00:00 : Welcome to Diary of a Dreamer, where resilience unlocks your potential. I’m Tasha Eizinger, and each week I’ll bring you powerful stories and practical insights from my own experiences and inspiring guests. Whether you’re facing challenges or chasing dreams, this podcast is your go-to for motivation, building confidence, and practical tips for transforming obstacles into opportunities. Be sure to check out my website, TashaEizinger.com. Let’s dive into today’s episode and start turning your dreams into reality. 

00:35 : I’m so excited to have Maureen Kercher from Kercher’s Apple Orchard in Goshen, Indiana here today. Maureen and I met when my daughter had a field trip and she is the Mrs. Apple. 

00:51 : Like at 

00:52 : our school, she’s famous. So it’s very exciting. I told my daughter, I’m going to talk with Mrs. Apple today. And she was like really excited about that. So, but when we were on the field trip, I really got to thinking about business and Marine, everything that Kirchner’s has experienced over how many decades now? 

01:14 : Is it 70? 

01:15 : Well, 104 years. Yes, it’s been around a while. We’ve had everything happen to us that could possibly happen to a farm and we’re still here. So we’re very proud of that because it wasn’t easy. No. And I think 

01:31 : people, they get excited about entrepreneurship because it sounds just like so romantic, right? Like it’s this whole like exciting thing. Like you choose your hours and you don’t have a boss and you can be creative and all of that. Also, choose your hours. It’s more like which hundred hours in the week do you want to work? 

01:54 : Well, you’re never off. You’re always on. You’re always when we have family get togethers. I love my family. My family is wonderful because we talk about the farm all the time. Even the ones in our family that aren’t involved in our business on a day to day basis are. 02:14 : Always in the conversation. It always comes back to the business and family dinners and things. And that’s good. That’s fine because it keeps everybody up on what’s going on. Even if they don’t work for us full time, they’re still interested. Yes. They really know what’s going on. 

02:32 : One of the kindest. most relationship building things you can ask an entrepreneur is how is your business going or what are you excited about? What challenges are you having? It’s different than when you’re an employee. A lot of employees don’t want to talk about their job. they’re like i’m off the clock but like you said as a business owner you’re never off the clock never 

02:51 : never you’re always on you’re always thinking oh gee what can i do or oh these people are doing this that’s interesting or how could i make that work in my business maybe we don’t have the same kind of business as someone you’re talking to but they come up with a super cool idea and you think gee how could i how could i make that work 

03:12 : Yeah, you’re right. The wheels are always spinning, which is really bad. 

03:18 : You can turn it off. You can turn on. it’s it’s okay it’s it’s all right to be on all the time but like i just spent this morning for about an hour and a half with some of my grandkids and um yeah we played a couple games and we just you know it was before school so it was really early in the morning and um yeah and but i said oh what a blessing But I just had that to start my day. And we didn’t talk about business. You know, we were playing matching games with a four-year-old. Yes, I 

03:52 : love that. Well, and I think that’s the huge benefit of being a business owner is you can choose that. You didn’t have to contact your boss and say, hey, is it okay if I come in a little bit later? Or this is important that I have time with my grandchildren. You get to decide what it’s like. And that is really powerful and special. 

04:13 : hours that you work later than you really want to and then there’s times when you go hey i’ve got some extra time you know you want to go grab some ice cream or or something to the kids or just do something nice for yourself you know do i want to stop at the library for a little bit or um do i want to go back to work and clear off my desk no 

04:34 : we never want to clear off our desk Oh my goodness. So here’s something that’s really funny too. We already talked about this before I started recording. When people talk about small talk, I don’t like small talk. I want to dive into all the things, but I always tell people, if you don’t like small talk, I want you to understand if you know somebody in agriculture, weather is never small talk. It is always the most important aspect because it’s out of your control and you’re always coming up with solutions to whatever is coming your way. And we already talked about the weather before we started recording, right? So what happened last night that you were telling me about? 

05:15 : Okay, so no growing season is ever the same. Even though you have certain things, you have to plant, you have to take care of, you have to, and then harvest. Well, there’s a lot of things in between that happen to a crop that you don’t have any control over. And some of that, most of that is the weather. And last night we had a freeze and the temperatures got down into the upper 20s and low 30s. 

05:44 : And we are with the orchard right now. We are at bloom. We are three weeks early in bloom. That’s another Mother Nature thing. Everything started out really early this year in those nice warm days that everyone enjoyed going outside and taking care of their yards and playing and biking. And well, we were worried because it shoves everything forward. And so everything is blooming. If you look around you now, you will see in town everything blooming. You will see the lilacs blooming. You will see the forsythia blooming. You will see our orchard blooming. You will see the tulips blooming. And that’s not normal. Usually these things kind of come, you know, one right after another a little bit. But right now everything’s in bloom and that’s very unusual. So the orchard is in bloom and temperatures freezing and below can do damage to the buds. If the fruit buds are damaged, they’re not going to grow an apple. they’re not going to get pollinated, they’re not going to grow an apple. So it’s very important that we protect them as best we can. 

06:52 : Techniques to protect your blossoms and your blooms and things are very, very expensive. And some varieties do better than others. There is, there’s a few little things that we can do and we did them, but we went out and checked this morning and it’s, it’s hard. It takes a while to show up. It could take a month to show up. How would, what stage the apple blossom, like when an apple blossom. A bud of an apple tree looks like this. When it opens up into blossoms, there’s five of them. And they open up at different stages. There’s the king bloom and then the other four inferior blooms. Well, the orchard person wants one apple out of that whole bundle to survive. So we were checking bundles or bunches of blooms. Some of them were further along than others. The king bloom, of course, is going to be. the best and biggest apple and it’s the one that opens up first and that’s the one that gets hurt first so we did have some pink bloom damage um that we can see right now some of the other blooms were starting out and the pistols were up and they got burnt a little bit so will the bees be able to pollinate those blossoms you’re never sure it’ll show up in a month in a month i’ll be able to tell you more than i can tell you today at this point we know we had a little bit of damage but there were so many blossoms not opened yet they’re very tight that that that was a natural protection for them so i would say at this point if we don’t get any more really cold nights like this creatures is going to have a very nice crop this year even though we had a little damage we still um it’s a little natural thinning we like to control the thinning but Generally, Mother Nature has a hand in the thinning process. Mother Nature 

08:44 : is the one actually in charge. Yeah, she’s really 

08:47 : in charge. Yeah. So is 

08:50 : it the most fragile time period when the king blossom is blooming? That’s the most fragile time period of the apple? 

09:00 : I’ve seen damage done in June when we had a frost in June. The apple was at least the size of my thumb growing on the tree and had a real bad frost. And what happened is you end up getting like a mark on the skin. It’s called a frost ring, like a ring on your finger. And so, I mean. we’ve got a couple months here okay but then when you talk about July and August what are you talking about storms with hail true the most fragile time of any fruit grower is from when that bud starts opening up into blossoms till harvest the money’s in the bank you know the apples are off the tree and they’re on the truck and the and the invoice is written that it a lot of things can happen between now and the money being in the bank so absolutely 

09:58 : i kind of tease as an entrepreneur you don’t want to breathe until the money is actually deposited 

10:03 : exactly exactly yeah 

10:05 : then it’s like official right yes yes well i think there’s a misconception especially like my parents had a hybrid seat company and so we grew up in that world so we weather was always on the tv it was a huge part of conversation right but there was a misconception that during the winter months that my dad you know he was the seedsman and everything that he didn’t really have anything to do and that’s not true 

10:31 : no it’s not 

10:32 : so what do you do in the winter months when it seems like It would appear like you’re doing nothing, but I know better. So what are you doing? 

10:41 : Some of the important things that are done like in November is that you’re ordering seed for next year. All of your seed gets ordered. All of your land, we rent, lease some of our land. All those land leases have to be done by November. So those are really like. early season winter things that we do and then um we go into the um improvement time where we’re making changes in our warehouse we’re making changes in equipment we’re getting rid of some tractors that are like 50 years old and needed to be we’re you know we’re trying to find replacements for them um Taxes, taxes, lots of paperwork, clearing off my desk from things that I just had piled up from the fall when I didn’t have time. There are many, many, many things that you do in the winter months. You do take a vacation too. That’s important. Good. Yeah. 

11:47 : Ours was in February. Yes, February. February was like the one little window of time that there was a breather. 

11:54 : Yes, absolutely. Yes. Well, my goodness. 

11:59 : So looking back, what would you tell your younger self to prepare you for this crazy adventure? 

12:11 : I would tell my younger self to, well, some of the things that I did that I would say do more of, pray. Oh, my goodness. Praying can calm you. Praying can do so many things for you. You know, it’s that constant contact with God. And, you know, you know what’s going on here, God. You know what our needs are. 

12:38 : pray pray more have more faith don’t get so upset it’s gonna be okay we’ve been through everything we’ve been through near total collapse of our company basically bankruptcy in the 90s when our biggest crop we ever had 265 000 bushels of apples was hailed on early september Totally ruined. After all of the inputs had been put in, we were ready to pick it. The only thing we could use the apples for were for cider. We pressed a million gallons of cider. 

13:17 : Cider is very cheap. So for a pound of apples, if you can get 10 cents a pound for cider apples, you’re doing really well. Rather than selling those apples at the grocery store. you know, for a box of a big box of apples for $20 a box, a hundred pounds, you know, so all 13:41 : these people that you have to pay too. 

13:44 : The crop 

13:46 : wasn’t good this year. Like I can’t pay you. It’s like, well, 

13:50 : yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of, a lot of farmers hurting right now, all across the board. all across the board, everybody. And fruit growers, there’s a lot of apples still in storage from last year. Well, if they didn’t sell their apples that are in storage, they can’t pay the banker back. Well, if they can’t pay the banker back, then the banker’s not going to give them any money for this coming year. So there’s a lot of that going on in Michigan. A lot of fruit growers are hurting really badly. And I know, you know, row crop. farmers are hurting. Livestock farmers are hurting. There’s just a lot of hurt going on out there and you can only stand so much. 

14:32 : When we had those bad years, the only way we survived it was my husband’s sheer will to survive. I probably would have given up. I was not quite as strong as him. He was just a pit bull about it and we sold land. We sold land to dig ourselves out of that. It was in the early 90s. So since then, we’ve diversified. We didn’t put all our apples in one basket anymore, you know. So a lot of fruits and vegetables. We have a lot of contracts with different Whole Foods, Target, Kroger’s. We know what we’re going to sell our product for. our vegetable for when we grow it because we contract with them, which is a very, very difficult process to go through. If you can imagine trying to get the best price out of Walmart or any of those companies, you know, they don’t want us to get the best price. They want the markup. They don’t want us to get it. So that is something that we do in the winter too. That takes a long time to get those contracts set up. 

15:45 : Absolutely. Well, just even making the calls and negotiating in the back and forth and the voicemails and the emails. It’s just, yeah, I can imagine it’s a lot. So I guess what kind of encouragement, I feel like you’re already giving a little bit of encouragement to anybody in agriculture right now that you were saying like, it’s going to be okay. Even if you don’t know how, even if you have to sell land, even if it’s not pretty, right? Like things do, there’s ebbs and flows. 

16:12 : Yes. 

16:13 : And I feel like it’s important for people to remember, like we are capable of doing hard things. We are capable of figuring out solutions. Right. But like what other encouragement, even if people aren’t in agriculture, I think small businesses in general are really struggling. 

16:32 : What encouragement can you give? 

16:35 : You know, I think you just never give up. You just like. Sometimes, you know, you think all is lost and you wake up in the middle of the night with a good idea. I don’t know where that came from. And you just can’t be scared to try something new. Yeah. And sometimes you don’t have to spend a lot of money to try something new. You just get out there and put yourself out there. And we never thought we were going to be able to afford to invite our children back into our business because farms can only support so many families. Now we have. two of our children back in the business uh one of our son when he finished college he went to work for ford motor company and worked for them well he kind of got that corporate mentality so when we hired him back he was the easy one to say okay you’re going to be the one negotiating with the big corporations on where we’re going to try to sell this to. And so you just have to keep talking and working it around in your head and going to bed, say a prayer and say, give me a great idea when I wake up, you know, and you can’t be scared to try these things because sometimes it’ll shock you what will work. You know, tweaking something or you just have to try to be as creative as you can and pick other people’s brains. Other people have a lot of ideas. Listen to other people. 

18:04 : And I’m a big believer that even if somebody shares a bad idea with me, I’m like, it can lead to a good idea. Oh, yeah. 

18:12 : This is any good. I’m like, I don’t care. I don’t think it’s any good. Right. Just share what you’re thinking. Yes. Sometimes it like it just plants a little seed where you’re like. wait a minute I never thought of it this way right so I like that of just listening to ideas from other people too yeah 

18:29 : and we were never promised an easy life nobody ever said you’re going to have a really easy life so in that conquering that difficult time oh that’s a that’s a big feather in your cap you know congratulate yourself hey i did it we made it you know you got it you got to give yourself a pat on the back you can’t keep beating yourself down Yeah. Just just keep trying to stay positive, even though you think, oh, my goodness, how am I going to get myself out of this one? You know? Yeah. Well, 

19:03 : and is there ever a time where it does make sense to just throw in the towel and be done? 

19:09 : You do have to you do have to know that there is we have a small company that we purchased and things changed with. facebook marketplace um that kind of hurt that little company that we had and um there’s nothing i can do about that so um It’s just a business that really depends on me being able to go out. Well, it’s mushrooms, Merle mushrooms. I depend on buying them from people. Well, people have found out that it’s easy to sell them on Facebook Marketplace. Well, it’s not as easy as you think because people need to know how to take care of the mushrooms. The people that are buying them, you don’t want to buy mushrooms that have been washed or dirty. So there’s a lot to know there. But we’ve come. 

20:01 : to face off with this little company and say, it’s never going to be as good as it was 30 years, 20 years ago. It’s never going to be because of different reasons. But yeah, you have to face that and do what you love and do what you know best and do what’s working. And don’t kill yourself over the small failures because it’s going to happen. 

20:26 : And that’s how we learn. 

20:27 : Oh, yeah. 

20:29 : totally mess up you’re like well that was a great learning 

20:32 : and sometimes sometimes you don’t it’s not something you did it’s just something that people don’t want anymore or they want something that you don’t have and you can’t give it to them because of your location or whatever anyway location’s not quite the problem that it used to be with people right 

20:52 : because of 

20:53 : internet and things 

20:56 : well and one thing i think is interesting is like the whole concept of Agritourism when did you start doing that because i think it creates this beautiful experience so like when you’re saying you diversify part of the diversification because i’m telling you what like i said at our school you’re famous the kids love mrs apple oh my gosh 

21:17 : that is that is the funniest thing just a name and a teacher from um Dave Weber, I’m going to throw his name out there. If any of you know Dave Weber from Mishwaka, he gave me a pin one that said, Mrs. Apple. And I always struggled with it. My name’s kind of hard, Maureen. My last name’s kind of hard, Kercher. I said, what do I tell the kids to call me? Well, he gave me that pin and I looked at it and I said, well, that’s a no-brainer. Mrs. Apple, that’s perfect. I’m just going to tell the kids to call me. Well, it just blew up. i mean i can go anywhere in northern indiana and people will look and go this is apple what are you doing here you know it’s so sweet um agritourism was something that we did way before it ever had a name okay always always always on our farm taking field trips way before me 

22:14 : We had a great aunt that did them. It was just something, a way of us sharing our farm because people were interested. Kids were interested. They need to get out of the classroom and see some of these things. So when I first married my husband, I knew nothing about fruit growing. And I can remember one day in the office, my grandfather, my husband’s grandfather, looking across the office with me and he pointed at me and he said, I got a job for you. And I’m going, field trips. And I’m thinking, I know absolutely nothing about apples. So I had to get on top of my game. I had to ask questions. And I was married to the Encyclopedia of Fruit Growing, Tom Kercher. And so I thought, well, I couldn’t get a better teacher. And he was really good about teaching me and still is. Every day I ask him a question that I don’t understand or don’t know about. 

23:09 : it just happened and i found out that i really loved having the kids come i loved sharing with them i loved interacting with the parents there wasn’t anything except for maybe a rain cold cold snowy day that i didn’t love about the field trips and someone asked me a couple years ago it says how how much longer are you going to do this mrs apple and they said What do you mean? Do I have to quit? You know, I see myself out there in a walker, you know, doing things. 

23:43 : They’ll pave it for you so you can have a scooter or something, right? Right, right. 

23:50 : It just, it was something that somebody pointed at me and said, we need you to do this on the farm. And I said, okay, you know, put myself out there. didn’t know anything about it but i did it i was never a teacher people ask me now were you a teacher they said nope but i learned from the best i learned from observing other teachers that came some of these teachers are amazing if you just watch how the way they handle children you know that’s how i learned Most of the things that I learned about handling crowds and kids and situations and things, I just watched the teachers. That’s 

24:30 : so funny because that was one of my questions when we went on the field trip because I thought Mrs. Apple has the best classroom management skills because you’re right. Teachers, when you watch them, people think teaching is easy. It is unbelievably difficult. Yeah. to keep a whole group of kids on track and focused and and you nailed it and you said i learned from teachers 

24:53 : yep learned from the best i just watched how the teachers did it and one of the best teachers that i ever watched was really young she was in her early 20s and she did this repeating thing where the kids would repeat what she would say and i said I’m going to try that. And that has turned out to be one of my favorite parts and one of the kids’ favorite parts of the field trip is the repeating of things. And they learn. Teachers come back and tell me, you know, in the spring, they’re still talking about my field trip and the things that the kids learned in the fall on the field trip. And that, you know, that makes me feel good. That makes me feel like I did my job. 

25:39 : yeah well and especially being part about you know part of a child’s experience in life because it does take a village to raise kids yeah it’s like you get to be a little bit of their village encouraging 

25:52 : super sweet yeah like 

25:55 : really important yeah 

25:57 : yeah yeah it is my grandson who is 10 now he came home from school one day and he says you know what i like about having you for my grandma i said a lot of things but he said i like it that you’re kind of famous Oh my goodness. 

26:23 : Yes. It’s, it’s so cool. And I think it’s great because you’re a good role model 

26:28 : for kids. Yeah. 

26:31 : They need a good role model of somebody to look up to. So what are the things I’m curious to ask you about? I’m sure you’ve had employees come and go. How do you keep like hire people? What do you look for? 

26:45 : How do you keep people? 

26:48 : Especially as a small business. I mean, I just think it’s so hard. 

26:53 : Okay. So in this business environment in Goshen, we are competing for laborers. with RV and RV pays quite well. So that has been an issue over the years. Five years ago, we started with a program called H2A. It’s a federal works program. It’s these and they get visas for people and get us employees. And we get ours from Mexico. We get 65 employees and they’re only here. between july and october november they kind of some come a little earlier some stay a little longer a wonderful program very expensive just to get these employees here get their visas travel arrangements everything to get them here and get them home it costs us over a hundred thousand dollars a year but that Because we are able to get these employees, these 65 people to come work for us, we are still in business. If we did not have this program to work with, it’s run by the Homeland Security and Labor Department both. 

28:13 : And the hoops we have to jump through are crazy. But we get the same employees. Most of those 65 employees, I would say that probably 50. upwards to 57 of them are the same every year. So these guys hit the ground running. When they get here, they know what room they’re going to be in. We have housing for them. That’s not part of that $100,000. We have to supply housing. So I have housing for about 75 people. 

28:47 : That’s a job in and of itself, having housing and it’s all here on the property. So that’s another thing we do during the winter. Updating, going through, making sure beds are good and all of that and make sure the rooms are good. Excuse me. So these employees come and they hit the ground running. They know exactly what they’re supposed to do. We can hire supervisors. We can hire most of them are just the regular field workers and packing crews. So a lot of our business is done by packing. 

29:29 : value-added vegetables. So you’re putting, taking corn, our sweet corn, and shucking it down and putting it on trays, overwrapping it. And we do that custom work for a lot of different grocery store chains. It might not be our name on it, but it’ll say packed for Target by Sunrise Produce in Goshen, Indiana. Yeah. So yeah, that’s how we get our employees. The rest of the employees, there’s a core group of us. 

29:57 : that are here. There’s probably 10 of us that are here year round. So once everybody else leaves, it’s just us to do the rest of the work, which is great. 

30:09 : Well, then how do you keep the core group? Because I do think, you know, as a small business, like you were saying, the RV factories, they can pay really good money. There are bigger businesses. Even though I know you’re a small business, you’re pretty big as a small business, in my opinion. But so how do you like I have another friend who’s a small business owner and she’s very creative in ways that she gives benefits to her employees, you know, her company, but also to be generous to them. Like, are there different ways that you’re creative or how do you keep 

30:47 : people? So four of us, four of the 10 are family. That helps. We’re fully invested. We’re not going to go anywhere. We love our farm and we’re going to stay here. The other six, you have to pay them. You have to pay them. 

31:06 : But some people are just more loyal. True. And you look for that and you just you treat them like family. OK, so there’s four of us that are family. You don’t treat family these six differently than you treat us for. Right. You know, like one of one of the six is gone today. She she wanted to go to Texas over the weekend and said, go have, you know, have fun. It’s a busy, you know, busy time of year. But. take that extra day, take a couple days and, you know, go see your family in Texas and then come back. And they appreciate that. We appreciate the horribly long hours they put in in the fall. 

31:52 : You know, we try to just try to treat them like family, I think, you know, and that helps a lot. 

32:00 : I had seen a study or something. that was done years ago that said it was like a survey i think that employees as long as they feel appreciated are more likely to stay even if the pay is lower oh yeah that’s 

32:18 : what i’m hearing 

32:18 : from you is appreciate your people and show them that they matter because they do yes 

32:25 : and not and not only that you show them like some people are Some people are really or all people are not good at everything. No, you got to find out the things that they’re good at. And then you plug them into those things. And those are the things you, of course, have them do. Sometimes they have to do the things they’re not so good at. But and then, you know, you praise them. You say, wow, that was that was great. Or I really appreciate your help. Appreciate your help on that. Yeah. Telling somebody, you know, nice matters. I have this little sign in my house and it says nice matters. It matters that you treat them nicely. 

33:07 : Sometimes you have to, you know, say, oh, you know, that didn’t work out so good. We got to rethink that one, you know. But there’s ways of, and they know when they mess up. 

33:20 : That is important. You are right. People, the right people know when they mess up. They’ll take responsibility and they want to fix it. Most of the time, people aren’t doing it on purpose. No. And we all make mistakes. I mean, I make 

33:36 : mistakes. I do. I mess up more than anybody. I just kind of roll my eyes and I say, I always believe that I’m getting old, but I don’t know. Some of it’s getting older. Some of it’s just, it just mess up. 

33:52 : Listen, your secret’s safe with me. 

33:55 : 40,000 of my closest friends, right? 

33:59 : Oh, my. I think that humility is important, though, that as a business owner, we you have that freedom to make mistakes and not have somebody get mad at you unless it’s a customer or something. Right. But like you don’t have somebody breathing down your neck that’s going to like get upset with you. And I think sometimes employees, they need to know like your your boss also makes mistakes. Yes. And they 

34:25 : and they want to have their opinions. valued yes when they have ideas you better be listening not just listening to them considering that that is a really good idea you know you some people are very power hungry they i’m the i’m the boss of this business and it’s going to be my way or the highway well sometimes you do have to say you know i value that you’re I really appreciate that you’re thinking about this, but you know, I think we better keep doing it this other way, you know, but they just, they just want to be their ideas. 

35:06 : Listen to. Yeah. You have good ideas. 

35:08 : They do. Right. They’re, they’re seeing things in the company that you can’t because they’re where they are. Right. And so it’s important to have employees who. care enough to speak up right like even if it’s especially 

35:28 : your supervisors your supervisors that are working with these people like i don’t speak spanish yeah i have 65 people that most of them don’t speak english and if they do it’s very limited so i depend on my supervisors to guide me. And we were very lucky. We were very lucky in finding a very strong supervisor for our crews. And she’s a woman. And she’s probably one of the best supervisors I’ve ever witnessed here. And I’ve been here since I was 24. 36:12 : And I’ve seen a lot of employees, you know, supervisors. Yeah. She’s, she’s great. She’s great with them. She listens to them. She also tells them when they’ve, you know, no, you know, this is the policy and we’re doing it this way. And yeah, 

36:30 : that’s important. Cause you do want to be very kind to people and treat people well. And you also have to have a backbone and there’s a balance. And that’s what I’m hearing you say is like, there are times where you just, you have to sometimes be a little tough. Right. And you have to make those decisions, whatever they are, and say, well, this is just how it has to be. And so there’s a balance and it sounds like you walk that line really well. 

36:57 : Well, we try. Yeah, there’s, you know, there’s a lot of demands on produce of when you’re sending them to Kroger’s and Whole Foods and Walmart and Target, they have specifications. And some of this. that we do are because of their specifications. Well, if we can’t sell because we’re selling in, you know, the wrong size product or that whole load will get rejected. And they understand that these employees understand that. And, you know, they’re given specific guidelines to do. They can’t be there certain things we can’t negotiate because it’s coming from them. business we’re selling to. 

37:39 : Right. Yeah. Well, that is true. Like sometimes it’s just the way it is. 

37:45 : Yeah. But this is the way it is. Unfortunately, you know, if I could do it differently, I’d do it 

37:52 : differently too. But yes, absolutely. So to kind of wrap things up, I want to come full circle to what you had talked about earlier about how so many. Farmers are struggling. Businesses are struggling. All people, I think, in a lot of ways kind of are. So what are some things that consumers can do to be supportive of small businesses and especially farming businesses? 

38:24 : Of course, you know, supporting your local store. whatever it is, your local business is wonderful. 

38:34 : On site, right? Not a franchise, but like on site. On site. 

38:39 : Yes. Businesses in your town that are owned, family owned. Wonderful. That’s, you know, the economics have to work or you won’t have a business. And so we try to. get what people want in here to sell at the quality that they want and they respond very well and they support us. In our town, we are very fortunate in our area. People support our company so well. They feel like they have part ownership in this orchard. Which is a very unusual thing for a local business to be able to say, but people, you know, say our orchard, them saying our orchard in Goshen. Yeah. Yeah. They take ownership of this farm. Businesses don’t have that. You can’t take ownership in your local dry cleaners, right? 

39:36 : Nobody really wants to do that. 

39:39 : So it’s. It’s amazing. Now, the row crop farmers with corn and soybeans and things, that’s called a traditional farmer. We’re a non-traditional farmer because we grow fruits and vegetables. That is a non-traditional farmer. We’re a little easier to support because we usually have a farm market. So the row crop farmers, just to be educated. on what’s going on with the livestock. What’s going on with the milking industry? What’s going on with farmers? Just educate yourself so that you can understand. And I think most people understand the farmer’s not making the money. It’s everybody else that is taking a little bit of the pot. Yeah. And we’re taking all the risk. You know, I’m putting I’m putting a million dollars into a crop at the beginning of the spring in hopes that in the in July, August, September, October, I can harvest this and pay that money back to whom I borrowed it from. So we’re taking a lot of risk here. And and I think people understand that. I don’t think they understand. how much that risk is. And there are times in the middle of the summer when I have my payroll every week and I’m just thinking, I just hope these crops all come out because things can happen. 

41:17 : A hailstorm can wipe you right out. you know anything can happen deer deer do a lot of damage you know five acres of sweet corn they just came and ate the tops off the the the stocks of corn this last year we couldn’t harvest it because our our picker couldn’t pick it because it was too short so weird things happen on a farm absolutely yeah so 

41:41 : much is out of your control and i feel like If anybody’s going to be an entrepreneur and you’re going to have one skill set, it needs to be that you’re solution oriented. You see a problem, you come up with solutions. Do you agree with that? 

41:56 : I’ve always said that about my husband and I. We are number one problem solvers. Yes, we do all day long. We problem solve here on the farm. that it that’s our most important job is problem solving knowing knowing what the goal is and then solving all the problems to accomplish that goal yes 

42:18 : and also being willing to try a solution that doesn’t work 

42:22 : right yes like last year we our son said you know I’m seeing these robots there’s robots out there that are cutting the weeds out of the fields of these row crop farmers out in Kansas and Nebraska he said man that would be really nice because that would be one spray weed killer spray that we wouldn’t have to put on because we just use the robots to do it um we wouldn’t have to have the guys go out and hoe as much yeah that’s some of the things we have to do we have to hoe um because it can’t be done mechanically and so he just made a call a cold call to these people out in kansas and they said huh We’ve never done specialty crops before. We’d be interested. And we ended up with two robots. We leased them. And we’re doing it again this year. It worked out great. There were some glitches. 

43:25 : Interesting glitches, but glitches. And so, yeah, we’ve made improvements with them over the winter. And we’ll be using robots again. It basically chops the weeds between the rows of corn. 

43:39 : Well, I love that. Like you’re hitting on something that’s really important for any business that’s been in business for a long time. I mean, over a century. The number one thing to kill that business is this is the way we’ve always done it. Yes. You don’t say that. You’re like constantly innovating and thinking of creative solutions and possibilities. 

44:01 : I think my husband and I and our two kids are both. our brains work that way okay so this is the way we’ve always done it but is there a better way is there a different way it’s not all or nothing either no i mean these robots don’t do it all but they do enough to pay for themselves plus more you know and it’s worth It’s worth looking at some of these strange ideas and making that cold call. Out of the blue, he makes this call to this guy in Kansas. And the guy goes, well, we’ve never done specialty crops before, but hey, we’ll try it. And it wasn’t like they were looking for business. They had thousands of people trying to get their robots. They didn’t have enough robots, but they wanted to try our business because we were something new. So, yeah, you got to ask. You just have to ask. You never know. 

45:06 : Oh, my goodness. That’s so good. I love that. You’ve 

45:10 : given so many great tips. What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you, to find you, of course, to find Kerchers? 

45:20 : Probably one of the best ways is to follow us on Facebook. KerchersOrchard.com is our website. We are on the southwest corner of Goshen on Kercher Road or County Road 38. Yeah, our name’s on the road and people say your name’s on the road. It’s because. Just Kercher’s lived on this road a hundred years ago. So they just, they just called it that Kercher road. So anyway, but it does help our business now too. Yeah. So Facebook is a great way to follow us. We do have a new thing that we’re doing. 

46:02 : Oh, my daughter just started it. Oh, these kids, they come up with the best ideas. But you can scan a QR code and you’ll get messages from us, updates, what’s on, what’s happening at Kercher’s. So that’s something new that Molly’s doing here at the market. I love it. 46:24 : I love it. And then we can find out whenever crisp apples are available, right? They’re actually available 

46:31 : right now. We still have some from last year. Evercrisp is the most amazing apple. and not that we don’t have a lot of amazing apples but that one is it’s easy to store you can store it in your refrigerator all winter long in a plastic bag and they’ll stay just as crisp and sweet and good as the day you picked them it’s amazing we have another one called gold rush in gold rush um it will it’s a little bit sweet tart really a good apple people are really surprised when i take them out on the field trips and say okay this one you may never have seen in a grocery store and you may never see it again in the grocery store but you’ll see it at Kercher’s um it’s called gold rush and it was a purdue apple and it is sweet tart in the fall but you can store it in your refrigerator all winter long and it gets sweeter and sweeter and sweeter and sweeter it also stays crispy 

47:24 : Oh, my mouth is watering. I know. I 

47:27 : know. It’s like one of my favorite applesauce apples, but only in the spring. I don’t like it in the fall. So and that’s another thing about our business, because we’ve been in it so long. We can help guide people. People love that. If they want to know something about apples, they know they can come to Kercher’s and they can say, well, you know. What do I need? What kind of apple do I want to get for this or that? And we can help them. You can sample them. We sample a lot of apples here. 

47:55 : That’s wonderful. One, even your website is a great resource to get educated about what they’re for. and when they’re available so i hope people that have never been to kurchers that they go and check it out it’s worth the trip we go every fall we love visiting you um so thank you so much for sharing so many great pearls and time with us today thank you for having me i appreciate 

48:20 : it and i just like to invite everybody out to the orchard especially right now we’re in bloom and it’s going to be beautiful over the next week so even if you don’t stop in the market which we’d love you to stop in the market of course but just drive by it’s just a lovely time to enjoy the orchard in bloom 

48:39 : absolutely thank you maureen you’re welcome thank you 

48:51 : Thank you for tuning into this episode of Diary of a Dreamer. I hope you found the stories and tips shared today to be a source of motivation and strength. Remember, every challenge you face is a chance to grow and move closer to your dreams. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this podcast with anyone who could use a boost of encouragement. Please check out my website, TashaEizinger.com.