My 2018 Farm Plan

CRF Business Outline Summary

Including Lean Business Plan

Camps Road Farm works in conjunction with Kent Falls Brewing Company and Neversink Spirits as part of The Food Cycle, LLC. Camps Road Farm works in a supportive role of the other two businesses while also producing farm goods for sale.

 

As a farm we provide:

  • Hops
  • Foraged ingredients
  • Pastured protein
  • A beautiful bucolic setting
  • Technical expertise and support

 

As a support element to the brewery we provide:

  • Manage waste stream of brewer’s grain
  • Equipment operation in times of need
  • Routine equipment maintenance
  • Technical support
  • Tasting room support during retail
  • Buildout of customer experience
  • Aesthetic
  • Flow
  • Cleanliness
  • Expansion
  • Tours

 

As a support element of Neversink Spirits we provide:

  • Composting of distillery waste

 

 

My Farm Tour Page

This page has maps, operational info, links to resources, soil information, etc.... It is a live page and I'm constantly updating. It is how I am logging my information.


 

2018 Farm Season

For the 2018 season our focus is maximizing farm/brewery overlap. That comes in three forms:

  1. Beer ingredients

    1. Maximizing hop production from our 1 acre hop yard

    2. Best utilizing wild foraged ingredients that can be found on property and locally

  2. Customer experience

    1. Expanding tasting room area with arbor and small gardens

    2. Designing and implementing tasting room architecture

    3. Ensuring grounds are clean, organized, and safe for visitors

    4. Refining traffic flow and parking

    5. Self guided tour

  3. Bucolic permaculture-based farm setting

    1. Work with 33 Camps LLC to design and implement permaculture-based landscaping

    2. Self-serve farm store

 

Future Seasons

In future seasons we will continue to build on our customer experience as a farm brewery.

  • Continue hop production
  • Utilize livestock that work well with hops and pastures
    • Broilers for nutrients and protein
    • Sheep for pasture management, hop pruning, protein, and wool
    • Pigs for Hop Harvest Festival and protein
  • Farm tours: guided and unguided to educate and entertain
  • Utilization of foraged ingredients used in beer production
  • Educational landscape design

 

Lean & Tidy Farm Business Plan

Identity:

Camps Road Farm provides a bucolic setting for farm/brewery visitors, produces ingredients for KFBC, provides technical assistance to KFBC and NSS, and produces pasture-based protein.

Problem:

Operating a farm brewery at 33 Camps in Kent, CT presents unique challenges such as attracting visitors, accessibility, and additional equipment operation and maintenance.

Solution:

CRF will focus on enhancing customer experience, providing setting and story for the definition of a farm brewery, and technical expertise to solve a variety of issues.

Target Market:

Camps Road Farm sells products and services to:

  • On-site visitors
  • Kent Falls Brewing Co.
  • Neversink Spirits
  • 33 Camps LLC

Competition:

Honestly, not sure what to write here. I’ll come back to it.

Sales Channels:

Farm products are sold through on-site self-serve farm store. Raw ingredients are sold directly to KFBC and NSS. Services are provided to KFBC and NSS by John Suscovich, the farm manager, are billed as part of operating member agreement guaranteed distribution.

Farm store items are all shelf stable or frozen so nothing goes bad when we’re only open for retail three days a week.

Marketing Activities:

  1. Weekly seasonal farm/brewery tours
  2. Cross-marketing to brewery visitors
  3. Social media with a focus on Instagram
  4. Weekly email newsletter
  5. Farm website

Revenue:

  1. Farm products
    1. Hops
    2. Foraged ingredients
    3. Pastured protein
  2. The skills to pay the bills (technical assistance)

Opportunities

We have a lot of compost from brewer’s grains. We can use some, but is there a world where we sell some too? I don’t know.

There are many educational opportunities with tours, classes, and workshops.

Expenses:

  1. Payroll
  2. Rent
  3. Utilities
  4. Insurance
  5. Tractor Financing
  6. Equipment Maintenance
  7. Building Materials
  8. Fuel
  9. And more, but that'll be covered more in depth in the budget.

Milestones:

  • 2017 - Build out tasting room, adapt farm plan, develop farm experience
  • 2018 - Maximize farm brewery overlap, focus on hop production and permaculture design, pastured poultry, farm tours via tractor and wagon
  • 2019 - Start sheep flock, livestock winter infrastructure
  • 2020 - First lambs from our sheep

Team and Key Roles:

John Suscovich: Farm Manager and do-it-all-guy

Kate Suscovich: Part-Time Farmer

Partners and Resources:

Kent Falls Brewing Co.

  • Financial support
  • Extra hands for major hops projects

Neversink Spirits

33 Camps LLC

  • Covers some of John’s salary in exchange for landscaping/permaculture implementation


 

Some Brewery/Farm/Property projects that have been discussed:

  • Garden beds with hops on the Western wall of brewery (facing driveway)
  • Arbor area on South of tasting room with hop trellis
  • We’ll need more picnic tables (build or buy?)
  • Our playground (which I donated) is starting to rot, that’ll need replacing within the year for safety
  • Big KFBC logo sign for brewery made out of plate steel
  • Interior decoration for tasting room
  • Portable way to rope off brewery tanks when open for retail
  • Increase parking area
  • Signs that are better than laminated printer paper

 

33 Camps Landscaping projects:

  • Pollinator meadows on septic and on 29 Camps lawn
  • Transplanting existing tree(s)
  • Take down dying larger tree(s)
  • Remove poison ivy from trees/stone walls
  • Install tree by brewery (to replace the walnut that was taken out)
  • Landscaping around Barry’s house (gardens, mulch, install vine trellis, etc…)
  • New tree(s) near fire pit area
  • Lattice fence to block off brewery utilities
  • Landscape around tasting room
  • Clearing stone walls
  • More tree planting



 


Get the Whole Story

It's certainly been an interesting and wild ride. I have laid out my whole backstory as well as my future direction on the Fix My farm Hub page. If you're lost or if you want to know more check it out.