up for a year, or even two, start getting those addresses.”  Tim credits The Green Ranch website and use of social networking tools such as Twitter with getting them exposure and helping them make a go of it, although as yet it’s difficult to pinpoint what percentage of sales or added sales being online has garnered.  Online ordering also works for the busy restaurant and store owners they supply.

“Chefs and store managers are very busy, as are we in the peak growing season,”  Tim says. “It’s always hard to find the

right time to call and take orders.”  The number of individual customers ordering online is relatively small right now, but those who use the service like the convenience of ordering from their home.  Tim and Carla are at the Regina farmers’ market each week and bring orders for their customers to pick up. “There’s no waiting in lines and you always know you’ll get what you need,” Tim says.  Expanding the online ordering part of the business is a goal for Tim and Carla. “It really simplifies things for us. It’s great going to the city knowing that you have pre-sold a good portion of what you are bringing.”

Sharing the skills

Discovering that e-marketing can be fun and satisfying, Tim has expanded sales on their site from their own cattle and market garden to a whole host of other products, such as eggs, flour, wild hog and more.  “I realized I enjoyed this part of it and instead of several other farmers trying to reinvent the wheel, now we market their products under our banner,” Tim says.  This is especially helpful when supplying restaurants who need such a wide variety of meat and vegetables — too much for just one farm to produce reliably.  Beyond an information site and a marketplace, the Internet offers cheap, effective ways of promotion, if you can tap into it.  “There is so much to learn about Internet marketing and I feel like we are just scraping the surface,” Tim says. “We are just now playing with Twitter and considering Facebook as another method of connecting our customers with each other and with what is happening at the farm.” CG