Joy has been hard to come by at times while many portions of the country are observing stay at home orders. The economic uncertainty, isolation, the unknowns can easily overshadow the blessings.
On the farm we have tons of blessings but we are also weighed down by the economic consequences of the stay at home orders. Normally we would be prepping for a busy season selling at the Farm Market in our city. We were producing eggs, soap and tending to the 2020 season of farm produce well before COVID-19 brought Illinois to a standstill.
As you know, small businesses across the USA with staff can put in for SBA relief programs to help keep their businesses afloat. Also, commodity farmers will find economic relief from the USDA CARES relief package but COVID-19 has left mom and pop sized farms like ours struggling and mostly left out of all the economic recovery efforts.
We have been brainstorming all the ways we can still get our produce, eggs, soaps, pumpkins and mums into the hands of customers without crowds or excessive person to person contact. We have ideas but a farm like ours has very small margins and not many resources at our fingertips.
While we’ve been homeschooling and simultaneously managing our kids virtual meetings schedules for all their education related stuff we got a crazy idea about how we can help ourselves in this time of crisis…
Why not offer the joy of farm animal interaction to folks electronically? So we launched:
GOATEE MEETING: A VIRTUAL FARM EXPERIENCE.
Pick your favorite animal from our list of farm residents, select the date and time of your meeting, pay for your selection, and provide us the link so we can join your meeting at your specified time. Click here to read more.
Basically, as our farm scrambles to innovate ways to replace lost income from our goat yoga events, farm tours, farm market sales, etc we are turning to virtual tourism to fill the void.
You can now schedule one of our farm animal residents to attend your next video meeting or you can book a virtual farm tour!
“Does social distancing “goat” you down? Are you ready to bring some joy and excitement to your virtual meetings and give your meeting goers something to cluck about? Let a farm animal from the Ryder Family Farm help you out!”
You can view photos of our critters and learn more about pricing options and how to book by visiting our farm site here: https://www.ryderfamilyfarm.com/book-a-farm-animal-for-your-next-virtual-meeting
