Looking Forward to 2023 and Beyond!

 If the year were a S that had fallen on its side, the winter solstice is the valley, while the summer solstice is the mountain top.  By the time the winter solstice rolls around, most of the year's crops have been brought in and the farming year is over.  It is cold outside and there is less light to work with.  So, we take the opportunity to rest, read, stretch, catch up with dear friends, do puzzles, play board games and dream about the future.  The hard knocks we took over the past year, we try to see those as learning opportunities and vow not to make the same mistakes again.  The good times we remember with fondness and vow to have more in the future.  It doesn't matter how difficult the challenges or how awesome the good times, we know that we will try to do better next year.  This natural rhythm is sacred to us, and we feel blessed to be alive and share this with others.

We see a bright future for Fresh To Morrow (F2M) and for the Village of Morrow in general.  We are surrounded by natural beauty and are already seen as a natural destination.  As Morrow grows in size, we hope to grow with it!  It would be impossible for us to feed everyone in Morrow, but we hope to feed those people who want to eat better and take better care of themselves.  Most people who eat our food tell us the food is delicious and this is music to our ears!  If nothing else, we know that we are heading in the right direction.  We are sincerely thankful for all of your smiling faces and words of encouragement; we couldn't do this without your support!

So where are we headed?  What do we see in our future?  Here are our purest and truest intentions for the future of F2M.  In 2023 we hope to reach a few more milestones.  The first and major milestone for us will be full time employees (we are hoping for two by mid-year).  In the past we would only be able to keep our employees between April - November at the latest.  It is always hard to bring them back the next year because good workers will always find other jobs.  With the cafe being year around we can now offer full time employment all year long.  Offering year-around employment increases our chances of hiring highly qualified workers who will help us in striving for excellence.  Our workers will know how to grow food, process the food, serve the food and talk about the food and all of our wellness products.  We see these as highly skilled professional level jobs and are proud to be able to offer them.  Danielle Halbleib is a part timer as is Tabitha Reynolds.  Mark Ryan is the first picture and Seth Hutten second, they will be full timers in 2023. 

With more workers we are going to expand our hours.  We are going to stay open on Sundays until 8 and in the summer when the produce is in swing, we will open on Thursday evenings as an opportunity for market account customers to get first dibs on the produce before the weekend.  We hope that our dinners continue to grow with the beautiful music being played.  It is so very rewarding to see good customers meet each other and become friends!

Other areas of growth we see in 2023: continue to improve the building inside and out, better lighting and signage, more plants to sell in the spring, sell frozen food, more wellness products in the store, more private group events and catering, more classes on homesteading + herbalism + cooking, more game nights, movie nights, Bible study groups, nature clubs, book clubs, etc.  Basically, any excuse for people to get together in the space we are all about that!  Throw us some suggestions...

Our most important area of growth would be to develop a few more market account customers.  Market account customers pay up front as a communication to us that you are into what we are offering, at a time in the winter when we start purchasing materials to be able to meet that commitment for the whole year.  It spreads the risk on such a critical function within the community.  This is also a technique that has been used in rural communities for many centuries.  More info to come, stay tuned!

We would like to develop the following relationships in our community: more non-spray growers who will help us to meet the growing demand for clean produce, a few more musical acts to play on Saturday evenings, high schoolers with transportation who want to work in the fields in the summer, and more artists to sell their paintings on the walls or their crafts on our shelves.

If you can feel the excitement in these words, then we are doing a good job of expressing how we feel inside!  If you are feeling that you would like to participate in anything you read above, we feel that is a normal response and want to totally encourage that!  Please don't be a stranger this winter, let us know how we can serve you or if you want to work together with us.  

Thank you for reading to the end!  Next time you come in let us know you read this until the end, and we will give you a free cookie or a sweet potato, your choice!

Be well and keep shining bright into 2023 and beyond!

Ryan, Megan, Brad and Maria