and the flood gates have opened...

I guess we don't call it the beginning of "busy season" for nothing! It was like all the schools around here opened and our phones went from almost silent to non-stop ringing for the past almost 2 weeks...everyone that took the summer off wanted to get started back right away, plus we are getting like 5-6 new sign-ups a day and we are doing absolutely no advertising, it simply amazes me!

About 2 weeks ago a person from Alexandria, Virginia contacted us about doing delivery, she heard that we may consider such a thing if we had enough customers to make it worth our while. So Tony figured up how many miles it would be one way and it is around 75 miles so he told the lady we would need at least 75 customers to even consider it, and wouldn't you know it, in just 2 weeks time I have close to 80 names with more coming in, just in the last 24 hours alone we have taken in almost 50 new sign-ups online!! I am totally blown away by the sheer fact that people want our service soo badly that they do all the advertising for us and get what we ask for...they are certainly full of determination! Needless to say the new route to Alexandria will begin on September 24th.

Also on the horizon is our fall products that we will only have thru the New Year. Items like apple cider, egg nog, turkeys and speciality ice creams. Something else new that we just recently started was frozen prepared meals made by my cousin out of Westminster. Basically, the customers have the first 2-2.5 weeks to place their meal orders and then the last week of each month they will be delivered to their homes along with their normal milk delivery. In just a mere 5 days I have about 30 orders and the meals are $25 a piece. We advertise that the meals are made with our meats and again is supporting a local small company like ourselves...the customers just LOVE the idea!

In just over a month we also have our Fall Open House and even though we have not done too much planning as of yet, people are already calling and wondering the dates and times of it. We are having it the 3rd weekend of October this year, so hopefully the weather will still be nice to draw a decent crowd...that has to be one of my BIGGEST worries of the festival.

In production, we are running between 7,200 to 9,600 pounds 3 days per week, and even that doesn't seem like enough, our biggest problem right now is cooler space, our new equipment can certainly handle running more milk we just have no where to put it! We are also bottling goat's milk twice per month and very soon we will be bottling milk for a dairy out of Ocean City, MD. They will haul the milk to us to bottle and then haul it back to sell at their farm.

At the Baltimore Farmers Market where Tony goes each Saturday, he has been approached by one of the head chefs at Philip's Seafood (located at the Inner Harbour) they are in the process of revamping their menu to accomodate more local offerings and want to possibly use our dairy. To see how things work they are having a breakfast the end of September that will host over 70 chefs from other restaurants in the area, so even if we don't land the BIG account the possibility of getting some smaller restaurants is certainly there! Even though back 5 years ago we really had no interest in landing wholesale accounts our minds have changed in recent months as we realize we can still make a nice profit margin by selling as much as we can ourselves. We have milk in a grocery store chain located in Emmitsburg called Jubilee Foods, as well as 2 locations in Baltimore called Atwaters. We supply butter to the Marriott Hotel at the Inner Harbour for their in-house restaurant.

I think we have enough to keep us occupied for at least the next 3 months, and then we will need a vacation!!