Conference, Festival, and more madness...

Tony and I got a few days away from the farm to attend the IHDA (International Home Delivery Association)meeting that was held this year in Atlantic City, NJ/ We have gotten to attend in years past when it was held in Nashville, and Orlando, and we always have a really nice time and bring back LOTS of new ideas to improve our business, this year was no exception. We met up with an internet webiste group that we have since signed with to completely overhaul our website and shopping cart, we came home and hired a new "swing" driver who will do nothing more than fill in when a driver is out and fix any and all problems on the routes. Aunt Marcia was kind enough to come and stay with the kids while we were away.

Our festival was this past weekend and although we did no MAJOR advertising (meaning radio or newspaper ads) we did had out almost 9000 fliers and I sent mass emails to our over 2600 customers who are logged into the website. We have NEVER had the response we got from this festival...we figure we had over 5000 customers in attendance over 2 days, we ran out of parking in the main field and had to go across the street, we ran out of food on Saturday and Sunday, and we went thru 600 vials of butter during the scavenger hunt...it was an amazing and very tiring 2 days! The food tent and the store we had lines at pretty much all day...it was pure MADNESS!

Monday one of our drivers was having trouble with his truck, (the alternator was bad), so Tony and I went to meet him to switch trucks, I was not clear at the time how we were going to get the broken truck home but Tony was determined that we were driving it home...so my job was to follow him in our truck and as long as he kept driving he was fine but any red stop lights we were doomed! We broke down and needed jumped 3 times between Smithsburg and Boonsboro, and ALWAYS at very busy intersections...we would just stop traffic and I would pull around facing the front of his truck and we would jump it and head on our way until the next time...may I say it was also pouring down rain! (we jokingly said that our next purchase needs to be our very own tow truck) Just 2 weeks ago we had a driver break down on the George Washington Parkway on a Friday night in the middle of rush hour and we HAD to call a towing company to bring him home...

In the office we can hardly keep up with all the phone calls and new sign-ups...I literally worked all day on Tuesday doing nothing more than entering in new customers and I did not even put a "dent" in the online list...what is so frustrating is that the customers have no patience and they call wondering WHEN we are going to start the service, we used to tell them that they would receive confirmation in 24-48 hours we have now doubled that time frame. The farm is in the process of buying 100 more cows as we are pretty much at the point of using all that we produce and we have since stopped taking on any NEW wholesale accounts for the fear of NOT having enough product.

Ever since we put the "invisible attendant" in the store the store has gotten quite busy, some days we are literally taking turns running up and down the stairs from the office to serve customers in the store, Mom has at least one tour group a day, so we always have LOTS of ice cream to scoop. We are thinking we are going to need to hire a "real" person very soon!!

My article came out in the "Country Woman" Magazine, as well as a front page article in the Frederick Gazette Newspaper, and now FOX 5 News wants to do a story on us as well, it is exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time!

On the home front, we are just trying to keep it all together, by putting soo much effort into the creamery we come home most nights just exhausted, since the weather has been relatively nice I can work outside some in the evenings and the kids play with their cousins next door until dinnertime, I used to have Saturday's as my cleaning day but now that Farmers Markets are starting this weekend I will have to try to keep it all together by doing a little each night. We will have our "normal" saturday markets and this year we are also doing a Sunday Market that we will be alternating weeks with other family members.

Life is busy, but I LOVE it and I would not want it any other way...