Dealing with Covid-19 on the Farm
In these challenging times, our role as local food producers is critical, and likely to become much more so during the next few months. As Illinois comes under the new Stay-at-Home order beginning tomorrow, people will still need real, nourishing food, and we will be here to help fulfill that need.
As an agricultural enterprise combined with a grocery store, we provide "essential services" under the new Illinois order, and therefore we will continue to operate our normal hours during this state-ordered shutdown of most businesses. However, we are making some changes to our store procedures to help keep our customers and employees healthy and to help manage the high volume of customers we have experienced over the last week:
To maintain safe distances between customers and staff, we will only allow 5 customers into our small store at one time. Please only handle items in the store that you plan on purchasing. We will be sanitizing high touch surfaces multiple times per day
We will no longer handle or exchange customer milk jars. We will refill customer jars but ask that customers place their own jars under the spigot on the milk tank, and remove them when full. If you do not have a jar we will sell you a new one and fill it.
Please use a debit or credit card if at all possible to pay for your purchases so we do not have to handle potentially infected cash and change.
To better manage our supplies of farm fresh food, we are limiting daily purchases to 2 gallons of milk, 2 dozen eggs, and 4 chickens per customer per day. We may change these limits or add other limits if needed. We still have good supplies of most cuts of beef and pork available in the store at this time. Eggs and raw milk supply are refreshed daily.
As always, our raw milk is limited in supply and high in demand. If you would like to get raw milk you need to be there when the store opens. We are selling out every day within an hour of opening. Please do not call and ask if we have milk or if we are open, we do not have time to answer all the phone calls and take care of the many customers in the store.
Working together, we will get through these challenging times and a brighter future ahead for more local farms and local food producers. Spring is coming!
Stay calm and stay healthy...
Cliff, Anna, and the Farm Team