There are few things as exciting as seeing people get excited and involved in something, especially when it’s something you’ve committed a large portion of your life to, good food for example. That is exactly what the Farm Stories team has been doing over the course of the week. With visits to both the farm and the processing facility of This Old Farm, they’ve been making an effort to push the good food movement through journalistic writing and photography.
Farm Stories was started by Kelley Heneveld with the goal to help connect the consumer with those who raise their food. Kelley, accompanied by her camera and an eye for good pictures, had toured several farms both in the States and in various countries in Europe before recently teaming up with Writer and Editor Sarah Suksiri to take better written record of these “Farm Stories”. Together, they plan on touring the farms of the Midwest this summer before heading out to Texas in the fall.
As I’ve grown up around good food and local agriculture, I’ve come to realize that no matter what your product is, there is one thing that can near guarantee you will sell a product: marketing. Pretty pictures, and good writing can take an obscure product and potentially cause a wide spread interest in it. I’ve heard it said that you should pay your marketing bill before your electric bill, and though it sounds absurd, it really is quite true. If you don’t market your product, you don’t sell it, and if you don’t sell product, you don’t need any electricity.