Before the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus forced restaurants to suspend dine-in services or close altogether, Miller Kinstley was selling 95 percent of the eggs his hens laid to Restaurant Tyler in Starkville.
Now that business has stopped. But Kinstley is still selling out of eggs.
“People are still eating the same amount, it’s just they’re doing it from their own home,” he said. “We have seen a steep increase in demand for personal use. It’s taken a little more legwork as far as deliveries because instead of just delivering 30 dozen eggs to one location, now I’m delivering them in three-dozen quantities to multiple locations. But I’ve definitely … gotten people beating down my door, really.”
Kinstley is a farm fellow — or as he described it, has a “partnership/internship” — with Johnny Wray, who owns High Hope Farm near Cedarbluff in western Clay County. Kinstley began working with Wray part time as an undergraduate at Mississippi State University about a year ago and now works there full-time, handling the poultry side of the business.
He has 90 laying hens. When he was selling their eggs to Restaurant Tyler, those hens were laying about 30 eggs a day. Now that they’re more mature, they’re laying closer to 50 — and all of those eggs are going to individual customers choosing local-sourced food over grocery stores and restaurants.
On the other side of the farm, Wray sells beef and lamb. He’s seeing the same thing, with more local customers looking to purchase meat directly from him.
“Our business has had, I guess you could call it, a boom,” he said.
Without meat “readily available” in grocery stores, Wray said, customers are increasingly turning to his farm, which provides local grass-fed beef.
“I could use quite a few more cows right now that are close to slaughtering size,” he said. “But people are patient. … We’ve just had a lot of interest since this started.”
At Mayhew Tomato Farm in Clay County, Melvin Ellis said the pandemic hasn’t hurt his business either, which right now is focused on strawberries but which will also sell squash, blackberries, tomatoes and other produce as the season goes on.
About 70 percent of his sales are from local customers who drive up to his farm, he said, and that may have to increase soon since he plans to sit out the May farmers’ markets this year. But he said while he’s not necessarily seeing the same boom in new customers that Kinstley is, he’s still seeing some new faces.
“I’m seeing some people that never have bought from me before,” Ellis said. “I think some of that may be (people are) at home looking for something to do. ‘I think I’ll make jelly, I’ve never tried that before. Who has strawberries?’ That kind of thing.”
Cautious customers
The primary difference Ellis has seen with his farm is that his customers are more cautious about doing business.
“I have a lot of older customers,” he said. “They’re all very leery. Lot of masks. Nobody shakes hands, and I have a significant number that ask me to bring it to the car for them because they don’t want to get out of the car and move around. It’s definitely changed people’s habits. It hasn’t changed their buying habits, but it’s changed the way they interact with the farm when they do buy.”
That type of care is the reason more people are turning to High Hope Farm, Kinstley believes. He and Wray have ended face-to-face interaction between customers. Instead, customers will ask them to leave eggs in coolers on their front porches or leave meats in the freezers of their garages.
“I think (the shift in the market) was due to two reasons,” Kinstley said. “One just with the grocery store shortages and there being limited products available at the grocery stores, people are looking at other outlets to get their eggs and meat and other products. Another reason is, I feel like, with all this going on … there’s been a growing concern for ‘Where’s my food coming from?’ Instead of getting eggs from somewhere across the country and handled by three, four, five different entities, they have found an outlet that is right down the road and handled by one person.”
Reid Nevins, Lowndes County agent for the MSU Extension Service, said he doesn’t have data to support whether more customers are turning to small local farms like High Hope across the state, but it wouldn’t necessarily surprise him if they are. Given some of the phone calls he’s received since the pandemic started, he thinks there’s a growing number of people interested in eating local food.
In particular, he said, he’s getting calls from people asking him how to start gardens and grow their own food.
“They want to know what they have on their plate,” he said.
Kinstley said he thinks the pandemic will mark a permanent shift in many people’s eating habits.
“When everything calms down, I don’t necessarily foresee a lot of people being like, ‘Well, I can get my eggs from the grocery store now, so I’m not worried about it,'” he said. “I feel like this will have a lasting impact on the way people think about what they’re eating and where it’s coming from.”
One thing’s for sure.
“I guess I’m going to have to get a lot more chickens whenever Tyler gets back to ordering from me,” he said.
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