Where We Are Now... Following Our Previous Announcement
Boy has the last year has been a rollercoaster! If you missed this part of our journey you can read more about it here but I’ll give you the cole’s notes.
Over a year ago now, we were told that we needed to secure a new butcher because ours was getting out of doing custom cutting for other farms — they’re amazing and gave us a year’s notice to get something figured out, this was just a change in their business model.
After scrambling to find a new butcher and then realizing there wasn’t an option available who could take on the size of our account… except one who didn’t typically cut for farmers and therefore had pricing that would have made it impossible to continue on financially, I reluctantly decided to open my own butcher shop.
I jumped into the process and started working with our local health authority, The Township of Langley, and the Agricultural Land Commission to get a butcher shop passed on the farm. The cost and workload was going to be extremely high but I didn’t want to lose our business so I pushed on.
Then COVID hit — Suddenly our community was facing food shortages which kicked our workload up to something we’ve never seen before and the local health authority we needed to work with to get it passed was now busy with more important things.
So after hitting a wall and running out of time and energy, in October of 2020 I announced the upcoming closure of Central Park Farms promising we’d be fully closed by the end of the year since we just needed to sell off inventory.
I was tired and with no other options, I was done.
Now, you might be thinking ‘But Kendall, it’s the end of May. You’re still open’
Yup, we are. Right at the bitter end our butchers came back to the table (I mentioned they’re amazing right?) and agreed to keep us on with a few adjustments including reducing our capacity.
At first I wasn’t on board with continuing on. I didn’t want to have made that big life decision and then have to go back on it — It takes a ton out of a person mentally to decide to close their business at the height of it’s success so I didn’t think I wanted the back-and-forth. But by this point Jay had moved into a more active role within Central Park Farms to help close things out and since he was now attending farmers markets he had grown more attached to the new potential to stay open…
It’s because we have the best customers and once he got to meet more of you in person he realized what I had spent so long fighting for.
His new interest in taking on more of a roll within CPF led me to get re-inspired to take this on once again… they say, once a farmer always a farmer and it’s true this job really becomes ingrained in the very fibre of who we are as people.
The decision to continue on came with it’s own challenges and necessary changes to allow us to hit our new reduced capacity. We are now selling only online with either pick up from the farm or weekly home delivery.
I’ll admit, no longer being at farmers markets is scary for me. Such a huge part of our revenue as a business came from farmers markets so I’m still not 100% convinced that we’ll sell enough through these new channels to sustain ourselves as a business but we’ll see. Only time will tell.
And it’s a little strange for me not having a better indication of what the demand will be for home delivery and pick up because I’ve always known where we stand with farmers market sales. The trouble with not knowing is inventory in farming is a struggle and a long term fix if you don’t make the right call. If folks are in for delivery then I need to get our livestock numbers back up, if demand is going to drop then I need to reduce those numbers so we don’t end up with way too much product.
I’m sure there will be more updates to come but if you’ve been wondering what the heck is going on, this is it in a nice neat package:
We are open.
We are still farming.
We are now able to continue on with our butchers but at a reduced capacity.
We are no longer selling at farmers markets
We are for pick up from the farm in Langley or weekly home delivery
We are planning to spend more time at the ranch and raise more livestock here
We are still facing struggles with abattoir access (as are many other farmers)
We are so thankful to be farmers
We are grateful for each one of you for continuing to support us on this journey
As hard as the back-and-forth has been, looking back now I think it forced me to reevaluate what is important to me and caused me to slow down. We have our weekends back to spend as a family, we’re getting more time at the ranch with plans to raise more cattle here, and we still get the change to help feed our community.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out!