This thread is for everyone participating in the Online Farm Planning Course to chat about what you’re learning, help you hone in on your farm plan, and connect with your fellow course mates! What are you hoping to achieve through taking the course? What questions do you have about farm business planning?
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I hope this kind of question is ok for this forum, let me know if it’s not . I am trying to decide on the platform for my website and online sales and i’m inclined to use the Open Food Network for sales and link to it from a Squarespace designed website. Has anyone used OFN for selling vegetables? Do you use another platform such as Squarespace or Shopify? This is really not my wheelhouse so I’m looking for the most simple way to set it up that still provides good reporting to streamline the selling and order preparation. Thanks for any insight you can provide me with!
I’m looking for a farm manager/property manager part time or potentially could be full time if hybrid, partnership model. (helping to oversee the property and be the primary one re a produce garden - about 1/4 acre). Ideal to have farming experience -organic veggies, orchards, herbs and chicken (for free range eggs) and some building/carpentry experience would be ideal. I’m approaching a potential investor in Feb for some capital and operational funds. I own over 100 acres in Northumberland County. If I can’t find one for managing the property I’m open to a farmer being involved with the produce garden. I likely have a full time student in the summer to assist. If interested in chatting please be in touch with me at info@fellsmeadows.com and I can talk about the vision and see what unfolds! If you have suggestions of where I can post re this please let me know. Doing the plan through the course is helping me update the business plan I have and to include specifics re the gardens (but I know I need someone to help oversee and implement the gardens so I can focus on the rest of the vision).
I’ve never used OFN but I know there are farms out there that do. I have heard a few farms say they like Local Line and others use their CSA member software to sell (Harvie is an example of CSA software). Most farms have online stores set up now so do some searching and see which ones you like the look of. I’m not sure what the back end would look like on them and how good the reporting is or if they will all link with a payment processor. There was a lot of talk about this last year as everyone scrambled to move their sales online so I’m sure there must be other threads out there that address this. There will also be some talk about this during the marketing section of the course.
You might want to also post this in the Classifieds section of the forum. Outside of that, have you taken a look at FarmLink?
I think it really depends on your different sales streams (retail, CSA, wholesale, etc.) and how much you expect to sell. Harvie and OFN are good options, and there are others. They are all pretty flexible so compare their features and costs and that will help you narrow it down. I have a personal soft spot for OFN as it is Open Source, but I’m technically inclined and like to support those types of endeavours.