For this post, we had hoped to have gotten through the weeks best blogs, posts and articles that we wanted to share with you and provide a synopsis. But like everything in life, especially in homesteading, we can't bend others schedules to fit our needs and something unexpected always seems to happen. This week things were interrupted by the coyotes still jumping the fence in the "Back 40" and my having to add another layer of fencing and several unexpected customers dropping by looking for lambs.
We will be posting the week's best stories, articles and blogs on producing your own food and getting a Homestead started later tonight or tomorrow.
We will be posting the week's best stories, articles and blogs on producing your own food and getting a Homestead started later tonight or tomorrow.
Unexpected Customers
We'd love to know how some of you feel on the subject of unexpected drop in customers and how you handle them! This week 2 of our regular customers stopped by, unannounced and unexpected. While we were glad to see them and visit with them, we certainly didn't like the monkey wrench that gets thrown into the plans for the day.
Because a visit from our customers entails spending time talking with them as to what they are looking for as far as sex of the animal and approximate age and weight. Then we have to go through the flock and find the ones that best match their wants. On top of our having to find the sheep that meet their requests, we also have to inspect the fleeces to make sure we aren't losing an animal from the breeding program that has our desired traits. After all that, then there's the decision process and the haggling. A fair amount of our customers purchases are for ceremony and eating, while ours is for wool production. After the customer has made their selections, we then return the sheep back to the original pens with their flock mates.
Our third visitor was a bit more involved, this family wanted 3 sheep, 2 ewes and a ram, to start raising their own flock on the other side of town. So now, we had to research the blood lines on the 2 ewes once they were selected to make sure the rams we recommended had a bit of separation in the gene pool department.
So while it was nice to have the sales, it would have been a lot easier if they had all called ahead. That would have allowed us to schedule 1 day, say Saturday or Sunday where we could have checked the fleeces and sorted through them and had them moved to a sales pen for them to make their decisions instead of having to do it all on the fly then try to get back to our projects. Of course as the customers were departing they were all gently urged to call ahead next time to set up an appointment.
So how do you handle unexpected customers?
Because a visit from our customers entails spending time talking with them as to what they are looking for as far as sex of the animal and approximate age and weight. Then we have to go through the flock and find the ones that best match their wants. On top of our having to find the sheep that meet their requests, we also have to inspect the fleeces to make sure we aren't losing an animal from the breeding program that has our desired traits. After all that, then there's the decision process and the haggling. A fair amount of our customers purchases are for ceremony and eating, while ours is for wool production. After the customer has made their selections, we then return the sheep back to the original pens with their flock mates.
Our third visitor was a bit more involved, this family wanted 3 sheep, 2 ewes and a ram, to start raising their own flock on the other side of town. So now, we had to research the blood lines on the 2 ewes once they were selected to make sure the rams we recommended had a bit of separation in the gene pool department.
So while it was nice to have the sales, it would have been a lot easier if they had all called ahead. That would have allowed us to schedule 1 day, say Saturday or Sunday where we could have checked the fleeces and sorted through them and had them moved to a sales pen for them to make their decisions instead of having to do it all on the fly then try to get back to our projects. Of course as the customers were departing they were all gently urged to call ahead next time to set up an appointment.
So how do you handle unexpected customers?
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