QR codes (Quick Response) is the strange black box with squiggly marks in it on some labels. This is a technology that allows users of ‘smart phones’ to scan the code which will bring them to a website…. this code is often used by food producers like us, because we want people to find our unusual and perhaps unfamiliar food in a market, and be able to find our website quickly so they can see preparation and recipe information.
Edible Cactus QR Code
Our labels are part of a marketing campaign designed and implemented by ‘Top 10 Produce LLC’
The QR code will take people to our website where they can pick from cactus recipes and preparation/nutritional information.
Even though we have this QR code, I personally do not have a smart phone as we have no cellular reception at our home, and I am only out of the canyon for a few hours each week…. so even though I love technology, I can’t use the technology of cell-phones well enough to pay for a smart-phone and the added costs of data service
Food-First is a web page on food safety issues (They are officially the Institute for Food and Development Policy), here they discuss the marketing group we are a member of… and way cool is the fact that they used our label to show the scan codes the group is using!
They also discuss the new laws that are set to help find and track foods from ‘point of origin’ to help with food safety.
The marketing group is called Top10 Produce. And they are a fine group that has great ideas to help the small grower and the consumer both.
Oh boy, Best Buy is on my ‘canned’ list. They sold me a wireless router and 6 months support at discount if I got a credit card with them. When filling it out they said they do not ship invoices to PO boxes. I told them I don’t get mail at our address, it is too remote for the Postal Service. They said put both down and it’ll go through. We never got an invoice, I went to Best Buy twice and they said I had zero bills due. Then after 3 months I finally got a call, they said they were charging us $35 late fee monthly, and 24% interest. Even though they admitted they had gotten all our invoices back as undeliverable. HSBC said that Best Buy computer system does not connect to their computer system, so Best Buy cannot be relied upon to give accurate ‘accounts due’ information. (I paid their usury fees for the late charges just to get out from them saying we didn’t pay)
To cap it off, today the wireless network went down. I unplugged everything and reconnected; after ‘no-go’, I hit the reset button and still ‘no va’. So I called their support team, who told me that since I’d pressed the ‘reset’ button I had voided the warranty and service agreement.
Geek Squad/BestBuy will get NO money or goodwill from me unless they act right to me. So I am in their complaint log which is supposedly ‘actionable’.
The way to punish businesses who act wrongly is to spread the word, and warn others. And I’m doing that now.
A big portion of customer action is to also make sure you give the business time to rectify the mistake…. because EVERYONE makes mistakes…. give people time to make things right….. but after these two SNAFUS from Best Buy I’m very leery about their sercice, although in the past I’d always considered them a good company with fair prices for good items. But in both cases when I had ‘issues’, it was with an auxilary company they’d retained to service the agreements (HSBC with the credit card, and Geek Squad with the router and service agreement). So it’s NOT Best Buy alone that’s to blame… but ANY company doing business with another company has to ensure their auxilary support companies are as good, honest, reliable and ethical as they themselves are…. if they are not, it WILL reflect on the main company.
I’m callin’ ya out Best Buy…. fix my router issue with this and I’ll mention that you made things right…. but until you do…. this will also remain open and ‘actionable’.
We wondered about a nice way to explain the small white spots on the cactus that the hail caused.
Then I decided to make the best of the situation and make everyone happy they got some pretty special cactus….
With each box of Grade C cactus we shipped a small note explaining the hail marks….
“First off, let me thank you all for joining with us in the nutritious and natural organically certified edible cactus! Part of the fun we get is the fine interaction with many of our customers, and knowing that they like the cactus we send them.
Another part of the fun is dealing with the vagaries of climate and how that affects the cactus growth.
Well, it wasn’t fun though when we got hail two days in a row last week… and although I thought of swatting the hail with my tennis racket, I knew it was pointless…
But then I realized that not many people are going to get the opportunity to get California cactus with some hail-stone pings….
But unfortunately… there was not enough hail-marked cactus to go around to everyone, so we had to split it up and give everyone just a little to make it fair. So the white pings and dings are your special bit of cactus.. but don’t tell too many people…. This is a once in a year event if that.
We had a fellow write us today asking when we’d be sending bulk edible cactus shipments….
By co-incidence we were just sending off our newsletter offering list members the first harvest of the season. Yes, you too can get in on the VERY FIRST pickings of cactus this season… but only if you are a member of our newsletter list and get the info directing you to the ‘secret page’ with the order forms.
We have the newsletter to keep people apprised of our sales activities, which is all dependant on the cactus growth. Whenever we have a new offering, we tend to share this on the newsletter. It makes it sure and simple for me.. we try to let the subject line give a quick bit of info on the main purpose of that letter. We are more active with the newsletter in the spring, when the offerings may change weekly due to repressed growth and high demand… but through the late summer and winter it is monthly at best.
If you’re not a member of the newsletter, you could register from our site at www.rivenrock.com or from the field below
Right now we can only offer five pound boxes of edible cactus, and only to list members.
As the weeks go by, we’ll add larger box sizes to the offerings. The leaves are growing well now, and we have good weather forecast which keeps growth active, so we may be able to offer list members an early offering of leaves in bulk within a month. Also, within two weeks I expect we’ll be offering the cactus in 16 lb lots.
One of the odd things with video is the big music companies trying to shut off display and sharing of their music videos, or the music they own rights to being used in personal videos and shared over the Internet through services such as YouTube.
I don’t know much about digital music…. but it seems to me that most folks aren’t going to know how to take the songs from the videos in a manner that will allow them to be kept on a player so they can listen whenever they want. So it’s not like they’re likely to lose a lot of business from potential customers. On the other hand, it could well be that many people will find out about an artists music through the Internet and listening a few times might be compelled to look the artist up and purchase the music online for their own collection.
I was happy to find one of my favorite current artists label has done such a thing with her music. Kerli’s tunes are now on VEVO through YouTube, and they give the code out so people can embed them legally into their web posts and share the music with others.
Now, I’m not ‘hip’. .. So I’m not often current on anything happening…. but I was asked to audition once for a music video for a young Estonian girl named Kerli. They wanted a ‘Creepy Guy’ for a song about a Creepy World. I didn’t get the role… maybe I wasn’t creepy enough… sometimes not getting what you want is good. But at any rate I became familiar with a young girl with loads of talent, a good heart and as Lancelot mused “She has a pretty face”.
It is this kind of issue the Regional Water Quality control board wishes to address with the newly-required ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ classes for all commercial produce growers in California. But they go about it the wrong way. The classes should be given for free to licensed growers… not enforced onto us at our own travel and expense. The water testing is another thing that should be shared across the board. If this is for the good of the planet, whey are we the ones to bear the cost? And there is little (seems to me nothing) to help the very small scale grower, nor any consideration given to those who are already doing some or many of the actions they desire…. Instead, like nearly any governmental program, all are lumped together, and all herded through the same door into the same classes. So we who have run on a deficit for the last few years are paying nearly the same as the super huge corporations.
If I’m upset about this, imagine the commercial growers who would see this all as ‘Tree-Hugger BS’. At least I believe in and support the basic premise of the classes.
Here’s an excerpt from the article….
Hamerschlag’s report finds that careful studies have shown that several underused farm management practices, such as cover cropping, conservation tillage and organic fertilization, have the potential to deliver significant carbon sequestration benefits while helping farmers conserve water, maintain yields and resist weeds and pests in the face of climate change.
The report makes ten specific recommendations for addressing the inertia that has prevented California from taking effective action on agriculture and climate change and calls on policy makers to develop programs of targeted research, outreach, technical assistance and financial incentives for farmers.
“As a first step towards swifter action,” Hamerschlag said, key state agencies “should establish an inter-agency working group on agriculture and climate change. Federal agencies, NGOs and farm groups all have critical roles to play and should also be actively involved.”
The last is the reason I am reluctant to make a decision to close shop and stop producing. I believe that in time, the officials will realize they have destroyed the most productive farms on a ‘per-acre’ basis.. the small family and organic farms with their growers more interested in producing good foods and taking care of the land than just making a buck this quarter.
We’ve been operating at a loss the last couple of years…. most of that is due to advertising costs that have not borne fruit. I’ve decided we’ll stop with advertising in the conventional sense… it seems to gain us very little for the cost. This will allow us to at least operate without having to post a loss. Perhaps in a couple of years the government will come up with a plan to let farmers be able to take the classes through the internet and not have to travel 200 miles for them. Perhaps the government will decide that if it requires a thousand dollars worth of water testing yearly, they will reimburse the growers for some of that cost, since the reason is to help the entire country out. Instead as it stands now, they will push out all the large gardens (small farms) that make some of the best produce. Actually, they won’t, those folks will mostly just operate ‘under the table’, selling their produce to stores that are willing to take food from unlicensed growers without paperwork and receipts. But that will defeat the entire purpose of the testing. Governmental actions generally have unintended consequences that often are more horrendous than initial inaction by the government.
Oy-Vey! These young kids come up with an old idea and think they’ve reinvented the wheel!
When I was a kind and visiting my grandma’s home in Germany, there would be a vegetable vendor who came along with a small truck loaded with vegetables. He had some particular horn on his truck that everyone in the neighborhood recognized, and all the ‘hausfraus’ would come running out of their doors with marks in hand, eager to purchase the fresh veggies he carried. Remember this was ina time and place where most families did not have a car, and the men worked and most of the wives stayed at home cooking everything from scratch most of the day. If a woman was out of green onions, this guy might save her a one mile walk to the store, so it was a good marketing-delivery concept. There was also a fish guy who had live fish who’d come along on Thursdays so everyone could have their Friday fish. And the beer guy would have the key to your cellar, he’d replace your empty beer bottles with full ones, and credit you for the empty bottles. And the milkman would give you your milk and yogurt.
This concept was common in most towns in Europe and also in the USA. Only when WWII came along with the huge demographic changes in the US populace, and the wheels that ended up in nearly every driveway that these professions disappeared. With most women in the workplace, and most families with a car for easy travel, and the proliferation of heat-and-serve foods, perhaps there is not much of a market for this service.
Yet some Einsteins have come up with a ‘unique idea that should make money’ in the form of an electric truck that will sell veggies in the inner city neighborhoods. Perhaps in some places this idea might work. But I think most people want to go shopping at a store where they can browse at their own pace, and not feel like they’re holding the guy up. Also US citizens are used to ‘spic-and-span’ in their foods. The idea of an open truck driving around with food sitting in the open might not seem all that appealing to many consumers. Now, I live in farm country, and anytime I drive to town I see huge open trucks loaded with strawberries, broccoli or tomatoes driving to the packing houses…. so I know this happens, but folks in the cities don’t know veggies except cello-wrapped, and mostly already washed and trimmed… indeed, many folks have no familiarity with fresh veggies, they get most of their veggies (when they eat them) from a can or frozen packs.
Anyways, I hope the idea catches on. It is a good concept, and hopefully all those husbands that have been laid off from construction and factory jobs and staying at home while their wives work, will shut Oprah off for a bit and cook their wives a good meal for when she comes home. Maybe the vegetable truck will be handy for them while the wife has the car at work and the second car has been sold to pay the mortgage.
The Law in its majestic equality,
forbids rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges,
to beg in the streets,
and to steal bread
~Anatole France~
Since 1993 we’ve been an organically certified small farm in California. I had a job with a contractor which paid our household expenses and kept us solvent even when the farm sales were less than our farm expenses. But two years ago when the factory in town closed down, and most of us were laid off, I decided to go into the cactus growing more full time. We grow a unique vegetable which we’ve shipped throughout the country. Initially we shipped the cactus leaves as nursery stock, then governmental regulations tightened and we became more aware of the laws and regulations of shipping nursery stock into other states. So we switched to shipping the younger leaves for people to eat themselves as produce. Our goal has been to ship to Health Food Stores, and restaurants as well as individuals who might be interested in the leaves we grow. Through the years our customer list grew slowly but steadily at a steady 30% rate. As the years progressed the governmental regulations seemed to grow more onerous… and the last year we’ve lost many of our older customers due to the recession. Other businesses have quit, some people seem to have stopped their regular orders. Yet, due to aggressive marketing, our sales this year are the highest we’ve ever had due to many new customers. Yet this was done at the expense of any profit we might have had. And again the government has come down on us harder. Now we have been notified that we must complete a fifteen hour ‘continuing education’ credits in water pollution and conservation. I’m all for education, but these government-mandated classes for all farms in the state are not provided for free… we must pay for them ourselves. The worse part is that they are given in the major population centers of Ventura or Monterrey to which we must take ourselves, and pay for our own lodging for the three days of the course.
It is this extra bit that has me stymied. We don’t really make any money doing this cactus business. All of our money goes to shipping, governmental fees of several thousand dollars yearly in order to maintain our licenses, permits, and associated fees and overhead expenses. Knowing that this trip will lead us into negative financial territory makes me reluctant to want to go. Knowing that due to these regulations, we must take a sample of our water and have it analyzed monthly at unknown costs…. I am seriously aggravated at the state of our laws and the level of compliance required even for tiny little micro-farms.
We have some months in which to take the classes, and maybe I’ll find some classes nearby, but this more personal posting than usual is to let the people know that governmental regulations are a double-edged sword. While they give the USA good traceability in produce, and what is perhaps the safest produce in the world, it also makes for stronger economy-of-scale issues that stymie the small grower… right at a time that we are needing MORE small farms, not less. If we were a huge corporate farm, with many employees, still we would need just one person to go to the classes, but when it’s a one-man operation, the standards are the same. The costs are the same, but they are a larger share of the profit in a small operation like ours.
My usual outlook is of hope and positive thoughts. Rarely am I dragged into this level of aggravation. I am sure I will sign up for the classes in Monterrey, they seem very informative and interesting. But people need to know that excessive governmental regulations strangle small business, they hamper the process of business formulation. We need to seriously look at what we want for this country, a place where people can transact business legally and efficiently with little governmental interference. If the government requires classes such as this, it should place them within the reach of the people, if it requires monthly water sampling, it should have a method to make such sampling efficient and inexpensive, (the paperwork mentions some samples might cost $8,000 yearly).
Excessive governmental regulations hamper small business more than the large. If due only to ‘economy of scale’.
When my dad grew up on an Ozark farm in the thirties and forties, they raised corn and wheat, raised hogs which they sold every fall and winter, and had a hundred or so chickens from which they sold eggs daily. They had five or six milk cows which they milked by hand, using the milk for food and their dogs, and one milk-can daily which they left on the roadside for the milk company to pick up. They also went to neighboring farms to supply skilled farm labor. Nowadays they would have to have many more permits, and each operation would require specialized equipment and permits and licensing. As all these regulations pile onto business, you must streamline your operations, drop aspects that have no profit and require permits, then you start to specialize. Yet a small family farm should not be a specialist farm, it should have a wide variety of foods and animals to create the ‘loop system’ for bio-diversity. Yet through the years we have had to drop livestock from our farm, first initially because we did not have proper butchering facilities, so we stopped the breeding of animals, until we had no more. We stopped using manures for fertilizer years ago because the government is worried about contamination of the soils with bacteria from manures. We stopped bringing in mulches for weed control and soil building because we could not vouch for the exact trees the wood chips came from. We are now a closed system with no outside inputs, and only material going out at a rate of a ton a month. Yet even this production is priced so low, and the shipping and governmental costs are so high, that we make no profit. One day, it might just get through my head that I’m better off just enjoying the property ourselves, and stop working so hard to make a business out of it. Yet, I know I can’t, we have such great customers….
While mulling these thoughts over in my head, I decided I needed to go for a walk. So with my camera in hand, I went down the road and took photos of the things I love about living here. And it is when in the wilderness, when I am furthest from people and the government, that I am closest to God and nature. These photos are my world, they are my daily activities and sights…. it is what is most in my heart.
The large oak once was a nut that stood its ground
Spanish Moss on Black Oak
Cutbank on the canyon road
Cutbank on the canyon road
The green lush creek bottom
The green lush creek bottom
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Live Oak reaches over the creek
Old cattle Loading Chute
Miocene Deposits, this was all once underwater
Oak Woodlands
Poison Oak vines wind up the Oak Trees
Spanish Moss on the Oak Tree
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
A tarantula, means rain is coming soon!
Right around the bend from home, my daily view
‘One Tin Soldier’
`Lambert-Potter’
Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they’d kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom,
“With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there.”
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
Now the valley cried with anger,
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it…
“Peace on Earth” was all it said.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after….
One tin soldier rides away.
New products made from nopal cactus are starting to come out onto the market.
This one is made from wild-harvested cactus plants. I don’t really like the idea of folks wandering the desert and harvesting plants. The animals of the desert use this amazing plant for their life…. I’d be happier if this company advertised that the plants were grown on the terraced fields of Rivenrock…. but instead they take the food from the mouths of the wild critters in the Sonoran desert and call it ‘sustainable wild-crafting techniques’.
The commercial is a bit overblown, almost sensationalistic…. but dang, I sure do love the photography and the scenery in this commercial. And I am sure that it is a very healthy drink.
