Chemical-Free Farming, Direct Marketing, and Community

John Fisher gave a presentation at the annual Grazer's Conference in Lancaster last week. I thought I'd share it with you here. If you don't know him and his brother Alvin Fisher, this will give you a good idea about what they have been up to the last 2 1/2 decades.

Their conviction to growing clean foods for a healthier planet is deep. 

It's a vision. It's a prayer. It's a way of life. 

Paradise Pastures

• 100% Grass Fed Raw Dairy
• 100% Grass Fed Beef & Lamb
• Pasture-Raised Poultry & Hogs
• Healthy Baked Goods & More 
• Custom Butchering

History of Direct Marketing

• Direct Marking - a way of life since the Creation thru mid-20th Century
• Food was sold to the consumer directly by the farmer or passed thru short supply chains
• Most food was consumed within 20 miles from where it was produced
• Farms were diverse
• Manure from animals was essential to provide fertility for grain and vegetable crops
• Hogs were raised on skim milk and other waste products

What Changed?

The Industrial Revolution
 

• Leftover chemicals were used in agriculture
• Manufacturing Infrastructure and knowledge developed for the war effort, now was put to use building trucks, tractors, and other farm machinery
• Ignorance - Greed - Corruption
• Government Policy

The Results

• Less Nutritious Food
• Food disconnected from its source
• Ever-increasing regulation resulting in fewer farmers and processors
• Food processing and marketing ending up in the hands of giant corporations
• Ever-increasing amounts of harmful artificial ingredients
• By the 1990s, food was traveling an average of 1,500 miles to get to the table.
   

Our Personal Journey – Part 1

• Born on a dairy farm tinkering with raising poultry as an early teenager
• Dad had an interest in health due to his personal struggles
• Dad got sick every Spring after spraying chemicals
• Heard Joel Salatin speak in 1995 or ‘96, bought his book, and began raising pastured poultry
• The family farm transitioned to organic by 2001
• Met Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation (2002)

Our Personal Journey – Part 2

• Began marketing grass fed beef, pork, and laying hens
• Bought a few Jersey cows and began offering raw dairy to our customers
• Started delivering to a nutritionist on Long Island in 2002 and then to her clients around 2003
• Worked in two different red meat butcher shops during the Winter
• Attended every educational event possible during this time

Start Up Infrastructure 2000 – 2009 (pt. 1)

• Butchered the first batch of 40 chickens by hand for personal use
• Rented chicken butchering facilities from friends for several occasions
• Found a set of used poultry equipment and set it up in an old corn shed
• Bought a small 8’x12’ walk-in freezer (later upgrading to a reefer trailer)
• Set up a retail store in old 10’x 24’ milk house (half- cooler; half-store) 

Start Up Infrastructure 2000 – 2009 (pt. 2)

• Used and old hog barn to brood chickens in the Summer and house layers and hogs in the Winter
• Raised Pastured poultry on Dad’s dairy pastured
• Used a small portion of the milk from Dad’s dairy herd for direct sales while he continued to sell the rest to Organic Valley until 2010
• Made butter, yogurt, cottage cheese and other fresh dairy products in Dad’s milk house and basement
• Rented an 18-acre pasture from a cousin next door to farm

Building Infrastructure

• Married Verna Mae on October 27th, 2009
• Move to the house across the road on January 18th, 2010
• Broke ground for our dream family on March 1st, 2010
• Building was built to house a butcher shop, cold storage, order fulfillment, and retail sales on the upper floor
• Lower floor housed cheesemaking, fresh dairy processing , and baking
• Bought used equipment where ever we could to equip the business 

Building the Team

• Hired our first full-time butcher (2010)
• Started custom butchering (2011)
• Hired additional employees to assist with butchering, sales, order fulfillment, and farming over the next several years
• Hired a full-time cheesemaker and separated the cheese business (2011)
• Worked with Kenny Friedman (marketing agent) for our main customer group Nourishing Long Island
• Continued work with, Brother Alvin, the dairyman, buying his milk and reselling it
• John Troyor and Sons in Canastota, NY custom grazed most of our beef 

Paradise Pastures at Its Peak

• 35-40 Dairy Cows
• 30-40 Grass Finished Beef
• 40-60 Pastured Pigs
• 800 Pastured Layers
• 8000 Pastured Broilers
• 500 Pastured Turkeys
• 4-5 Full-time and 4-6 Part-time employees; processing more for others

Keys to Success - Paradise Pastures

• Great Employees - Dedicated Customers – Focus on Customer’s Needs
• Willing to adapt to meet customer’s requests
• Great friends in the emerging movement who were willing to share their experiences
• A family tolerant of my craziness
• Events like the Grazing Conference, PASA Conference, and more
• Sticking through the tough learning curve and learning from mistakes
• Be willing to do things poorly at first

Things We Could Have Done Better

• Listening to and addressing employee concerns and complaints
• Better financial planning
• Adding more management structure to the business
• Be quicker to delegate
• Delegate more intentionally

Moving On

• Burke’s Garden Farm (2015)
• Sold the retail business (2017)
• Sold the butcher business (2018)
• Moved to Burke’s Garden, VA (May 2018)
• Alpine Heritage Creamery continues to operate in partnership with and under the direction of Brother Alvin

Alpine Heritage Creamery

• Licensed cheesemaking business producing raw milk cheeses aged at least 60-days
• Co-owned by brothers John Lee Fisher and Alvin D. Fisher
• Employs 2-3 full-time and several part-time employees
• Created primarily to turn milk from Alvin’s A2A2 100% Grass Fed Jersey herd into top quality cheeses
• Provides Custom cheesemaking to other farms

History - Alpine Heritage Creamery

• We shared the cost of hiring an old Swiss cheesemaker named Eldore Haney to teach Eli King and us the basics at Eli’s (2006)
• We made several batches of cheese at Eli’s every year thru 2009
• We began making cheese at our own facility (2010)
• Our first vat - old 300-gal flat-bottom Jamesway bulk milk tank with no agitators
• After hand-stirring for 1 ½ years, we added a stationary agitator system
• We formed Alpine Heritage Creamery as a separate entity (2012)
• Alvin Fisher and Ben Glick, the cheesemaker, became partners 
• Ben became the new business’s first full-time employee at that time
• We added a slightly used 5,000 lb. vat with stationary agitators

Keys to Success - Alpine Heritage Creamery

• Great partners in business
• Quality milk from Alvin’s herd
• Bringing in good consultants to teach us
• Using custom cheesemaking to more fully utilize our resources
• Attending cheese conferences and educational events

Starting Over - Burke's Garden Farm

• 100% Grass Fed Beef
• 100% Grass Fed Lamb
• Pastured Pork
• Pastured Poultry
• Raw Dairy Herd-share

Burke's Garden Farm

• 200 +  Cow - Calf Pairs
• 100 – 200 weaned calves bought in each year
• Producing 250 – 400 grass finished beeves per year
• 400 ewes producing grass fed lambs
• Selling to Simply Grassfed and numerous other direct marketers.

Simply Grass Fed

• Formed in 2021 to sell grass fed meats from Burke’s garden Farm and Cheeses from Alpine Heritage Creamery
• Selling on-line
• Selling from a small farm market at Burke’s Garden Farm and Alpine Heritage Creamery
• Current weekly sales:  $5,000 – $6,000 shipping out of Lancaster, PA
• Due to labor shortage, we out-sourced our marketing, customer service, and fulfillment.

Challenges - Simply Grass Fed

• We are using our third independent contractor for customer service, sales, and marketing
• We are on our third fulfillment center as the second center was expensive and did a poor job of inventory management
• The second center was 5-hours away and hard to really keep an eye on inventory
• Services that are out-sourced must be paid regardless of what stage of development you are in the business
   

Upsides - Simply Grass Fed

• Both parties who are now providing us with essential services are doing well at this time
• Sales are growing steadily
• Cheese sales are especially strong
• Great potential for expansion as we are currently only retailing a small percentage of what our farms produce

Lessons Learned - Simply Grass Fed

• No place has better shipping connections than Lancaster
• Pallet shipping is available and reasonably priced anywhere in the U.S.
• UPS and FedEx one and two-day shipping zones are much larger when shipping out of Lancaster area
• Inventory is harder to manage when you can’t check on it regularly.
• Out-sourcing services are expensive
• Working out of multiple locations increases logistical costs significantly

Our Vision for the Future

• To be part of a small conservative Christian community dedicated to agriculture and building a market and brand together
• To have a diverse group of interdependent enterprises working together on one land base and marketing thru common channels
• Farming enterprises could include cows, sheep and/or goat dairies, pastured poultry, woodland pork, grass fed beef, grass fed lamb, maple syrup, honey, produce, and more
• Our enterprises could include dairy and meat processing, and more
• Marketing channels could include a farm market, online store, farmer’s markets, and more

Current Trends

• Raw milk is just now catching the attention of the general public. Expect demand to continue to surge
• People want a relationship with the people growing their food
• A portion of the population will likely react to trends toward on-line shopping and be attracted to farm markets where they can establish a relationship with real farms
• The unintended consequence of government action is often greater than the intended

Blessings,
John Lee Fisher