Hello there!👋
This is the Spira Farms newsletter. We are the team working on making foods fresher than ever for our community, even fresher than what we were able to do before.
Today I am writing this from the storefront, with warm coffee, and loads of humidity. The humidity of the farm has been AMAZING for the skin. We accidentally made a mild sauna. 🧖♂️🧖♀️
Today we are going to talk about:
- Putting together the Fresh Microgreens Dream🥬🍄🌱
- 2022 R E C A P
The Fresh Microgreen Dream 🥬🌱🍄
We will be changing our delivery schedule to Fridays in 2023 👇
Would you believe it that freshly grown foods weren’t really available in Chicagoland until the last few years in the winter? Might have something to do with that snow ⛄
When we discovered the fresh food problem years ago in our community, we sought out to resolve the problem initially just for our family, and then eventually our community. We had no idea there were so many that cared about this problem, and are working to resolve it alongside us.
As we have grown our team and improved our technology, we started realizing we might be at a place where we can harvest and deliver on the same day. A goal that directly aligns with our nutritional values.
As such, we are going to be harvesting and delivering the SAME day on Fridays, making the foods we have the freshest available in Northern Illinois.
Spira 2022 Recap!
This was the longest and hardest year of our families lives. 😅
This year has been so incredibly busy, both good and bad that I never got the chance to really share our story. I took a few moments to recap some of the highlights and achievements we managed.
January – March
I reached out to many businesses in the hopes of filling our shelves with product to grow for them. Eventually a few things kicked in, and we landed a few grocery stores, and food coops. We had health issues in the family as well that landed us in the hospital, and I started a new full time job that became very demanding.
April
Cait and I started feeling the burnout of working two full time jobs, a business, and helping family with health issues. We hit our wall of exhaustion working all hours of the day. Cait and I spoke, and she decided to go full time Spira Farms. 🥳🎉🎊
In April, some big accounts landed for us as well. Suddenly we went from having plenty of growing room to completely running out of space in the span of a few days. We suddenly had 15 days to find a commercial space. 😱
May
We were able to connect with a local realtor Pawlak Properties who made a dream for us to come true. To have the farm in downtown Lemont, where we also reside. We had our eyes opened to all of the available spaces in our home area. We ultimately found our current space, and pushed to get us moving in ASAP. 🫢
When we moved into the Downtown Lemont location on May 15th, Cait was out of town for a wedding and I was solo for a few days moving the farm from our old location to new. We ended up having to work out of 2 locations for a few weeks in order to finish all the growing at the old space, so we can move all the equipment to the new. 🚚
June – September
We JUST finished moving the equipment to the new location when in June we had our first farmers market kick in. This launched our event season where between Cait and I our time became extremely tight. We were juggling 4 farmers markets, harvesting, delivering, fixing up our new farm space, figuring out grow problems, constantly building new furniture and equipment to keep up with demand, marketing, sales, customer service, health issues and so much more that I blocked out of my melted brain.
During these months we also started getting mushrooms available to the community, opened up our new storefront on September 20th, and started working with Premola Granola and Kefi Life Olive Oil to really get all the pieces of nutrition we needed for the community.
We never really had an opportunity to rest in these months and the burnout was up and down. 🔥
October – December
Farmer’s Market season officially ended at the end of October, and we were incredibly thankful. It was incredibly cold, we were exhausted, and we had a lot of clean up and work to do on the farm, and on our website.
We were able to add in a few more heads to the team to help alleviate some of our bandwidth issues. We are BEYOND thankful for those that chose to work with us. Not only have they given us some time back in our life, but the culture and community that developed has been amazing to be apart of.
During these months, we were able to introduce a few new products such as lettuces, and a few different types of microgreens that were sought out for by the community.
Conclusion
In 2022 we set our goals to work with a set amount of businesses, and get a set amount of subscribers. The goal was to 5x our business compared to 2021. We achieved our goals, but not in the ways I was expecting.
I was not planning to move locations, nor open a store. We worked so many events that were out of the norm for us. We really started feeling like we are apart of the community after this hard year. It’s amazing to walk into restaurants in the community and overhear (sorry) others talking about the weird farm in the downtown. Our schedule often has us disconnected from what’s going on outside of our bubble, getting brief moments of connection with others really is an amazing boost to morale.
2023 Goals
- 5x business growth again
- Solar Farm
- Begin Soil Recycling
- Organic Certification
In 2023 I am going to try to do a few more things I think are challenging and scary. First off, the goal is once again to 5x the business. Doing that means we again have to worry about getting more commercial space, which might either be more warehouse space or a second store location farther north.
We want to improve how we impact the world. I am hoping I can get solar panels to power our farm. I also am going to begin exploring creating our own soil instead of sourcing it from around the country. We will also work on becoming the sole organic microgreens farm in the state. Today we already grow organically, but have not made the leap to get certified yet.
Wishing you all an amazing memory-filled New Years Eve! Go make 2023 the best year EVER. 👊👊