Background

Founded in 1980 by siblings Lee and Wayne James, Tierra Vegetables is a bedrock of the local community, having nourished generations of local residents and pioneered sustainable practices (earning them the Slow Food Award). Their 20 acre diversified farm has loyal customers across their CSA, Farm Stand, Farmer’s Market, and Restaurant sales channels. However, managing the CSA and daily customer communications became cumbersome, especially with disconnected systems such as Mailchimp, Authorize.net, and CSAware. It took the farm hours to prepare and send their weekly newsletter, and they gave up on updating their website. The farm realized it was time for a change.‍

The challenge: Streamlining workflows and capturing sales opportunities

Like most farms, Tierra’s production reduces in the winter, requiring them to downsize available CSA membership to a product availability limit. A subset of customers continue year round, while others are paused until summer production picks up. In the middle of this transition period, the farm also takes their only vacation between Christmas and New Years. Without a single, easy-to-use system for their CSA, Payments, and Member Communications the farm had come to expect a lot of admin work to start the new year. 

To make matters worse, as their customer base grew so did their subscription fees. Mailchimp tripled in cost, and their value from it halved, as it became harder to keep up with sending a weekly CSA member and customer newsletter given the time intensity to prepare the content, format it, edit it, and send it (without errors). 

As the farm juggled member communications, invoicing, and payment follow-ups with daily farm tasks, other things began falling to the wayside. The more outdated their website and email content became, the more sales opportunities were missed as confused customers were unsure how, where, or when to buy. Ready to recapture missed opportunities and free up time from ad-hoc customer communications, Lee and Wayne turned to Farmhand.

The change: a pivot leads to 14% revenue growth

Within hours, Tierra’s 100+ member CSA was seamlessly migrated to Farmhand, with zero interruption for customers. Once the winter shares reached full capacity, the system automatically transitioned to a summer start signup page and enabled them to market and sell Farm Events. In total, the farm saw 14% growth in revenue by selling more to existing customers, and capturing sales for the upcoming summer season.

By transitioning to Farmhand, Tierra Vegetable optimized operations and pruned unnecessary expenses. The cancellation of Mailchimp ($45/mo), Squarespace ($23/mo), Authorize.net (3-4% per transaction), and CSA Ware ($100+/mo) subscriptions resulted in significant monthly cost savings, paving the way for a leaner and more cost-effective operation.

The time-consuming tasks of crafting newsletters, providing member support, and updating accounts were streamlined, freeing up over 5 hours per week for Lee and Wayne. As more administrative responsibilities were taken off their plates, compliments poured in–not only for the changes to the CSA platform but also for the much-needed website update.

In Lee's own words, "Farmhand frees me up to do more things here at the barn that I had to put at the bottom of my to-do list. Thanks to Farmhand, I am enjoying going back to being a big produce nerd and keeping Wayne on his toes."

Tierra Vegetables' journey with Farmhand not only resulted in tangible growth and cost savings but also rekindled the joy in their work.