We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Judy Byler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Judy below.

Judy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How has Covid changed your business model?

Some aspects of our garden community expanded during covid. Our outdoor education and outdoor camps were very popular when families were looking to avoid being inside during covid. We also started offering more outdoor events like trick or treating events, outdoor markets etc. Additionally we added many virtual classes with opportunity to pick up supplies for the classes. We had one small free pantry, but the need for food and hygiene items and pet food were very high. So we expanded our pantries to be able to hold more food and added a pet pantry. But we also experienced a drop in volunteers. But this happened at a time when we had a huge demand in our produce and food. Since the food bank where we dropped off our food also had a decrease in volunteers, we needed to stop dropping food off in bulk. We needed to box up food in family size boxes. This was a time consuming process and we needed help. We started relying more on our help from the World Wide Organization of Organic Farmers. Many students were taking gap years in college or taking virtual classes. Many people were traveling around the country as they worked virtually. And they joined WWOOF to have a place to stay to do this. So we started increasing our farm crew through WWOOF. The changes with covid continue. But we have been doing a great job of getting creative with the changes as they come.

Judy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was approached by a local church to see if I would be interested in helping to use their land to grow and donate food. Initially, my role with the 2 other founders, was to fundraise and to bring in volunteers to help. But after months of raising funds, purchasing resources to get started and planting the seeds the founder who was doing most of the ground work and had the most gardening knowledge, moved. So I had to scramble to recruit more folks to get involved. We harvested 500 pounds of produce that season and we haven’t stopped since. As a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist, the concept of donating locally grown, seasonal and organically grown food to food pantries is essential. All people should have the ability to eat the optimally nutritious foods. This has been and still remains the focus of the organization. But along the way, we have also helped many families transition from homeless to housed, provided years of low income housing to an individual on long term disability, provided free community events to thousands of people, provided free educational programs to thousands of people, started a forest school preschool aged kids, provided sustainable farming and gardening experiences to kids on field trips, badge opportunities for scouts, community service opportunities, internship and education to students in their Dietetic internships, and also have donated around 10,000 pounds of food to people in need. We have done all this through almost complete volunteer hours. We only increased our one part time employee to full time during covid and she had been our only employee for the past few years. It has been overwhelming in the most amazing way.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

The garden desperately needed a new septic system. The estimate was around $15,000. We didn’t have it. We had to temporarily stop using the house on the property to help homeless families transition to housed because of the continued and growing issues. We looking into grant options. But many businesses didn’t seem interested in funding a septic project. It’s not a very fun ask. During this time we had one of our annual family events. It is a spring event where we celebrate our chicken’s birthday’s with an egg hunt and festival. We ask folks to bring some pre-filled eggs for the egg hunt. This kept the costs low for the event. One mom showed up with her 3 kids and didn’t realize she needed to bring the pre-filled eggs. We found some extra plastic eggs and shared some candy we had with her and helped fill the eggs. She was very grateful and we later found out she worked as the leader of a foundation for a major athletic team. She encouraged us to apply for a grant from the organization and we did. That organization gave the garden the money to do the septic replacement so we could resume using the house to help families in need. It was such a wonderful reminder about the importance of the community events and how special they are to people. As well as how actions can lead to great things.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

Since we donate all of our food, we have had to create multiple streams of income. We took on a mortgage for the property very early on and we had to make sure we always paid the bills. We started with camps. They continue to be one of our most important streams of income. We are teaching kids about the outdoors, farming and gardening, while raising money. We try to keep our classes and community events as free as possible. So we have been generating money from vendors and sponsors. We started a forest school and then gave the business away to one of the teachers at the school. The school now pays rent to the garden. We offer a service to the community we call “backyard bounty”. We provide a service similar to lawn maintenance, but we maintain produce gardens in yards of homes for a fee. We also donated a percentage of the harvested produce. We offer field trips, birthday parties and more.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ourgivinggarden.org
• Instagram: @ourgivinggarden
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ourgivinggarden
• Youtube: @hillaryjensen1919