Hannah · Farm Drop

[0:08]Hey, welcome. Welcome back everybody to another Better Al Yaps. I am here with Hannah from Farm Drop. Hannah, how are you doing today? Great. How, how are you? I'm doing wonderful. It's amazing to have you on. Um, I'm super excited to, to dive into farm Drop, dive into everything you've been doing, um, here in the local main area.

[0:27]Um, it's been, uh, a pleasure learning more about what you guys do and, and diving deeper and, uh, what you guys are kind of planning to do. But I'd love to start first with a, a little bit about, uh, of a bio about who is Hannah and, uh, and yeah, how'd you kind of get here? Yeah, well, uh, you want the origins of how I got here?

[0:46]Well, I'm a five generation summer person in Blue Hill, Maine. Um, my parents in the seventies, uh, moved to Spain, so I grew up in Barcelona, which of course, uh, deeply affected my sort of like food culturescape. And I came back, went to College of the Atlantic, spent a lot of time in, uh, Mexico and Guatemala learning with, uh, subsistence farmers and got to see firsthand how our US.

[1:12]Uh, trade and sort of approach to international food business affects communities globally, uh, with, you know, abandoned fields of carrots and the highlands of Guatemala as an example. And so went off to study international food business in Germany. Ended up interviewing a bunch of people about. Different CSA models, community supported agriculture.

[1:34]Uh, and then took a turn towards food waste and, um, was working in Spain back home for a while in food waste. And then got the opportunity to come back to Maine to work with, uh, healthy Acadia, where I was the first paid gleaning coordinator. If you don't know what gleaning is, it's harvesting surplus from farms and getting it to local food pantries and meal sites.

[1:54]And I discovered Farm Drop as a, a community, uh, food systems solution in Blue Hill, Maine, and took it over as part of my role at Healthy Acadia. And, um, yeah, started on the Farm Drop, uh, journey, which has been, it's been around for 15 years and I've been sort of in charge of it for the last 10. That's awesome.

[2:15]That's really cool to, to hear a little bit more about that background and, and how deeply ingrained some of the aspects of Farm Drop are. You know, not only in the last 10 years of your life, but the, you know, the, the formative years as well. So it's really cool to. To dive in deeper, like, uh, I think it's a very interesting, uh, concept of trying to get, you know, our, our consumers direct, uh, food products from their farmers.

[2:45]And I think it's a very valuable, um, service that you guys provide. So it's been, uh, a pleasure learning more. Um, I'd love for you to just kind of dive into what is Farm Drop. Um, you just said, you know, farm Drop's been around for 15 years. What have you guys done, um, over that? Like how, how did it start and uh, and where has that kind of journey taken you after kinda sharing a little bit more about what Farm Drop is?

[3:10]Yeah, thank you. Um, so it started off as a senior in college's senior project where uh, they interviewed a bunch of farmers in the Blue Hill area about what. The community could do, and in particular, what this individual and their local wine shop could do to support farmers being able to sell year round directly to customers without, you know, heating a greenhouse or, you know, being able to just drop and go back to.

[3:35]The farm. And so the use of technology was brought up as an important way to be able to coordinate, uh, the logistics of customers being able to select exactly what they wanted, paying farmers in advance, having the farmers being control of pricing, inventory, um, you know. Setting up their store alongside 20 other farmers and food producers in the area.

[4:01]So collectively marketing, uh, developing a distribution system around, you know, one day of the week, dropping off all their products, and then have some, someone in the community put those orders together for customers to pick up, you know, in the afternoon as a sort of midweek evening option for sourcing all of your sort of favorite local food items in a sort of one stop shop.

[4:22]And I like to say that. So the, the core of Farm Drop is basically if you take a farmer's market and a CSA and they have an online baby, you get farm drop. So it's, it's a really interesting model in that there's zero waste. Farmers only bring to market what you have already purchased. So they've sold everything they deliver, and if we do our jobs correctly and match all of the products with all the orders, uh, and we're not left with like a, you know, a straggler of like, where did this.

[4:47]Where does this cheese go? We didn't, we didn't put it in the right place. Like it's always the sort of like fun part of farm Drop at the end of packing. And then, um, since then, uh, that was sort of like the beginning in 2015, but we sort of quickly realized that this was something that could exist and not just Blue Hill, Maine.

[5:04]And so we replicated to MDI and had a, a very quick and very large following on MDI where there. Funnily enough aren't that many places to get local food in the area, especially in the wintertime. So we started to sort of develop a, a, a social business model. We didn't know whether to be a nonprofit or a for-profit.

[5:24]Um, and we opened up a location in Portland and in Unity. And so we had these four separate tech stacks operating. Four separate community markets with completely different food producers on each one. And we thought, oh, this is a really cool tool for community food systems to have an online, um, option for again, that like midweek evening, you know, pickup for customers.

[5:50]And so we quickly realized that we needed to not just, you know, have every. Tech stack needing to be updated separately by our tech team, but that we needed to develop and design a platform that could host all of the markets on one platform. That would also allow producers to maybe expand beyond their local community and find markets in other communities where they might have a product that was coveted or needed by, um, another community that didn't.

[6:19]Uh, production and Maine being a very large state, but with, uh, uh, sort of low, uh, levels of, you know, demographic density, that, that, it's a really important thing to try to figure out how to create, you know, markets that are closer to farms where a lot of them, you know, Washington County drive all the way down to Boston and, um, to try to reach their markets.

[6:40]And so figuring out ways to efficiently create. New markets closer to home, closer to the producers, to better connect producers that are right around us. You know, making incredible food was became the purpose of Farm Drop and how to do that in a way that still maintained that direct connection between the producer and the customer.

[7:00]Allowed for local jobs to pop up in different communities where we have these sort of local food coordinator jobs, the Farm drop managers that. We're able to sort of coordinate that connect connection between the producers and um, the customers. Uh, and we started to develop this model and, um, decided, you know, we, we were an L three C, which is a low income, limited liability company.

[7:22]Not all states recognize this structure, but in the state of Maine, we're lucky to be able to have the L three C recognized at the state level. And so what that means is, is we have a a, a A. Social mission of, uh, both farm viability and food access. And so we're working to support the farms, but we're also working, you know, to reach customers that want access to more local food.

[7:49]And also we're expanding to support not only wholesale restaurants, but also food security organizations that sometimes don't have a way to source a 25 pound bag of carrots. And we can help them do that. And so. We're now in three regions of Maine, four regions in Maine, um, in down east where we are today.

[8:09]And then we have mid Maine, Northern Maine and Southern Maine farm drop regions. And each one of those regions is managed by what we call a regional manager, a regional. Farm Drop Manager and their role is to figure out the best way to sort of aggregate all the product from their region. Sometimes across regions.

[8:27]Um, sometimes storing products, sometimes with just-in-time deliveries. And then figuring out the local community, uh, organizers, drivers, order packers that can all come together one day a week and participate in. In the sort of, uh, packing of orders and distribution network that sort of develops and it's really fun, it's exciting, and we engage usually like a, a great sort of, um, diversity of people like elder folks that sit with the orders for a couple hours a week and help a certain pickup location with some oversight and customer service helping people sort of walk their groceries to their car.

[9:03]To sort of younger people that are coming in for the summer that want a job that's not just, you know, waitressing or working at a farm, but something in between, um, to people that are wanting to stay year round and work in sort of rural Maine and want a part-time job working with Farm Drop as as regional manager.

[9:18]And so we're trying to make it, um, so that everybody can have a role at Farm Drop, whether it's two hours a week or 20 hours a week. Um, and that we're sort of like. Growing with more customer support with wholesale, restaurants, retail stores, schools and food pantries, to really become more of a full service and helping all the corners of our sort of rural main, um, areas to, to be able to access like all of what is, uh, accessible, uh, right in Maine.

[9:52]No, I love that. I think that really explained in, in, in depth, uh, how Farm Dog came to be. It's cool to really see the level of coordination, uh, across, uh, you know, very wide span of regions, right? So all kind of across all of Maine. So to me, like it's very kind of cool to see that evolution of how that, uh, kind of coordination started and then how.

[10:16]Uh, like you're saying a little bit, talking a little bit more about the, the, the tech of it all and, uh, how you guys have kind of brought the community together around these farmers in different ways. Right. Um, I think there's a lot of cool things to that. So, um. Yeah. I'd love to, to chat a little bit more about kind of your impact to Farm Drop.

[10:38]You said you came in about 10 years ago. What are the kind of ways that you have, uh, specifically wanted Farm Drop to go, kind of following that vision? Well, it's really interesting because as a, a business. We have access to certain services, like we went through, you know, top Gun, which is a, a sort of business training program for Maine Center for Entrepreneurs.

[11:04]We did, um, the Cultivator program, which helped us develop sort of our financial management systems. Uh, I was a part of the Dear Go Labs. Accelerator program in Waterville. Um, I work closely with SCORE mentors and really just constantly trying to stay as true to our social mission, our, our farm viability, supporting the farmers and being a real partner to the producers.

[11:31]And also, you know, trying to make it so that local food is more accessible to more people. And what's really unique about Farm Drop is the nature of having a variety of local food online that isn't. Always available at local retail stores, co-ops, or even farmer's markets because there's limited space in a van and limited shelf space at a co-op.

[12:01]And they don't wanna carry chicken feet or chicken liver because it takes up space and they're not sure they're gonna sell it. Or maybe they'll only choose three flavors of a particular, um, you know, dairy farms yogurts because they don't wanna branch out until like. The seven or eight flavors that they actually make, because again, they need shelf space and they need to share it, and they're taking the risk of purchasing and then hoping to sell.

[12:27]And what's different about Farm Drop is that the farmers are putting up all of their availability, everything that they produce. On their farm. I mean, we hope some, sometimes they don't, sometimes they hold back. But, um, and they're able to manage their inventory strategically, offering everything that they have to offer online with no limitations to shelf space, but also getting really creative with unit sizes that, you know, their wholesale buyers don't necessarily wanna experiment with.

[12:56]Like three pound mystery box of mushrooms. It's one of our top sellers. People love it, right? Two pounds of chard. It's a huge bag of chard. You'll, you'll eat chard for every meal for a week, but it'll last two weeks in case you don't get to it. 'cause it's freshly harvested that morning when you get it, so you don't have to worry about things going bad.

[13:15]Um, and so really it's just been like discovering not always exactly like knowing what the value of what we were doing. Was at every step and then just sort of realizing, oh my god, customers can get 50 pounds of chicken and just stock their freezer. You can buy whole animals on farm drop. We have half cows.

[13:35]Or you can get a lamb like custom butchered and coordinate it with your farm and just make the payment through Farm Drop and we will distribute, you know, whatever cuts you want that week, you just put it in your notes and we'll bring down the lamb chops or the ground lamb, or you know. And so we're really getting creative with like how.

[13:54]Customers want to shop and matching that with the most sustainable ways that farmers need to be able to sell and get that product to customers. And, um, so that, that is a really interesting sort of aspect of, you know, shopping on Farm Drop is not the same, is going to a farmer's market. Obviously farmer's markets are wonderful and you get to socialize and talk to the producers for a minute, you know, before they move on to the next person.

[14:20]But when you can dive into an online platform and really get to know the products, email the producer, ask them questions. We also, um, are really dedicated to our farm drop stories. Um, when budget allows, we, we have our filmmaker go in and do a deep dive, two to five minute sort of film about different farms and different aspects of what it's like to.

[14:41]Produce food locally and be a small business. Um, and I think it's just really important that we consider Farm Drop as another local community food solution that's like a, a, a structure that can provide a different kind of service and meet customers where they are and try to. Persuade maybe more of the supermarket goers to come and try out something different that's convenient.

[15:07]You don't have to drive to all the farms. You don't have to wait until Saturday morning. You know you have to. You have to order in advance, buy a certain deadline, choose whatever you want, pay a pickup fee, and then go pick up at the designated time. And that requires a little bit of like habit changing.

[15:23]But as soon as you try it, once you get the kinds of products that, that you can get on Farm Drop that you can't get anywhere else, it starts to make a lot of sense. And, um, it's just like another way in which we can better connect customers to, to produces in the area. And so it's just that, that sort of.

[15:41]Navigating of what is the value of having a farm drop in your community, um, is, has been a really interesting discovery. Um, and then the other sort of like fascinating part of developing Farm Drop is this concept of what is local. We fought a lot. A few years ago about whether or not farmers from Unity should sell into the Blue Hill Farm Drop, or if you know, we should have produce even traveling from, you know, blue Hill to MDI and you know, what, what is the definition of a sustainable local food system, and should we be limiting customers to only be able to purchase what's.

[16:22]Within their immediate locale. And you know, a lot of people define local as New England and others define local as Maine. And some people define local as like, can I drive to it and can I talk, can I drive to the farm and can I talk to the farmer? And farm drop expands the definition just enough so that you can get crooked face creamery ricotta from Skowhegan.

[16:44]'cause why not the other producer that is their neighbor is driving anyway and delivering, you know, the, the. Abrams creamery, you know, goat feta and you can't get these products locally from producers in Blue Hill and you can get some of 'em and, and we definitely like encourage people to go to farm stands and go to local farmer's markets.

[17:03]But the other thing is that like farmer's markets have long waiting lists sometimes, and people that have a product that is unique, that customers want to buy should have a right to access that market and not necessarily. Be unwelcome because they're from an hour and 15 minutes away, or you know, there isn't room at the, at the farmer's market, or there's just not enough shelf space at the co-op.

[17:28]And so I think that the power of sort of being able to offer our regional communities a combined. Here are the local farms that are strengthened in their ability to sell to you because you also want the feta from an hour away, and that makes you wanna come to the platform even more and support our local farmers where they're at.

[17:50]And so have we done that perfectly over the years? You know, it's been a little bit of a back and forth and perfecting and figuring out how to make it work for different farmers at different times of the year and make sure that there isn't too much product so that all farmers are selling enough.

[18:06]That's really my main concern, is making it worth it for farmers and producers to come and engage in our model. Um, and, and be able to sort of also pay for the local jobs that, that are supporting those, those, those systems. Um, and then one, one other thing I'll say is the sort of constant technology. Uh.

[18:28]Development that we have had been doing, um, for several years and then kind of stopped doing, uh, was a fascinating process because we were working directly with farmers and saying, how do you want this to work? What do you want this technology system to look like? How do you wanna do the wholesale and the way that works best for your inventory management?

[18:49]And it turns out that we've like developed a very, very cool system. Um, unfortunately because of just. Security and, and speed and just different aspects. We're actually switching to a new platform and what that has brought up for me is that although we're gonna be moving to another technology platform that isn't like the one that we created on WordPress, that that is the one that is currently, um, working.

[19:13]We are going to be sort of doubling down on making sure that we're present in the community, that we're working in a, in a community. Centered way and that we're engaging, uh, people in every community to sort of like answer the question of like, how do we want to eat? Like, what products do you want? What systems do you wanna be a part of?

[19:34]What mechanisms and communities of food producers do you wanna engage with? And what is the most important thing for your health? And so I think that that's like another layer of conversation that as we move into a technology that is designed more for sort of larger food businesses. We're actually gonna make sure that we're designing the sort of community rootedness into our overall model in a way that makes sure that we're constantly engaging with the local communities, um, that we drive through and drive to and are working with, to, to make sure we have Farm Drop and in their communities for, for years to come.

[20:10]'cause we think it's a really important resource. No, that, that's awesome. I think that's really cool to hear more about that evolution and, and some of those things that you guys are thinking about. I'd love to kind of, uh, transition into chatting more about the future of Farm Drop. Um, some of the things we've chatted about a little bit more.

[20:28]I know we, you guys have a couple of events coming up. Um, do you wanna share, share a little bit about that while, while we have you and kind of what you got planned for the rest of the year? Yeah, definitely. I mean, in addition to, to the switch over to, um, a new technology platform, we're extremely excited about that.

[20:46]It's gonna bring a lot of much needed sort of flexibility in how producers can engage the network and also how customers can engage the network. So the new platform has, uh, snap EBT access built into it. It has the ability for, um, different buyers to use a CH payment, which. Um, is a lot better for schools who don't always have credit cards available to make purchases online.

[21:10]Um, and we're gonna be able to really create more, um, network of sort of local community, um, organizations and individuals that are sort of representing their communities as a way to sort of build in that sort of community feedback and making sure that we're sort of addressing, you know, some of the.

[21:31]Things that are important to people locally about their food system, whether that's through, um, different kinds of like webinars and educational opportunities and opportunities to have like farmers, um, you know, come to different events and speak with people. Um, whether that's like. Developing like more of like a tasting and kitchen and supper club, um, uh, events that are, you know, each community sort of like coming up with what it is that they wanna do.

[21:56]And we're gonna be supporting that with different ways of sourcing on Farm Drop and different ways of like getting involved in, in communities to figure out what activity and social sort of engagement do they want to see around food. It might be, um, you know, mini food festivals or music events where we also bring.

[22:15]Farm drop in. Um, maybe we do, you know, cool, fun catering and, and sort of piggyback on existing community events to make sure that Farm Drop is there. Talking about local food, talking about our farmers and food producers and, and sort of what we're trying to build at the community level. So we do have like a pretty robust set of events coming up.

[22:35]Um, on May 9th, we're gonna be a part of a community solutions conversation at the Reversing Falls Sanctuary in Brooksville. It's a part of a series called reia. And um, the last meeting we had, um, Acadia Action, uh, talking about mutual aid and several organizations locally who are doing a variety of different things like accompanying, um, elderly neighbors.

[23:00]Um, or supporting, uh, children and accessing sort of, uh, school gardens to, to be able to sort of learn about growing their own food. Um, and in this next conversation, we're gonna be there with a lot of other organizations talking about. From a food perspective, what can we do in terms of mutual aid? How can we build a mutual aid culture around the existing solutions that are already in our communities, but also making those more accessible and sort of building in, um, some principles of making sure that, you know, like the Food for Health program that Farm Drop is running, where we're raising money constantly from different community members and then going out and buying food for food pantries and meal sites that need it, that can't access it anywhere else.

[23:42]Like figuring out sort of like ways in which that might also be able to translate into, um, more people knowing about different opportunities for ways to have food shared with them that aren't ne necessarily transactional through our website. Um, and so that's exciting on May 9th. Um, and then we are also, uh, gonna be, you know, engaging in local health fairs.

[24:07]Um, we are gonna be a part of a showing of the documentary grocery list in Ellsworth on May 20. Third, I believe, at the Ellsworth Library. Um, and then on May 24th, we have an exciting event at, we believe the grand, I'm talking to them tomorrow to finalize details on that. And we're gonna have the soul vendors playing.

[24:33]We're also thinking that during the afternoon hours before the music starts, we're gonna have another conversation about community food systems, community food solutions, and mutual aid, and how we can sort of figure out ways to better connect the network, um, through, through all the organizations and, and efforts and initiatives that are in, in our area.

[24:52]Um, so that Soul Vendors concert will be a fundraiser for our Food for Health program. Um, and there'll be a sliding scale of, you know, what you wanna donate, uh, to come and dance and celebrate. And, um, we might have, um, this conversation ahead of time and we will share information about that as well. Um, and then yeah, finally we do have another event, August.

[25:16]Sixth, um, at Sassafras Cafe, which is gonna be sort of more of a inviting sort of a lot of our top customers to come and talk to them about ways in which they can further support strengthening, um, our infrastructure so that we can get more. Potentially vans that can support sort of some of the work that we're doing in the area.

[25:38]So it's a little bit more of like an invite-only, um, you know, fundraising event that, that we wanna sort of like pitch to our existing customers and supporters that we wanna sort of like build in some more infrastructure capacity so that we can serve. Going up to Washington County on, um, on one of our routes.

[25:57]And so we're sort of building that, that work in. Um, and one more thing I'll mention is that we are a part of the down East food systems partnership conversations that have been happening. Um, and I believe that this past April 14th was the sort of like closing workshop, but that there are going to be some results.

[26:15]That we're gonna help communicate of what future opportunities to sort of provide feedback into some next steps in developing a feasibility plan for our Downey food system and figuring out where we can support getting, you know, more connection and more, um, opportunities, uh, for developing, you know, food systems infrastructure to support our local food businesses and our local community security organizations as well.

[26:41]So it's all very exciting. It's a very busy spring. Yeah, no, that it sounds awesome. There's a, a, a, a awesome laundry list of events that, uh, people around can have the opportunity of, uh, diving in more with Farm Drop and some of the people in the community that make Farm Drop Farm drop. Is there, um, is there anything specific you wanna share with people?

[27:06]Is there a good way, uh, for people to get in contact with you? Is there, what's the, uh, uh, website as well? If you wanna list that, say that out for, uh, for Farm Drop? Uh, and, uh, and yeah, I just wanna, uh, see if you have any last thoughts and conversation pieces about Farm Drop, uh, that you wanna share with us.

[27:27]Thank you all. No, just really appreciate working, uh, with you and helping us get the word out. And, um, I, I just wanna say that Farm Drop has been around since 2011 again, and so many different people have been a part of developing it. It's really been a collaborative, consultative sort of decision making process every step of the way.

[27:51]Every turn we've taken almost to a fault. We're like, well, what do we wanna do? You know, we sit around and figure out, um, how we wanna develop and sort of like have been building organically based on interest, based on, you know, sometimes being adopted by a nonprofit for a year, another time. You know, somebody that wants to run a certain market in Blue Hill has taken it over and there's just been a lot of.

[28:14]Really interesting sort of volunteerism that has gone into Farm Drop. Um, I myself volunteer most of my time for Farm Drop. A lot of producers that are really just driving on behalf of other producers on a volunteer basis to help make the network approach work. And it is just a really interesting. Thing to be provided, a technology that eases certain aspects of collaboration so that we can all sort of give a little more towards a model that to be truthful as a business, it's not penny to penny, you know, sustainable, but it's also not going anywhere because it's resilient, because the people that are holding it up.

[29:01]Aren't gonna let it go because it saved their business during the pandemic or it fed their grandmother when she was sick, or you know, it's just what we believe in. And so I think it's really important to just say Farm Drop is gonna reinvent itself every step of the way. We're going through a big metamorphosis with this new technology sort of platform, and we invite anyone and everyone that's interested in building our own food system around our own sort of.

[29:30]Technology in our own set of principles to sort of join and they're welcome. And, um, yeah. Thanks so much for having me. And just wanted to call to action that this is something that we can all rally around and be a part of, and so we wanna include as many people as are interested in sort of being a part of it.

[29:47]Awesome. Yeah, no, I love that. Uh, once again, the, the website is Farm Drop Us. Definitely check it out. Thank you so much for joining, Hannah. Uh, it was a pleasure having you, A pleasure learning more about Farm Drop and, and some of that history and really excited to see what we do here in 2026 together. So thank you.

[30:06]Thanks to anyone who's listening, uh, and popping popped in. So appreciate you guys. See ya.