Open for Business with Teresa Lorensen, Bloom Where You're Planted Farm - Dec. 8, 2020

Nebraska Women in Agriculture Author

12/10/2020 Added

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Open for Business with Teresa Lorensen, Bloom Where You're Planted Farm and Pumpkin Patch - Dec. 8, 2020

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[00:00:00.240]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: During our time together, please use the chat box located on the bottom of your screen to ask questions will address questions as time allows.
[00:00:06.960]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Today we have Theresa Lawrence and joining us. She's the co owner and operator of bloom where you're planted farm and pumpkin patch.
[00:00:13.980]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: The farm set is located near the village of awoken Nebraska and was purchased by Teresa's grandparents in 1944
[00:00:21.090]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Teresa and her husband, Terry bottom moved onto the property in 2003
[00:00:25.470]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: And the years when Teresa was dissatisfied with her career and looking for something more fulfilling her mom would tell her to bloom where you're planted, or in other words make the most of the place you're at in your life.
[00:00:35.580]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Those words helped inspire the Lawrence's to take the leap and in 2005 they opened a new business which they named for her mom's advice. Over the past 16 seasons.
[00:00:44.490]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Bloom where you're planted farm and pumpkin patch has grown to offer a full slate of pumpkin patch activities.
[00:00:49.950]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: All based around agriculture in nature, outside of the fall season the farm is home to monthly rule route rest of vintage markets May through September featuring antiques home decor and the occasional guests vendors. Thanks for joining us, Theresa.
[00:01:04.500]Teresa Lorensen: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
[00:01:06.810]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Well, we'll just go ahead and jump right in with our first question. And Theresa give us some background about yourself and tell us all about you.
[00:01:14.490]Teresa Lorensen: Okay. Well, I grew up about a mile from where I live right now, the farmer we live with my grandparents farm and growing up, I knew I wanted to do something with business but not necessarily
[00:01:27.300]Teresa Lorensen: This particular path I was probably one of those kids who didn't want to live in a small town, you know, I wanted to do something different but turns out I didn't
[00:01:37.170]Teresa Lorensen: We moved here in 2003 and we needed to fix up some buildings, you know, or they were going to get to run down and
[00:01:45.900]Teresa Lorensen: After you do that, what are you going to do with these buildings, you know, we spent all that money you've got to have a purpose for it. So I always wanted to have some kind of business and the idea of having a pumpkin patch.
[00:01:56.400]Teresa Lorensen: evolved out of the desire to do something with the farm.
[00:02:01.590]Teresa Lorensen: What our business.
[00:02:04.290]Teresa Lorensen: Is is a barman pumpkin patch. So we knew we were pumpkins, of course, that's how we got started. We started with just growing a patch of pumpkins and we had a little store.
[00:02:16.920]Teresa Lorensen: And it kind of grew from there.
[00:02:19.650]Teresa Lorensen: Now we have a full slate of family activities and
[00:02:25.440]Teresa Lorensen: You know actually agritourism is definitely what we do. We also. We also have a vintage market. In addition to the pumpkin patch. That's kind of supplemented that fall only income.
[00:02:38.580]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: That's great. Theresa, let's dig in a little bit more intelligent idea really came from. I know you said that you had some buildings that were falling down and really needed to upkeep them. But let's tell us a bit more into that.
[00:02:52.350]Teresa Lorensen: Yeah, well, so we have a bar that needs to be restored and, you know,
[00:02:59.760]Teresa Lorensen: What, what do you do with that barn, and then we and we had a cow lots just east of the house. It
[00:03:06.540]Teresa Lorensen: You know, we needed to be cleaned up and that seemed like a good place to grow some pumpkin. So we tried it for a year, we did an experimental year where we just grew pumpkins and then in the fall, we had
[00:03:18.510]Teresa Lorensen: The kids from church come out for a day, and we did here rides and we gave everybody pumpkins and we just wanted to basically see if we were able to grow them or not, like, how hard is it to grow pumpkin. We weren't sure. So that's kind of how we got started, but
[00:03:33.900]Teresa Lorensen: I just have always had a desire to have a business of my own.
[00:03:38.100]Teresa Lorensen: And when we started, we had a little store we had the pumpkins for sale, which we grew and we pre picked them and people could just come in by we had a little corn pits outside where they could kids can play with his swing set
[00:03:53.910]Teresa Lorensen: And you know, we didn't charge admission or anything. We just went on the sales of the merchandise and you know wasn't a bad year to begin with, we had about 500 people maybe come to the farm and
[00:04:07.530]Teresa Lorensen: So that kind of boost our confidence that we were able to do this and then over the years. It's just been people have asked for certain things like
[00:04:17.880]Teresa Lorensen: We started doing field trips, because people were asking for field trips. We were real hesitant to do hay rides at first because we had heard that the insurance to do that was really bad.
[00:04:30.120]Teresa Lorensen: Turns out it really wasn't that big of a deal and adding hay rides is the best thing we ever did, because we sell a lot more pumpkins that way.
[00:04:38.760]Teresa Lorensen: The little patch that we had growing pumpkins was certainly not enough to sustain us even that first year we had to go and buy pumpkins, we were going to be where they had him for, you know, three for
[00:04:49.710]Teresa Lorensen: $8 or something. We were buying these pumpkins and so that we had some stuff to sell at the end of the year we grow the heirloom pumpkins.
[00:04:58.680]Teresa Lorensen: Which are like the tans, and the whites and the Greens and the pinks and that's really what we have been doing that from the beginning. That's kind of my passion, but then the jack o' lanterns, the pie pumpkins. That's what people really want and
[00:05:13.080]Teresa Lorensen: That's what we ran out of that first year we kind of underestimated, we thought what we thought was the coolest pumpkins, it's going to be what everybody else wanted to buy but kids you know people want orange pumpkin. So
[00:05:23.970]Teresa Lorensen: You know, we've just learned kind of along the way and had to keep growing the patch bigger and
[00:05:32.190]Teresa Lorensen: We added a lot of attractions. Just to give people something to do. We started charging admission in our third year, we started at $3 a person this past year we were $8 a person in our 16th season. And so we just kind of been adding things along the way.
[00:05:49.830]Teresa Lorensen: We do. Hey Rice's you pick patch. We've got a lot of play areas and everything kind of has a farm theme to it. We've got rubber duck races with the pumps that you know kids can
[00:06:04.440]Teresa Lorensen: Of corn pit. Still, which is now inside. We've got a big 40 foot to slide that comes out of our old greenery building
[00:06:12.720]Teresa Lorensen: A horse me of course swings and a bucking barrel that has four chains on it that you can even adults can write it and you try and you know if you're nasty you try and shake the person off of it.
[00:06:25.170]Teresa Lorensen: A combine that you can go up into we do Dress a scarecrow. We have
[00:06:33.360]Teresa Lorensen: An egg race and we have yard games, which include
[00:06:38.940]Teresa Lorensen: cornhole you have a big giant pong game, which is like like beer pong, but with trash cans and volleyball. We have
[00:06:48.900]Teresa Lorensen: Ladder golf and then like
[00:06:52.140]Teresa Lorensen: A family tire swing that everybody can ride together. Then we also have AG exhibit. So we've got our old farm building. We've got a barn that according crib.
[00:07:00.540]Teresa Lorensen: And the greenery and so you can go and see these old buildings and everything has a little bit of a little plaque on the wall that tells about what the building was used for back when my grandparents were here, and even before that, because they weren't the first ones here.
[00:07:15.540]Teresa Lorensen: So we try and teach about agriculture, we've got old farm machinery.
[00:07:20.820]Teresa Lorensen: Like a corn sheller and cream separator and hit and miss engines and things like that everything has a little bit of informational card on it to try and teach a little bit about farming.
[00:07:32.010]Teresa Lorensen: In addition to just having fun. And then we also nature trails, which go out to our we've got a couple different little ponds and you can go, you know,
[00:07:43.110]Teresa Lorensen: Take a look at your trail.
[00:07:45.570]Teresa Lorensen: Alongside the, you know, kind of around the perimeter of the farm. So that in a nutshell is basically what we're doing now, but it all just kind of grew from that little
[00:07:56.280]Teresa Lorensen: Desire to have some kind of a business and use our farm buildings and share it with other people.
[00:08:01.680]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: That's great. Lots of fun activities for everyone in the family to enjoy.
[00:08:06.300]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Our first question came into our chat box and is, why did you choose pumpkins.
[00:08:13.140]Teresa Lorensen: Um, I, good question. We live on a farm where there's corn, soybeans, grown around us. So there's those crops are here too, but I love
[00:08:24.600]Teresa Lorensen: Well, my husband I both love fall and we loved pumpkins and all the different heirloom varieties, especially was what I really love and it was hard to find those it's a little bit easier now they're in more places like even the grocery stores but
[00:08:40.620]Teresa Lorensen: I guess I'm just because we want love the fall season. And we thought we can do that manageably
[00:08:48.150]Teresa Lorensen: Yeah why pumpkins, I guess, because we love him. Yes.
[00:08:52.620]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: That's great.
[00:08:54.450]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: So with all the pumpkin and with the storefront. How do you find a labor to help you guys
[00:09:01.350]Teresa Lorensen: We, we have a hard time asking for help. So we probably do more by ourselves and we should. And the older we get, the more we say I'm willing to get some help.
[00:09:12.420]Teresa Lorensen: We have we started out just with a couple of employees and now we have about eight, I think.
[00:09:19.980]Teresa Lorensen: So Terry and I run the admission counter. So we're always the first point of contact when people when people come and then we have two or three people at a time, depending on how busy it is in our Cafe.
[00:09:32.700]Teresa Lorensen: And those are usually girls. Not always, but from high school age to we've got some girls who've been with us for years who were, you know, in their early 20s or mid 20s. By now, and have been working since high school. Our hair I drivers, you have to have a little bit more of a
[00:09:54.150]Teresa Lorensen: different skill set to drive a tractor and we've got some we tend to target retired, guys. But we've also got
[00:10:01.620]Teresa Lorensen: Our main hayride drivers is the neighbor guy. His wife started working for us. First, and now he's in the field in in it with us and they're kind of part of our extended family now.
[00:10:14.130]Teresa Lorensen: It's just you know it's it's a short season so it's easy to find people because you don't have to have them for very long, but it's also difficult to find people because if they've got a regular job.
[00:10:23.820]Teresa Lorensen: Or in farming or something. It's a terrible time of year for them. So we just, you know, you kind of have to
[00:10:30.870]Teresa Lorensen: Put out a lot of feelers and
[00:10:33.840]Teresa Lorensen: whittle it down from the people who are available. I guess the week but we're really you know the rest of the time and growing of the pumpkins, the weaving and all of that. We do that by ourselves, and probably should ask for help in that regard to
[00:10:51.480]Okay.
[00:10:53.100]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: coven 19 has impacted everyone in agriculture and it's a big business shock for a lot of people
[00:11:00.390]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: How did, how did you guys face that, how did you overcome that this year.
[00:11:04.680]Teresa Lorensen: Well, um, I'll go into the little so in the summertime we have these vintage markets. So that's when we started being affected by it code was, you know, we were normally start like having markets in May we do it once a month, where we have
[00:11:20.130]Teresa Lorensen: One weekend a month where we set up and sell from our barn or Barnes, full of antiques and vintage and then we spill out into the yard and
[00:11:28.980]Teresa Lorensen: You know, have a lot of square footage of antiques and
[00:11:33.930]Teresa Lorensen: The mothers. We were, we normally do a Mother's Day one
[00:11:37.950]Teresa Lorensen: So that was coming up and you know coven was everybody was afraid to do anything. We weren't really sure.
[00:11:45.000]Teresa Lorensen: You know, nobody knew at that time, you know, back in April, when we were getting ready to have this what we were going to be facing. But fortunately, we're outdoors. So
[00:11:56.460]Teresa Lorensen: We move the big mother's a thing. It's a garden market that ended up being first weekend and in June, which is what we were planning to start with.
[00:12:05.610]Teresa Lorensen: But we did go ahead and open in May. We kind of had this kind of seemed like okay let's do a Mother's Day thing just ourselves without the other vendors that usually come
[00:12:15.090]Teresa Lorensen: So we just kind of went for it and had out our hand sanitizer and clean the bathrooms a lot and you know social distancing signs. So we started small, at the beginning of it.
[00:12:29.190]Teresa Lorensen: Then this is summer went on once a month, we would have these markets and kind of get a feeling of how people were reacting like the first couple times, you know, we weren't nobody was wearing mass at that time, but then by like
[00:12:43.890]Teresa Lorensen: July, there was, you know, a lot more mass where I would get a lot of people from Lincoln and Omaha and even though we were outdoors, we you know you started to see the public's
[00:12:57.120]Teresa Lorensen: Concern for it grow a little bit, I guess. So we adapted with that. And then when it came time to open the pumpkin patch, since we're an event. We had to file a
[00:13:09.060]Teresa Lorensen: Reopening plan with the Health and Human Services Department. We're starting to cast and they were you know they had really good guidelines for how to file your reopening plan, which really had the suggestions in there that you needed to follow.
[00:13:24.360]Teresa Lorensen: In order to get approved. So you knew you know like with
[00:13:29.010]Teresa Lorensen: We do food service. So you have to have, you know, versus having bottles of ketchup and mustard that people all grab and put on their hot dogs, we had to get individual condiment packages and there's just all these little detail type things that that that health plan helped us work through
[00:13:47.010]Teresa Lorensen: And we made plans to try and on our own to try and spread people out
[00:13:54.150]Teresa Lorensen: You, we have a we have an admission point where the mission window was right here. And then the people checking out for their pumpkins were right here.
[00:14:01.770]Teresa Lorensen: And they were sounds too close together. So we moved the admission window on the other side of a barn and try and separate people like that and we closed our cafe to you couldn't go into building anymore. He had to order at the door so that kept our employees safe.
[00:14:20.280]Teresa Lorensen: From the public and the public safe from them and the public safe from, you know, being in inside a building together and then people just have to eat at the picnic tables. When we got some extra umbrellas for them and we ordered
[00:14:34.440]Teresa Lorensen: Table coverings that were clinical we had just picnic tables but we got oil cloth and so that we can sanitize the tables between us and
[00:14:42.930]Teresa Lorensen: Hay rides. We had to adapt that a little bit.
[00:14:47.340]Teresa Lorensen: So we could run a more frequently with less people on them and we bought signage to put up and
[00:14:55.710]Teresa Lorensen: We had a we hired a new position of a person that would just clean tables and help expedite the hay rides. So he would take the
[00:15:07.800]Teresa Lorensen: Take wagons up to people getting off the rack right so they could put their wagons here. The pumpkins in a wagon, get off to a rack faster to the next group you get on faster and you he can sanitize the handrails and
[00:15:23.730]Teresa Lorensen: All the different you know little bitty things that had to be cleaned in between visitors. So we just kind of looked at each part of the recommendation, you know, and dealt with it as we could and
[00:15:38.130]Teresa Lorensen: Like I said, fortunately, we're an outdoor event which made a huge difference. I don't know how indoor people even manage the extra headache. So we were very fortunate
[00:15:49.860]Teresa Lorensen: That way.
[00:15:51.570]Teresa Lorensen: But I think we're for next year is still going to be kind of a
[00:15:55.680]Teresa Lorensen: You know, it'll be will be better off the people aren't still going to want to be crammed together. And so we're making plans accordingly to even go for forward kind of with some of these items for next year to
[00:16:09.000]Teresa Lorensen: We won't probably have people even our cafe ever again really because it was nice to be able to spread out in the building and you know store all of our extra stuff and keep our employees spread out and they enjoyed having more space.
[00:16:24.360]Teresa Lorensen: By using the eating area for service and for preparation. So I think we're going to probably just keep that as part of our
[00:16:34.140]Teresa Lorensen: Part of what we do from here on out.
[00:16:36.960]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Well that's good to have a plan for the for the next year because none of us really know what's what's going to come
[00:16:42.810]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: I have another question from the chat box.
[00:16:46.620]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: They asked do you find your own antiques to sell.
[00:16:50.730]Teresa Lorensen: Yes, we do. And that's my favorite part of the job.
[00:16:55.290]Teresa Lorensen: The hunting for the Antiques is the best. We go to auctions and state sales and we go on pics and we, you know, flea markets and garage sales and wherever we can.
[00:17:05.730]Teresa Lorensen: And that's what we do a lot like this time of year. And normally, it's kind of slow but Cobra. There's not as many options and things, but
[00:17:12.150]Teresa Lorensen: Normally after we close in the fall. Then we spend all winter and spring, early spring.
[00:17:19.050]Teresa Lorensen: Collecting to get ready for our spring markets and then of course all along, you know, all summer long whenever there's a sale or something. We try and get to that. So yeah, we do that all our all of our all our on our own. And I love that part.
[00:17:34.110]Teresa Lorensen: WE DO HAVE A LITTLE BIT IN OUR GIFT SHOP of handmade items in a little bit of
[00:17:41.040]Teresa Lorensen: resell you're like, you know,
[00:17:43.800]Teresa Lorensen: mass market items like
[00:17:46.440]Teresa Lorensen: Mason jar lids that can make so pumps and things like that. The kind of compliment antiques.
[00:17:52.800]Teresa Lorensen: So we, we do have a little bit of 50 items to that we buy wholesale
[00:17:58.680]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Let's talk a little bit more about this rule route rest of vintage markets. When I saw your website. Everything that excited me. I love antiques and that kind of stuff, too.
[00:18:08.640]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: But you kind of do that in your offseason. So let's talk about offseason and, you know, preparing for rural route Ross, but also preparing for the next season of pumpkins.
[00:18:18.960]Teresa Lorensen: Yeah so rural route rest is what we call the vintage side of our business. It used to be. We had a mark, like a big vendor show that we called rule rot rest.
[00:18:29.460]Teresa Lorensen: That we did once a year. We don't do that anymore because the weather was uncooperative and it was a lot of stress to worry about, you know,
[00:18:37.440]Teresa Lorensen: 50 other vendors coming to the farm. So the past few years, what we've done is have these monthly markets where we one weekend a month we sell our antiques. So May through September.
[00:18:50.460]Teresa Lorensen: We also occasionally will travel to shows like junk Bonanza in Minneapolis, or we often go to Texas once a year, there's a show in Round Rock, Texas that we go to. So we do a little bit of that. But more and more we're doing it at home.
[00:19:07.200]Teresa Lorensen: Especially this past year because we allow the shows were canceled, but um yeah so we collect and work on
[00:19:14.490]Teresa Lorensen: Cleanup fix up price, all of those all the antiques and vintage items that we call start collecting, you know, really heavily after pumpkin patch closes.
[00:19:25.020]Teresa Lorensen: Me all winter long. And that's, that's our project we order our pumpkin seeds and we do a little bit of pumpkin patch stuff, but really the vintage thing is what we let's keep us busy in the offseason and then we'll start having our markets in May.
[00:19:40.770]Teresa Lorensen: And then we find our bumpkins in around Father's Day weekend, you know, first
[00:19:48.240]Teresa Lorensen: About two weeks in two weekends into June, you start planting pumpkins. So then it starts to overlap, where you have we're having these vintage markets, but we also have the pumpkins, so it gets a little bit hairy sometimes in the summer.
[00:19:59.580]Teresa Lorensen: And my husband. Hey, and you know, so everything happens all at once. Occasionally, but
[00:20:06.930]Teresa Lorensen: Usually you can buy only having it once one weekend a month we're not having a store that we have open all the time. So then we can do our farm stuff.
[00:20:17.130]Teresa Lorensen: In between that and we just have to kind of roll with it, depending on what the weather is that day depending if there's a an auction to go to, or something that day. We just kind of plan what that day is going to be based on what we need to do.
[00:20:32.220]Teresa Lorensen: But it has helped us the vintage side of it has helped us both be self employed here on the farm.
[00:20:38.610]Teresa Lorensen: We both had Terry was a remodeling contractor and I was the museum curator before we were able to just both quit those jobs and be just fully on the farm.
[00:20:52.470]Teresa Lorensen: Yes, yeah problems.
[00:20:56.010]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: That are with us.
[00:20:58.470]Teresa Lorensen: I'll be back problem.
[00:21:00.690]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: I mean, you talked about planting with that process look like for you guys. You know how from start to finish, would go through that process for us.
[00:21:09.120]Teresa Lorensen: And we use a four rows of corn planter that has been adapted with different plates in it to plant pumpkin seeds.
[00:21:18.840]Teresa Lorensen: And we just we use two rows. Out of the four and we used to do it all by hand. And that took forever. But now we can do it, basically in a day or a day and a half usually plan about
[00:21:30.270]Teresa Lorensen: five acres or so of pumpkins. When we do a lot of different varieties more orange anything else the jack o' lanterns and the pipe bumpkins. But
[00:21:41.400]Teresa Lorensen: Then we do, you know, probably a third of our patches heirloom pumpkins, all the different varieties and squash and gourds also so
[00:21:53.340]Teresa Lorensen: It goes pretty fast with the planter.
[00:21:56.940]Teresa Lorensen: We're in then you know the rest of this year. It's just, you know, keeping up with bugs and weeds and, you know, we try and do as little chemicals as we can. Bug spraying and stuff, only when needed.
[00:22:11.490]Teresa Lorensen: But it's just always a challenge every year is different.
[00:22:16.680]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Okay, we have another question from our chat box is the barn open for visitors in December, and if so, what are the hours and the days.
[00:22:25.290]Teresa Lorensen: It's not open regularly. So the only times it is open is when we have these vintage markets. So one weekend a month and it'll start the first weekend in May.
[00:22:35.940]Teresa Lorensen: And then it's usually around is usually the first weekend of the month, except for July, we have our big barn sale, which is a three day event.
[00:22:44.520]Teresa Lorensen: We move into into July. I think it's like the ninth and 10th and 11th this year because we don't want to do it over the fourth
[00:22:52.680]Teresa Lorensen: So just one weekend a month is when we're technically open, but, you know, if somebody there were looking for something
[00:22:59.100]Teresa Lorensen: You can always email us or call or something and let us know what you're looking for. And we know I sold a couple items to Lady last weekend. People come out here and there, you know, to, to fix things up.
[00:23:12.030]Teresa Lorensen: But it's not climate controlled. So usually, once the weather gets cold we stopped. We stopped doing them you know on farm sales and we wait until till spring, but
[00:23:24.270]Teresa Lorensen: We do have a website rule route rest calm that has all of that stuff on it if anybody's interested in learning more about that. And we'll put our schedule on there too.
[00:23:35.940]Teresa Lorensen: Pretty soon. I think we almost have it narrowed down for 2021
[00:23:41.250]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Perfect. Let's talk about some of the challenges that you faced as a female AG entrepreneur, have you encountered any of that with you know lenders or attorneys or any other professional type people
[00:23:54.390]Teresa Lorensen: We have I've been pretty fortunate not to have to deal with that. I mean, for one thing, tearing my husband is a partner, you know, he's 5050 or 5050 so
[00:24:05.430]Teresa Lorensen: If there was ever something that somebody seemed like they might be difficult. Tonight we'll just have him deal with that became makes me, do I do the business stuff for the most part, he's just, he's the he's the grower. The fixer the, you know,
[00:24:17.790]Teresa Lorensen: But we haven't really had any I haven't really ever had any problem with that. We have a great accountant who really gets our business and looks out for us and he was recommended to us by another small business person, so if I ever have questions or anything. You know he he
[00:24:37.980]Teresa Lorensen: Is a good go to for that. But now I haven't really honestly had to deal with attorneys or anything like that too much. We've been lucky, knock on wood. So yeah, I can't really speak to any real challenges there. Okay.
[00:24:55.380]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: What kind of advice would you give to someone who wanted to start a business, similar to this.
[00:25:01.110]Teresa Lorensen: Um, I would say definitely go for it. Um,
[00:25:08.040]Teresa Lorensen: You know, it's really rewarding. It's also, as if you're already in agriculture, you know, it's can be terribly hard work.
[00:25:16.200]Teresa Lorensen: And it can definitely have emotional ups and downs. That's probably the worst part is the emotional ups and downs of growing things and having
[00:25:23.910]Teresa Lorensen: events that are dependent on good weather but you know everybody on here. I'm sure knows that.
[00:25:32.550]Teresa Lorensen: I think taking small steps is a good. It's a good piece of advice if you can, like, you know, we started really small with our business and
[00:25:42.810]Teresa Lorensen: We've never had any big input of resources in cash, we had we did anything. You know, like, it's not like we built every building and started this all in one year. You know, it's been it's been slow it's been gradual
[00:25:58.440]Teresa Lorensen: Where we were able just to take our take some profits from the one you know from the season and put it into next into the next year.
[00:26:07.380]Teresa Lorensen: And we made a lot of decisions based on what people were asking for
[00:26:11.910]Teresa Lorensen: We just saw your customers will give you feedback about, you know, like the things like the hay rides and the field trips and and the cast having a cafe. I never thought we would have a restaurant but
[00:26:23.430]Teresa Lorensen: That's what people were, you know, they were asking for. So just take small steps. And if you can, especially this time of year, I get frustrated because it's like
[00:26:35.490]Teresa Lorensen: You know, I feel like I can't, I'm not doing a lot towards my business. But if you can just do one little thing each day to to progress yourself along or to
[00:26:47.220]Teresa Lorensen: To get closer to your goal, and we attended a lot of conferences and visited a lot of businesses that were similar
[00:26:57.030]Teresa Lorensen: Any kind of Tourism Tourism is beneficial to us. You can always learn something from from somebody
[00:27:08.190]Teresa Lorensen: Yeah.
[00:27:10.080]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Perfect. Another question from the chat box. Have you ever lost all or most of your crop due to weather and how did you handle that.
[00:27:19.230]Teresa Lorensen: We did in in 2015 and I can't really say what it was due to but in 2015 every pumpkin that we grew here on the farm.
[00:27:29.310]Teresa Lorensen: turned to mush before we ever opened. They were looking good. And then all of a sudden probably like a month before we were supposed to open
[00:27:40.170]Teresa Lorensen: We could just tell that they were everything was failing. They were, you know, turning right too early, and then they just turned to mush and we're not very good.
[00:27:49.560]Teresa Lorensen: Farmers or agriculturists because we never did. Have we should have had somebody come out like from the extension or somebody to come and take a look at
[00:27:57.390]Teresa Lorensen: At them and tell us what actually happened but and you know where there was a, I think it was a some sort of a disease, but whether it was bugged born or
[00:28:06.270]Teresa Lorensen: It wasn't weather related because we had decent weather and the plants to lift. Okay, but
[00:28:10.620]Teresa Lorensen: I know it's just the most bizarre thing. So that was all of our orange bumpkins that were up here for our you pick patch.
[00:28:17.760]Teresa Lorensen: We did have some growing on a different farm that Terry's parents phone and that was where all the heirlooms and the colored ones were and they were fine.
[00:28:28.740]Teresa Lorensen: So we had to buy pumpkins. We had you know couple times, you know, occasionally we have to buy like a few boxes of pumpkin is toward the end of the season to supplement
[00:28:39.000]Teresa Lorensen: What we had and usually stop those in our barn, because you can shop from the barn and then go out to the you pick patch, but so that means that that this year, we didn't have any up cash at all, and we
[00:28:52.710]Teresa Lorensen: knew we were devastated. It was horrifying. But we were able to buy some to have, you know, Viola orange pumpkins and then
[00:29:01.440]Teresa Lorensen: We were just up front with people and we put a letter on Facebook.
[00:29:05.940]Teresa Lorensen: About what happened so people could read it ahead of time and know how disappointed that we were. And this is what happened. And, you know, we didn't try and be as anybody by pretending that we grew those pumpkins out in the past, you know,
[00:29:20.640]Teresa Lorensen: We did hayride, you can still go on a fun ride, but you didn't stop and pick pumpkins and we had that same letter posted at the checkout or at the admission counter to kind of let people know, and it did hurt our attendance, a little bit.
[00:29:37.710]Teresa Lorensen: But you know we did, we just tried to avoid disappointment before people could even get here by letting them know that
[00:29:46.200]Teresa Lorensen: That was what happened.
[00:29:48.660]Teresa Lorensen: So luckily it's never happened again. But, you know, it definitely COULD WE HAD SOME HAIL one year to that damage a lot of pumpkins, but not in such a devastating way.
[00:30:02.340]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Alright, you mentioned using social media to to communicate with your attendees talk about the importance of using social media for marketing or any other kind of marketing that you guys do.
[00:30:14.220]Teresa Lorensen: Facebook has been huge for us. Facebook is our biggest marketing tool.
[00:30:20.160]Teresa Lorensen: Especially with the vintage side of the business. Like, it's easy, really easy to let people know that we have a sale coming up or something on social media. So we have a page for the farm.
[00:30:32.550]Teresa Lorensen: A Facebook page and then one for rural route rest also
[00:30:37.830]Teresa Lorensen: And I do, I cross posts on both of them sometimes just do the same thing on both pages, but usually you can, I try and divide it out to be two different, two different pages and two different interests.
[00:30:50.250]Teresa Lorensen: But yeah we do, we do a little bit of promoted posts now time if you can get people to share
[00:30:56.730]Teresa Lorensen: And comment on your post you know i'm sure everybody's heard this, but the more interaction that you get on your posts, the more
[00:31:04.020]Teresa Lorensen: It seen by more people. So if you can, you know, pose a question to somebody or get people to comment or post photos like
[00:31:11.400]Teresa Lorensen: Of their kids doing, you know, enjoying the pumpkin patch or whatever, then that's just gold and we really have benefited a lot from from Facebook. We do Instagram, too, and I don't, I'm not real great at that. I don't really
[00:31:28.080]Teresa Lorensen: Focus on that very much. And then our website. So Facebook and our website are the two biggest tools that we have. And really, the ways that we get people here most successfully.
[00:31:43.410]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Another question from the chat box and just reminder, if you've got questions go ahead and drop them in there and and we'll get to them. But the next question that's in there is, you mentioned the liability insurance. Can you talk more about that.
[00:31:56.640]Teresa Lorensen: We have two policies, the one discovers the farm. And so it's it's insurance for our buildings and the contents and all that. And then it also has an umbrella liability, just for somebody to trips involves or something like that. And then we have a whole separate policy for hay rides.
[00:32:17.520]Teresa Lorensen: And
[00:32:19.650]Teresa Lorensen: It's just like an event type policy, but it just, it just covers the hay rides.
[00:32:25.290]Teresa Lorensen: We went to couple conferences, when we were getting started and got some of our resources from there if you're just getting your liability insurance for the first time.
[00:32:37.860]Teresa Lorensen: We use
[00:32:39.600]Teresa Lorensen: A company it's Jones insurance out of Nebraska city and they
[00:32:45.180]Teresa Lorensen: Sound like State Farm or something where they only sell one client, they go in and research all kinds of different policies to find out what's best for us. So if you can use somebody like that.
[00:32:55.980]Teresa Lorensen: Because there's they have all kinds of ideas and resources that you know if you're just starting out, calling companies.
[00:33:04.170]Teresa Lorensen: Maybe you don't know about. So I don't they call us that insurance broker or something. But, you know, that kind of a company that can
[00:33:12.600]Teresa Lorensen: Find a policy for you is was really helpful to us.
[00:33:19.980]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Alright, can you talk a little bit like what helped you prepare to be a business owner, did you have a mentor. What kind of resources. Did you use
[00:33:29.850]Teresa Lorensen: Oh, I mentioned a little bit that we went. We just did a lot of research like
[00:33:36.240]Teresa Lorensen: We went to as many conferences as we could find in the beginning like Nebraska tourism, there was an agritourism Nebraska agritourism conference. Many years ago, Tom Osborne was kind of the driving force behind that. That was great.
[00:33:52.650]Teresa Lorensen: Like, there's a lot of small business organizations that have these, you know, once a year type conferences and
[00:33:59.640]Teresa Lorensen: We soak that up as much as we could and we still try and do that because you can always learn something, even if it's a conference for small businesses and it's more geared towards like
[00:34:10.890]Teresa Lorensen: You know stores or wineries or something like that, you know, there's always
[00:34:15.630]Teresa Lorensen: Some seminars about marketing or about insurance or something that you can always benefit from. We did a lot of visits to places visits to other pumpkin patches or
[00:34:30.420]Teresa Lorensen: Any kind of sort of related businesses that because you know I stopped everybody on on their websites and Facebook, and you know, trying to learn just soak it all up.
[00:34:44.010]Teresa Lorensen: You know, we had some local tourism groups to that we became part of and those people have good resources.
[00:34:50.430]Teresa Lorensen: And, you know, we're tourism, but there's whatever your whatever your industry is there will be some kind of local group probably that can support you.
[00:35:00.990]Teresa Lorensen: Yes, you just kind of, you kind of got to have your bases covered as far as, make sure you know you have your insurance or whatever. But then you're going to going to go for it and do a little bit of learning.
[00:35:12.300]Teresa Lorensen: On the job too.
[00:35:15.090]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Great. Tell us what's next for you guys, you know, where do you see guys and five years or 10 years what it was. The next plan.
[00:35:24.390]Teresa Lorensen: Will definitely continue with the vintage markets. That's been going really well, and especially this year with Kobe being having those outdoors.
[00:35:35.940]Teresa Lorensen: Markets when you can get small groups of people every time is was really helpful. We are building a building.
[00:35:45.390]Teresa Lorensen: Just to kind of alongside near where our Cafe is and not too far from our store. They'll just be like a real general purpose building. It'll be a picnic shelter. That was kind of where we got we jumped off with wanting a picnic shelter, because we're going to have our
[00:36:01.410]Teresa Lorensen: Cafe building closed for dining, you know, maybe from here on out. So people will be able to order their food, but then they can go into a building. So we're not so dependent on the weather.
[00:36:15.360]Teresa Lorensen: But that building will also serve as retail space for us. It's got a couple of, you know, have a couple of purchase on it that can be set up, you know, in a market fashion.
[00:36:25.890]Teresa Lorensen: We can do our birthday parties and one of those
[00:36:29.730]Teresa Lorensen: It's just going to be really good all purpose building and we'll probably figure out even more ideas for it as we go along, but we like to try and have some we haven't been having musical
[00:36:41.460]Teresa Lorensen: Events like a grown up tonight. We have a fall grownups night, which is really successful for us where we have a alcohol vendor come out my bar and we have live music and adults can come and do all the pumpkin patch stuff and enjoy themselves.
[00:36:59.850]Teresa Lorensen: And without kids. So we'll probably expand on that idea a little bit maybe do a summer one.
[00:37:06.540]Teresa Lorensen: Trying to find new ways to spread out our season, a little bit and we'll continue doing that. And I'm sure that will evolve. It's just trying to just trying to
[00:37:18.720]Teresa Lorensen: Find ways to combat the weather and the reliability of
[00:37:24.450]Teresa Lorensen: The weather. So we can do more things. Hopefully with this building will hope. And yeah, I think we're just going to keep going down the same path and try and keep everything focused on the farm as far as our attractions go and
[00:37:39.060]Teresa Lorensen: Add a little bit here and there, but I think we're pretty happy with where we are size wise but just try to kind of give even a better experience to people and improve something every year.
[00:37:51.630]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Alright, our question box and we didn't quite a few questions. I'm going to go through those real quick.
[00:37:57.330]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Our first question in here is, have you ever done a Christmas type event.
[00:38:03.270]Teresa Lorensen: We have when we first started
[00:38:07.620]Teresa Lorensen: We did a couple years we had, we actually bought wholesale Christmas trees and sold those in the barn and had had some gift type items and you know Christmas cookies and cocoa and stuff like that.
[00:38:23.760]Teresa Lorensen: It wasn't a huge success and it was very cold out there. So we you know we didn't love doing it.
[00:38:33.540]Teresa Lorensen: But it's something that maybe with this maybe in the future with our new building, we could figure something out to do that.
[00:38:39.480]Teresa Lorensen: We have had a couple of occasionally if the weather cooperates will have a like last year, we had a Christmas market one weekend in December, because the weather was going to be really nice. So yeah, there's a lot of possibilities there.
[00:38:54.210]Teresa Lorensen: But we're kind of wimps. So if it's too cold week but we haven't been doing a lot
[00:39:00.330]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: That's understandable over the grass, whether you just never
[00:39:03.030]Teresa Lorensen: Know what
[00:39:04.380]Teresa Lorensen: I'm gonna be like it could be like today or tomorrow. You know I say outrageously wonderful weather but you never know.
[00:39:11.550]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: It's true. Our next question is how are you using your museum background in your business.
[00:39:20.130]Teresa Lorensen: Alright, let's see.
[00:39:23.520]Teresa Lorensen: It definitely helped. It was a small museum. It's the best street or Aldrich house and museum where I used to work and
[00:39:32.940]Teresa Lorensen: Having a really small budget and had to do things very efficiently and try and attract people to visit a little Museum in a small town of Belmont. And so there's a lot of parallels. I was doing both at the same time for a long time. So, you know, the social media.
[00:39:53.190]Teresa Lorensen: You know, marketing type stuff is totally total cross over there trying to
[00:40:00.600]Teresa Lorensen: Trying to reach people and entice people to come to your attraction, especially when you're out of the way, you're not in a big city.
[00:40:08.610]Teresa Lorensen: And just yeah customer service and
[00:40:12.180]Teresa Lorensen: Yeah, they're basically, I mean, it's really a lot very similar connection there.
[00:40:18.450]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Our next question is, what was the time span between the spawning of your idea and tell your first year of operation.
[00:40:27.000]Teresa Lorensen: A lot. We moved to the farm here in 2003
[00:40:32.820]Teresa Lorensen: And we spent the first summer getting the house fixed up and then
[00:40:40.470]Teresa Lorensen: So Summer of 2004 is when we started growing pumpkins and then October 2005 is only open the pumpkin patch. So just less than two years from when we moved in.
[00:40:54.060]Teresa Lorensen: But like I said, we open really small.
[00:40:58.470]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Yeah, that's great.
[00:41:00.720]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: My next question for you is, of oak as a pretty small rural town. And what's the community involvement with the pumpkin patch has the community also flourished because of the pumpkin patch. Can you talk a little bit about that.
[00:41:14.610]Teresa Lorensen: As OCA itself is
[00:41:17.700]Teresa Lorensen: Very small and does not have a lot of business there weeping water is also nearby. And that's the Chamber of Commerce. It's you belong to and it's a little more of a
[00:41:30.570]Teresa Lorensen: Full Service type town. So it has. I mean, it doesn't, hasn't it hasn't made a huge effect on businesses, nothing has changed a whole lot, but we do work with the local business people.
[00:41:46.770]Teresa Lorensen: You know, we've got a lot of friends in business and weaving water and we've promoted we promote each other.
[00:41:54.810]Teresa Lorensen: And when we do have a market like socially or supermarkets. It attracts a lot of people to come to the area that wouldn't normally be coming out here and then often they will go into weeping water.
[00:42:07.830]Teresa Lorensen: Because there's not even a gas station and above. So there is a restaurant now and which is great. And we try and provide a list.
[00:42:17.010]Teresa Lorensen: Like on Facebook or somewhere, you can go on to our, our Facebook page and see a list of other businesses in the area that you can visit when you're out here. So we do try and promote
[00:42:26.340]Teresa Lorensen: To let people know because they they do want to come out and and maybe go to a couple other shops or get something to eat.
[00:42:34.590]Teresa Lorensen: In the summer when we you have a vintage market. So we do try to promote
[00:42:41.430]Teresa Lorensen: Our local businesses and it helps. And I think some people are way too. There's a vineyard pretty close Slattery vintage estates is close by and
[00:42:51.000]Teresa Lorensen: Yeah, so there's lots. We try to work together, whenever we can.
[00:42:56.460]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Alright, Theresa. Where can we find one information about about the farm and the pumpkin patch, where, where do people need to go.
[00:43:04.050]Teresa Lorensen: Oh, we've got it, got a website with the pumpkin patch, which is blown BLM pumpkin patch com
[00:43:13.860]Teresa Lorensen: And then we also have a website for rural route rest.com
[00:43:19.200]Teresa Lorensen: And then we have Facebook pages for both of those businesses to do search for that.
[00:43:25.380]Teresa Lorensen: And yeah, that's the best especially Facebook. That's going to be the most current but the website that will have our events and location and our backstory and
[00:43:37.650]Teresa Lorensen: More about, you know, kind of more in depth about the history of what we do.
[00:43:44.460]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Alright guys, this is kind of a last call for questions go ahead and put them in the chat box.
[00:43:50.790]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Just keep them coming in but Theresa, any final thoughts from you. Anything you want to share with with our attendees.
[00:43:59.850]Teresa Lorensen: Well, not. I mean, it's just been fun to get to talk to everybody and hopefully
[00:44:06.480]Teresa Lorensen: We learned a lot from other business people. So hopefully maybe you could learn a little something or you know
[00:44:13.500]Teresa Lorensen: Come visit us. If you want to talk about anything or just, you know, share some ideas with us. I love the Christmas idea. I'm a sponge for for that kind of stuff. So yeah, just appreciate you having a chance to to come on
[00:44:31.020]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: Thank you. Teresa and thank you everyone for joining us tonight so you'll be receiving a short survey in your email, and we would really appreciate if you give us your feedback on today's webinar.
[00:44:41.580]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: And also give us some input for future sessions. Our next Open for Business episode will be January 12 at 6:30pm central more information will be up on the women and Ag website here in the next few days.
[00:44:55.950]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: But we are looking for guests. So if you or someone you know is interested in participating in the open for business web series, please email us the email is wi a@ul.edu
[00:45:08.910]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: And then that email if you can include your name, the business name and a short business description with the contact information, we would really like to hear from you guys.
[00:45:17.820]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: This is a super fun series. So we want to keep it going. And and have some really great people on with us. But again, thank you. Teresa. We really appreciate your time with us.
[00:45:28.230]Teresa Lorensen: Thank you guys.
[00:45:29.670]brittany.fulton@unl.edu: We'll see you guys all next time.

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Open for Business with Teresa Lorensen, Bloom Where You're Planted Farm - Dec. 8, 2020

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