THANKYOU For Being So Kind-Hearted When We Do Stuff Things Up
G'Day Folks,
It's Tuesday afternoon at 3pm, I have sat down to write this newsletter with the beautiful warm afternoon sun soaking my back. It feels delightful after such a frosty finger numbing morning harvesting your veggies. Prior to sitting down, I was at the pack shed with Dad and Lochie getting things ready for our early start tomorrow at 3:30am. We have come up with a new system to pack your orders, with the intention of increasing quality and speed. And, we managed to do all of this without myself and Dad getting into an argument, that truly is progress!
Each week we pack between 4000 and 5000 items of fruit and vegetables, which has to be done in a speedy manner in order to remain in business. So Lochie, who lives and works on the farm, runs at a frenetic pace trying to balance speed with accuracy and quality to keep you legends returning to buy more goods. But obviously we get it wrong sometimes and the speed at which fruit and veg is picked and packed can result in a bad one being placed in your box. Or, if Dad is too busy telling the entire crew how annoying it is when people buy a surprise box and leave notes to completely change it, Lochie gets distracted and completely misses something all together (Dad gives us all quite a good laugh with his rants, something we desperately need during the monotonous early morning hours).
So Scott A.K.A Dad, has been busy welding and painting some new roller racks that allow us to change the layout of the packing shed and have numerous people packing orders at any time. This will allow each packer some more time to inspect fruit and veg for damage, as well as check each order to make sure you guys are getting everything you ordered. So fingers crossed tomorrow morning our new system works out, if you're reading this now and are missing items or received damaged goods, then please let us know so we can keep refining our methods and keep finding solutions. Or just send Dad a polite message telling him to try harder, so I can listen to his ears make the sound of a kettle boiling on the stove top 
Look, we are never ever going to pack every order perfectly every single time, that would require our family and team members to be replaced by robots and even then, as we have seen this week, our modern technology can shut down banks and airports all because of a software update occurring on the other side of the planet. But we do try our darn best each and every week, we feel like shit when we stuff things up and anyone who has notified us will attest to the lengths we go to in making it up. It's a tremendous juggling act each week to balance the competing priorities to ensure everyone is stoked with their veg box and that we did it in a way that allows us to feed our community for many many years to come.
You see, this is something we believe in so much, we want to watch our children and our children's children continue to feed their community with the healthiest food possible. To keep the connection between farmer and eater, to steward the land, to make sure farmers and eaters get a fair price that allows both to co-exist in a symbiotic circular relationship based on health and happiness. And so far, this dream is becoming a reality, it truly is, and who knows how far we can grow this or who it will inspire down the road. Maybe in the future this will be considered normal, maybe our children in the future will ask their parents why people in the old days ate rubbish from corporations that didn't give two hoots about them. Maybe, just maybe!
Before I go, I just want to give you the warmest and most genuine heartfelt THANKYOU for being so kind-hearted when we do stuff things up. It blows us away when we receive such kind messages even though we stuffed up your order. Something that comes up often in conversation between our family, is that we feel like we are in a bubble, we are just surrounded by the most gracious and salt of the earth community. Steve our delivery driver, just can't get over the reaction you guys give him when he delivers your order. It fills his heart and it sure as hell fills ours.
Anytime we are feeling exhausted or stressed, it's the small moments of interaction with you that make us feel like everything is going to work out just fine. Be it through a message when you order, meeting you at your doorstep, through an email, a social media message, over the phone, every little bit of contact brings so much joy. I'm only 36 but I feel like saying, it reminds me of the good old days, at least the ones my grandparents told me about, it's bloody beautiful, from my family to yours, thank you!
