"Where They At?" - The wise words of Nelly

Last week we announced that we will be offering delivery of our farm fresh meats straight to your door. This is something we’ve been working on and trying to flesh out for a while, but have never quite had the rhythm to our days and weeks to be able to consistently offer this service to our customers.

Our first delivery day will be THIS Thursday, August 10th. Orders will have to be placed by 6:00pm Wednesday evening, the day before delivery day. And we will be doing deliveries every other Thursday afternoon. Before I go any further, if you’re ready to place your order, ORDER HERE!

So why would we do this? Well, as I sit here and try to put my fingers to the keys and words to my thoughts, I’m worried that what is to follow will sound like I (or even we) are complaining. That is never my intention as I share the story of our family and our farm, but I think there is a way to call attention to our reality to help others better understand, as well as shine a light with kindness and love. So, here’s to hoping that’s what I’m able to do.

Being a family farm that sells direct to consumer is not easy.

We aren’t as cheap as the grocery store, and we aren’t as convenient as the grocery store. There’s a whole lot to both of those statements, but I’ll save those for another day.

As any business does, we’ve gone through many iterations of what our farm and the model we follow looks like. We try to pivot to what our customers want and what makes most sense in the balance of our call to be farmers and our quality of life. We started at Farmers Market, and then as our family started to grow, we moved to buying clubs for a while. For the past couple years, we’ve been selling primarily through shares. A household, by themselves or maybe with another, purchase a whole pig or cow and get to customize the cuts they would most like. This has worked well, and we’re continuing that in addition to introducing a delivery service.

If you follow our social media, a few weeks ago you may have seen our reel that has over 22,500 views and 70 shares, far from influencer status, but still pretty cool. It’s a play off the song Ride Wit Me by Nelly. The song opens up with the line, “Where they at? Where they at? Where they at? Where they at?” Our point in using this audio was to ask, where are all the people that came out of the woodwork in the Spring of 2020, blowing up Brandon’s phone, asking what all we had in stock, promising they would never go back to the grocery store for their meat when they saw empty shelves? There was this drive then to support local agriculture, and there was a confession by so many that they had seen the light and the fragility of our nation’s food system, and they were changed forever!

We tried not to be pessimistic about this flux of interested customers, but also realistic and wondered if it would sustain. It hasn’t. And much of the popularity of our short 5 second video has come from the shared feelings of other farmers like us. The comments are filled with other family farms like ours saying, “Yes, I feel this,” and sharing their personal stories of the changes in support from April and May of 2020 to now.

Has this sounded like complaining? Gosh, I really hope not. We get it. Life is busy. Grocery stores are convenient. You don’t have to think about seasonality when shopping there. You don’t have to make multiple stops. I mean how many of y’all already get your groceries delivered to your house? (We can’t because we live in the middle of nowhere, haha!) But I do ask, this convenience comes at what cost? It is far too easy to avoid seeing the actual cost of our choices and where we source our food daily, but when the shelves are empty again, and family farm after family farm go out of business in the meantime and aren’t around anymore, what then?

There are literally people from all over the country, and honestly the world, who receive our emails and blogs, definitely not everyone is within our zip code range for delivery, so this isn’t just a call to action to order from Bowers Farm, but of course if you’re moved to, we’d love that, but to find the local farms around you and support them!

Our hope with a delivery service is that we, at some level, are meeting our local market where they are. We know we may live farther away and with soccer practice and piano lessons, it’s hard to make it to the farm for a pickup. We hope we can both continue to raise the best meat for our family and yours, serve our community, and cut down on just a small fraction of the friction that comes with supporting local agriculture. Whether it’s Bowers Farm or a local farm near you, show them where you are! That you’re there and that you’re grateful they’re there too!

And if you happen to be local and are ready to place your order for our first week of deliveries, here are some instructions!

Go to our Farm Store page.

Click delivery.

Put in your address

And fill your cart!

Deliveries will be made every other Thursday afternoon starting THIS week!