Last year I had some people come for tours from NC State University. As we were talking they asked me how many tours I gave.
“About 3-4 a week.”
They were quite impressed and complimented me on being so busy and taking so much of my time to educate people on what farmers do and where food comes from.
Yesterday we had 18 bookings, IN ONE DAY. We had one last minute cancellation (for a hospital trip instead) and one last minute booking to maintain 18 groups. We had the entire family working, including SWMBO, and we were still behind. There was only one melt down (The Princess got confused on a large order and couldn’t find me), no lunch, and church after. We sold over two dozen of the girls cookies. We had one overcharge which I’ve already apologized for and credited and I don’t know what else will pop up today. We did more business yesterday than a store I used to sell to would do on Saturdays. And they were a real store, in downtown. We’re just a little room on a farm with some kids working the store.
For all of you that came out, waited patiently while The Princess tried to remember how to round up or down on a weight, or helped her when she charged something wrong, or waited while she grabbed me. Thank you. The reason we do all this is so those girls can learn to work. Those girls are 9 and 7 now. In 10 years they’ll be 19 and 17. Can you imagine how employable they’ll be? How comfortable they’ll be under pressure? How good they’ll be at rounding, or addition, or any of the 1000 other things they’ll learn working every Saturday. Do you think when they take their next math lesson they’ll pay a little more attention since they’ve actually used math in the real world?
I had an order this week from a restaurant that was as much business as all the business we did on Saturday. It took me a couple of hours, by myself, to handle the whole thing. I probably made more money on that order than on all of Saturday’s business.
But the picture above is why we do what we do. We’ll keep working the store, and getting better at it. And we, all of us, thank you for your business.