Marketing 101 for a pig farm

It's now April 2014 and we are 5 months into the farming side of the business, its time to start selling. As much as I would like to have a home for old and/or rescued animals we actually need to start making some money. When I started The Startup Farmer blog it was all about my journey from consumer electronics professional to farmer, from riches to rags and from Sydney to Manakau. In just a very short time all of those changes have happened and I am now the farmer and my old life is long gone. I will always be 'The Startup Farmer' because everyday I find a new job to do and a new lesson to learn but I am now the farmer at Woody's Free Range Farm so I think its time that I rename the blog to Tales from Woody's Farm. Claire and I spent a lot of time discussing the name for the farm and after much deliberation over names that depicted the farm or the location we decided to name the farm after Woody, our dog, who in all honesty started me on the path to happiness and health. Woody's Free Range Farm is committed to the health and happiness of all the animals on the farm and as such it seems very apt to name the farm after a dog. Additionally with love the way the brand is fun and not too serious, it tells you what we do without forcing our ethics down your throat, because at the end of the day we all make our own choices. The next step was the logo, we knew we wanted simple and I have a fascination for round logos. I have to give all the credit to Claire's wonderful friend Dean Pomfrett who put up with our indecisiveness and came up with a logo that exactly met the brief, I really hope you like it as much as we do. The final step is to take all of this goodness and head off to the market. You will remember that on the 1st December 2013 Woody's Farm welcomed the first of our pigs to the farm, we called them the Wanganui Nine. The Wanganui Nine are now coming up to seven months old and will soon have to be taken to the abattoir, it's a job that no one wants to do but it has to be done. The upside to this is that we will soon have lovely yummy ham, bacon and meat. And after that, the Farmers Market. I have decided to focus on two Farmers Markets at this stage, the Hill St Farmers Market in Wellington on a Saturday and the Fielding Farmers Market in, you guessed it, Fielding on a Friday. Until we have more little piggies coming to market these will be the only markets we can serve. Additionally I will be talking to restaurants to get them to taste and try the meat for feedback and advice, lets hope it's all good. As soon as I have dates for the markets and produce to sell you will be the first to know... [caption id="366" align="aligncenter" width="890"] Yummy, tasty free range Devon (Large Black) pork all wrapped up and ready for the farmers market.[/caption]