Each year as we grow we discover new ways to increase the efficiancy of the farm. This year is no different. Simplicity and effeciency are the words for our farm this year and the following tools have definitely helped us with that! Keep reading to see the list of the top five tools that have helped us be more efficient on the farm.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I only share about companies that I truly believe in.
Our Ryobi Cordless Drill has by far been the best tool we use here on the farm. With a 1/2" bit it acts like a mini auger that makes the perfect hole for all my 288 plugs. It cut my lisianthus planting time in half and when you have nearly 4,000 plugs to get in the ground before it rains, that is an efficient use of time!
Flodesk is the email service provider that we use for all our newsletters and emails. Flodesk has made it easy and fun to compose our monthly newsletters by providing easy to customize templates. You guys, Flodesk also allows you to set up workflows so that certain actions trigger a series of emails to go out at specified times! This feature takes some of the administrative side of our farm off my hands - really, there are so many admistrative tasks to complete each day. Flodesk does come with a monthly cost of $38, but if you use my affliate link you receive 50% off your Flodesk subscription.
Honeybook is the platform we use to help us book clients more efficiently and stay organized for each of our projects and events. We can easily create brochures, proposals, contracts and invoices for our clients. I am able to run reports, track expenses, collect payments, schedule in person or zoom meetings with my clients, track time spent on a project or event, set tasks for myself or our staff and so much more. The thing that we like the most is that it keeps all our projects organized and we can easily see communications from clients since they are no longer getting lost in our email inbox. If you are looking for a way to be more efficient and organized you can get 20% off for one year with our referral link.
Our Rubbermaid Yard Cart is currently in it's seventh year of use here on the farm. We use it for so many things. This 7.5 cu.ft. yard card is currently being used to hold our potting soil mixture, but is also great to haul cuttings to the compost pile, weeds and brush to the burn pile, wood from our wood piles to the front of the house (we heat with wood), and harvested blooms from the field to the design studio. Our yard cart has never had a flat tire and is easy to move. It is indespenable. We stumbled upon it at Home Depot when we first moved to Missouri. If you're looking to replace your broken wheelbarrow seriously consider this yard cart.
Our farm is a proud member of the Rooted Farmers network. We post our weekly availability there, and shopping through Rooted Farmers allows our designers to place their orders online, in real time. There is no cost for florists and floral desigers to become a member! On Rooted, designers have access to one-stop online shopping across multiple farms simultaneously, or you can choose to shop only from a specific farm if that is your preference. You are able to search for specific flowers, search by color, or search by design element. Orders are paid for on delivery or pickup, as specified at the time of order. Ready to start buying our gorgeous flowers? All you have to do is apply here: https://app.rootedfarmers.com/onboarding/?application=wholesale-buyer (Note – it helps if you have your reseller certificate handy).
These five tools, whether they are physcial tools that help us be more efficient or software that simplifies our admistrative work, are easy to use and have become indespensible to our farm and floral design studio's operation. They allow us to continue to focus on spreading joy to others.
Until next time, keep spreading joy!
Jill
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