“For the first four years, no new enterprise produces profits. Even Mozart didn’t start writing music until he was four.”
— Peter Drucker,
Management consultant

Perhaps most importantly, all four of these very talented entrepreneurs love every minute of what they do.

Do you have the entrepreneurial spirit? You probably do. Farm Credit does business every day with people who have what it takes to work hard and to keep their heads above water in the demanding world of Northeast agriculture, forestry, fishing and all the other industries we serve.

A 4-H project gone haywire
Echo Farm began as an innocent 4-H project when the Hodge and the Schofield families, of Hinsdale, N.H., bought Milking Shorthorn and Jersey heifers for their children to show at local fairs. The plan was to keep the animals until calving, then sell the heifers and buy replacements.

The plan seemed sound … at least until the families named their beautiful heifers, groomed and cared for them, won some ribbons, and yes, fell in love with them.

Bob Hodge, an owner of Echo Farm, recalls, “In effect, our 4-H project turned into a large hobby farm which eventually became a full-scale dairy farm.

“When we became a farm, we began to grow aggressively, acquiring more cattle in an attempt to spread our fixed costs. As we grew, we invested more funds and invited the Schofield family to join our corporation. Our three children liked the idea of building a business as a family along with the Schofields and their children.

“But as a certified public accountant and financial planner, I was concerned about the farm’s growing costs, mounting losses, falling milk prices and ever-moving break-even target.”

That’s when the Hodges and the Schofields considered creating a new product with the potential to support both families. They decided that with innovative and effective marketing, they could create a new niche in snack foods.

“We created Echo Farm Puddings,” said Hodge, “with a brand identity similar to the very popular Ben and Jerry’s ice cream brand. It is an all-natural pudding made with farm fresh milk, and in a surprising range of new pudding flavors, like Peaches and Cream or Coffee Caramel Tapioca.”

A huge commitment
Bob Hodge wants other would-be entrepreneurs to be aware of a few important points he learned by trial and error. He says that the first step in developing a niche market is to recognize that manufacturing and distributing are completely new businesses, totally unrelated to farming.

He thus learned to create “boundaries.” He noted, “Our daughter, Beth, along with Shelley Schofield runs the farm so the rest of us can get Echo Farm Puddings on its feet.”

In addition, launching a business is a significant financial investment. He noted that packaging alone can cost $15,000 — and that’s for each product in his line — and chain stores charge up to $25,000 to put each product on their shelves … that’s $25,000 for chocolate pudding, $25,000 for butterscotch pudding, and so on.

Bob warns, “Launching a new business also requires an enormous time commitment. We spent all of 1996, for example, perfecting a recipe, designing packaging, renovating space for a commercial kitchen, buying a large volume of product and obtaining all the necessary licenses and permits.”

Currently, Echo Farm Puddings is on shelves in 125 locations across New England and as far West as Albany, N.Y.

Starting small
Bob Hodge says that the families work on aggressive, new ideas to catch the attention of their target market, which includes late teens through the fifties. “For example,” he said, “we add top-quality Ghirardelli cocoa to our chocolate pudding and always come up with unexpected new flavors for dessert lovers to enjoy.”

The families also introduced a Flavor of the Month, tempting palettes with scrumptious flavors like spiced pumpkin or vanilla and soon they will introduce butter pecan, coconut, eggnog for the holidays and peanut butter for college students. [After tasting six different flavors, the writer of this article labeled them all “positively yummy!”]

“Our goal is to have 30 flavors with an average of 10 flavors in a store at any given time,” Bob says, and then adds, “so you don’t get bored.”

The families currently sell 80 percent of the farm’s milk to AgriMark and use 20 percent in pudding. Their five-year goal is to use 100 percent of their milk, and select farms to produce additional milk supplies for them.

According to Bob, Echo Farm Puddings grosses $35,000 in sales per month, with $40,000 per month in expenses. “We are about six months from becoming a sustainable business, and a real presence in the market.”

A young award winner makes her mark
"Jenn Halsey is the first woman — and the first Long Island farmer — to bring home the coveted New York Farm Bureau Young Farmer Award,” Steve Weir says with pride. Steve is the branch manager of First Pioneer Farm Credit’s Riverhead, NY office, and he adds that Jenn also traveled to Texas to compete in the American Farm Bureau Awards.

And she did it with peaches. On Long Island, no less. How did it happen? The Halsey daughters, Jenn and Amy, returned from college to White Cap Farm in Water Mill, N.Y. with “the most important message” their parents ever told them ringing in their ears, “We’d love to have you back, but apples and pumpkins will not support three families. You need to bring something with you.”

So Jenn’s sister, Amy, started Amy’s Flowers, a single-greenhouse operation that quickly grew into three greenhouses. And Jenn brought peaches.

Jenn began by planting peach trees in a high-density configuration, much like her father’s apple orchard. High-density configuration is a somewhat new idea in the peach industry. In this arrangement, peach trees are pruned to dwarf size and not allowed to grow taller than 10 feet tall, which allows for closer plantings and faster production times.


Jenn says, “I saw potential in peaches here on Long Island. I planted 458 trees during spring break of my senior year, and planted another 750 trees this past spring. So far the results look good. The 1997 trees produced peaches last year, and next year, I hope they will produce at least one bushel per tree.”

Jenn explains why she entered the contest. “Challenges keep life interesting, and a little nerve wracking, too. Winning the contest was an accomplishment I wanted to achieve, just like getting good grades at Cornell. When I started school, I told myself that I needed to do well so I could be successful on our farm.”

She adds, “Some ask me how I do everything I do, and I say as long as I have willpower, and enjoy what I am doing, it is not work to me. I like facing a new challenge every day.”

“Farm Credit is a big part of my business. I would be lost without Norm Coe, my business consultant, and like working with my records specialist, Leslie Oakley. As long as I can work with people like Mike Haycook, my loan officer, I’ll be fine. They are knowledgeable people who take off my rose-colored glasses and help me shed light on my own ideas.”

Corn as a year-round business
In college, John Gill was asked to design a business. His family sold corn from a small roadside stand as far back as John could remember — even back when they had a picnic-table stand in front of the farmhouse when he was a small boy.

For his assignment, John chose to design a brand new roadside stand. He showed the plan to his parents. His parents liked what they saw. They built the new stand, and John Gill began his entrepreneurial career.

Today, the original 400-acre family sweet corn farm covers more than 1,600 acres in Hurley, NY And the roadside stand has grown to four 30' x 96' greenhouses and a doublewide 21' x 40' display house. John, his wife, Loretta, his parents, Jack and Charlotte, and his brother, David, are active in various aspects of the operation, which now extends from Hurley all the way to Florida.

Florida?

Says John, “Maintaining buyers’ preferred list status means that you have to provide quality product 12 months a year. That’s why I decided it was time to sell sweet corn year-round under my name, Gill Farm Sales. I went into business with two outstanding Florida brokers and several corn growers. Our New York harvest runs until late September, and we start picking the first week of October in Florida.

Packing sheds
The business added two state-of-the-art packing sheds, in New York and Florida, a produce brokerage business and trucking business and a cold room. “All to stop money from being leached from our main business,” John says.

“Our newest entities allow us to maintain a percentage of sales year-round, and improve efficiencies. By owning the trucking company, I can use a controlled ice drip to keep husks fresh right to the customer’s door. Shipping costs move from Gill Farms, Inc. right back into the truck brokerage. Our cold room holds 9,000 boxes so we can fill orders for yellow corn today and white corn tomorrow. My goal is to keep production cost per box as low as possible.”

Problem solving — for the fun of it!
If entrepreneurs like solving problems, John Gill is an entrepreneur. In addition to building his corn business into a thriving year-round enterprise, he is linking data communication and management information between his New York and Florida businesses on his own.

His goal is to have immediate access to information from either office. “I’m hooked on the challenge of computer puzzles, and keep all my bookkeeping, invoicing, bills of lading, checking accounts, spray records, crop records, yield records and planning records on line.”

Opportunity in innovation
Ernie Rammelt believes that innovation provides opportunity. In his case, he and his brother, Robert, saw an opportunity in a mechanical grape pruner to improve efficiencies and operating costs in the grape industry.

Accordingly, they bought an original pruner designed by Tommy Oldridge, of Lowell, Ark. They also purchased the patent so they could market it to grape growers from coast to coast.

The grape pruner assist is built for mounting on almost any tractor (with or without a cab). Its hydraulically powered sensors are extremely efficient and can prune approximately one acre per hour by extending over a row of grapes. “Perhaps the most important selling point,” Ernie says, “is that each part can be purchased in your local neighborhood hardware or farm store.”

Ernie is a self-described entrepreneur who bought his first grape farm as a teenager. Today Rammelt Brothers Farms, managed by his son, Joel, spans 220 acres in Westfield, NY, and yields 7.5 ton of grapes per acre in an industry where 5.5 tons is the norm.

“We’ve sold nine machines, from Washington to New York, and hope to have every grower with 50 acres enjoying the benefits of the mechanical pruner,” says Ernie. “The pruner reduced our farm’s pruning costs from about $200 an acre to $80. That’s a $120 reduction per acre or a $6,000 savings per year for a 50-acre farm. That means farmers with 50 acres who pay $25,000 for our pruner, can break even in just over four years.

“They will also have the same level of quality as they had with hand pruning — if not better! Plus, with the grape pruner, we can farm 220 acres with a labor force of just two-and-a-half people, instead of four to five.”

Three recent occurrences have added momentum to Ernie’s marketing efforts. A western New York husband and wife team who have used a mechanical pruner for eight years (and have the best return per acre in the county) caught the attention of the Penn State and the Cornell experimental stations. Both stations are now conducting field trials.

“Any new concept takes time to catch on,” Ernie says, “Field tests will prove the worth of our machine in the eyes of many growers. Advertising has also helped spread the word in Michigan and Washington, and those markets are contacting us for demonstrations.”

Ernie believes that the future of farming lies in innovation. “We cannot rely on others. We as individuals need to use innovation to control our own destiny.”

For information on the Rammelt Grape Pruner Assist, call 315.789.2541.

Contact us at info@farmcreditmaine.com for more information.

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