EDMONTON – Hermann and Louise Bruns operate Wild Flight Farms, an organic vegetable operation near Mara, B.C. The farm consists of 20 acres, of which only 12 produce crops in any given year. Hermann refers to it as a low land, low capital, high labour operation.
The farm sells fresh and stored organic vegetables and fruit to local consumers directly, through farmers’ markets, a subscription-based system and direct farm sales. Most of the produce he sells comes from his farm, but Bruns will also include produce from other organic farms, he told a farm marketing conference last month.
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“Monday, we sell to another company in Kelowna that does a box program – Urban Harvest Organic Delivery. They buy from several farms. They don’t have a farm themselves, and deliver door to door,” said Bruns.
“On Wednesday, we do our regular delivery, what we call community shared agriculture, which is a produce subscription, selling prepackaged boxes of produce. The farmers’ market is Saturday mornings in Salmon Arm.”
Bruns does have customers who show up at the farm to buy produce.
“There’s always people that want 100 pounds of cabbage for sauerkraut, or customers that have root cellars and want to store their own. And in the summer, we get tourists drop by that want to have organic produce, and there’s no market in this area,” he said.
“Mara Lake is a touristy area, so we might get $500 a week for something like that. But we don’t advertise that because we don’t want a lot of people come to the yard. It takes time and we try to limit it. Our focus is taking it somewhere. It’s a much more efficient way of doing it than having people show up, unless you’re set up for it.”
Bruns estimates about 40 percent of his gross income comes from the farmers’ market, 15 to 20 percent from the client in Kelowna, and the rest from the subscription system.
He said people can subscribe for a half share, basic share or family share, and they subscribe for six months at a time.
“(The summer share) starts the second week in May and goes to the third week in October. Then we resubscribe separately for the winter. (The winter share is) every two weeks, the value is roughly double and that goes for the other six months,” said Bruns.
The summer half share works out to $12 a week, the basic share is $19 a week and the family share, $28.50. Shares are paid up front for the six month period. That means Bruns has a large chunk of money to start each year.
Contents of the weekly box depends on the season.
“In the spring, you’re not going to have corn. You’ll have spinach, green onions, radishes, salad turnips – the early spring stuff. As you get into the season, you’ll start getting strawberries, peas, beans and eventually corn and potatoes. In the fall, you get into the leeks, squash and those sorts of things,” he said.
“It’s like having your own garden, except we do the work.”
Each week, Bruns sorts through his production and decides what the box will contain.
“You can’t go by weight, because something like spinach has a higher value than, say, potatoes. We go by value, what we would sell that same item for at the farmers’ market. When I make up my list, I go ‘spinach $2.50, lettuce $1.50’ until I hit $19, then I slam on the brakes,” he said.
Bruns also has a table set up so people can buy more of a certain product if they really like it or have company coming.
The filled subscription boxes are delivered to a central spot in Salmon Arm in the summer and people stop by to pick them up. They can also drop by the farm to pick it up.
In the summer, Bruns has slightly more than100 subscribers. In the winter he has more.
Bruns also adds a newsletter to the box each week.
“With each box, there’s some information about a connection to the farm, a description about some unusual vegetables or something new. Sometimes nutritional information, then recipes.”
The farm has seven seasonal full-time employees who work from April to October. Through the winter, it employs about four part-time people, three or four days every other week, to pack the boxes.
