A short diversion for a summer evening..

I love these photos posted on the Denver Post photo blog including this great one of the peach harvest in western Colorado done with horse power.

"These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations."

There are 60 or so more at the link above, so take a look!

I know you are busy. It is high harvest in most of the US, so you probably are not thinking about your farm website.

If you have 20 minutes this evening and want to make a good investment of that time towards improving your farm's web presence, install Google Analytics on your farm website. This is easy for Small Farm Central subscribers, just follow this help file.

Have a little more time after you are done with step #1? Read about Google Analytics terminology and learn how to examine trends.

You've made a down-payment on work you can do this fall and winter to improve your website. Google Analytics will tell you where folks are coming from, how long they are staying on your site, what pages they like the best, and more! You'll be pleased that you took these 20 minutes in August to start collecting data.

It's cliche but true: Pictures can say 1,000 words. Great photos can add so much to a farm site, and it's an easy way to keep your site looking fresh. People love seeing what's happening on the farm, whether it's the latest produce that is ripening on the vine or the recent addition to your herd of cattle. What seems 'every day' to a farmer is an exciting 'behind-the-scenes' look to your customers. The following are some handy tips when capturing moments at your farm.

1. Bring your camera. Everywhere.
It may sound silly, but remembering to actually bring your camera as you head out to fields is an important habit to form. The likelihood of remembering to come back and capture that tassle on the cornstalk, as the sun streams thru, is pretty slim. So throw that camera into the back of the tractor or carry it in your overalls so you can record those spontaneous moments!

2. Get down to your subjects level.
That picture of the baby sheep will be one hundred times cuter if you get down to your subjects eye level. That means squatting down to the ground and having the lens of the camera at the same height as the subject.

Great goats from Waverly Farms.

3. Use the flash outdoors.
You might think that there is plenty of light when taking shots outdoors, but forcing the flash to go off in outdoor settings can improve your pictures.

Happy faces from Balanced Harvest Farm

4. Off-center is nice.
By placing your subject off center, you can create interesting relationships between your subject the the open space around your subject. Try it out - take a picture with the subject in the center of your viewfinder...then take the same picture with the subject off center.

Hard working farmer at Plougshare Farm

Samples of Off the Hook's great photography.

Off the Hook Community Supported Fishery is Atlantic Canada's First Community Supported Fishery. They're connecting a co-operative of small-scale, groundfish bottom hook and line fishermen from the Bay of Fundy to subscribing customers in and around Halifax.

CSFs (like CSAs) provide several benefits to small-scale fishers, including more family income, more market choices, and increased ownership and livelihood control. And their subscribers enjoy access to the freshest local, traceable, high quality fish. We're happy to have Off the Hook join the SFC community!

''I've seen two people well up with tears while looking at the site, and have had lots more general compliments...You've been an instrumental part of what I am hoping is going to be a movement that really builds speed and spreads through other parts of Atlantic Canada....''
-Sadie Beaton, Off the Hook CSF Coordinator


Off the Hook's Small Farm Central Website
Off the Hook chose the Herbaecous Template for their website. We did some custom work to make the template a bit more nautical in nature.

Off the Hook Screenshot

I know you are busy with your farming season, but we've added a new feature that may be useful to your farm.

When customers go to checkout on your ecommerce pages, you now have the option to add pickup locations to their selection. This will be useful for farmers who are doing local sales and have multiple farmers markets where the customer can pick up their produce. I'm sure there are a hundred other uses, so get creative and start building your pickup locations by logging into the control panel and navigating to:
Sell / Configure / Pickups

Right before checkout, customers will be directed to a page that looks a bit like this:

Give us a yell if you need any help setting this up.