Not sure if I can call it new as the small beer companies long ago started marketing themselves as micro breweries.
Micro means extremely small. There are no two ways about it compared to Spice House, Stonewall Kitchen or even Burlap and Barrell, we are extremely small. We are not a bustling metropolis of factory workers, packers, and administrators. We are a team of four currently: Dizzy Lizzie, Tractor Man, Farm Manager, and our beloved employee. You can’t get much smaller than that. Please don’t get me wrong as we would love to be a bustling metropolis of people.
Recently, we have given this much thought, as these larger companies make the claim ‘they produce their goods in small or individualized batches.” We have begun to realize that we can not actively define ourselves as producing goods in “small batches” anymore. I mean, if these companies are truly small batch companies, what are we? They have bottles upon bottles of spices listed on their website. Do they ever really run out of anything in a given year? Unlike us because of our goal to grow everything in house, we are seasonally limited in our fresh supplies.
So what can we call ourselves? Tractor man in one of his genius epiphanies decided we should market products as “micro-batched”. Amazing, right? Just as there was a movement of small, no I mean microbreweries growing throughout the country getting recognition for the time and energy they were putting in to make a limited supply (but extremely notable quality) product on this “micro scale,” we hope to do the same. Just because we are smaller than the guys on the other side, we are worth paying attention to. Many of our products have a taste that will knock your socks off. Just as micro breweries do, we want everyone to enjoy each of our specialty culinary products for their superbly unique flavor and quality.
From today, think of us as a micro-batch company. Each product is made by each of the four of us at one point or another in the process, whether it is in the field on a tractor, harvesting, or prepping and producing the end products. The day will come, I am sure, when we can once again be labeled “small batch” and we will reminisce about the micro-batch days. But until that time, enjoy each of our “handcrafted with love” micro-batch products.