MISC MARKET NOTES

A Little Money Talk

This last week has been a tiny bit exciting and a lot of gut wrenching for M@D. The exiting part is that the bill we lobbied for earlier this year went into effect. It’s not everything we hoped for, but it is a start and yesterday sales tax on Alabama’s groceries lowered by 1%. You can read about it from our legislator who initiated it by clicking . . . HERE.

The gut-wrenching part was how to implement it for our customers. Our website is not designed for multiple sales tax percentages and lowering by 1% across the board would force M@D to pay the extra 1% on lovely things like beard balm and candles. A big order on soap or lip balm could easily put us in the red any given week.

One thing I’ve not shared is that for all these years M@D has been absorbing extra expense on standard overhead fees as it is, specifically 3% of all sales tax collected (web hosting) and about 3% of all sales tax from most card payments. We simply cannot absorb any more.

Our four core values are FRESH, LOCAL, SUSTAINABLE and YEAR ROUND. SUSTAINABLE includes finances and in order to continue to service our customers we have to service our obligations. So rather than nickle and dime each order we are leaving our overhead fee at 9% now listed as “Taxes and Fees”. The State of Alabama will receive exactly what they’re due on all products and should there be a surplus in the 9% collected it will help offset the 6% we’ve been losing all along anyway.

So that’s how it’s going to play out and unless something else comes up this all you’ll hear about the matter. This info will be added to the Q&A page of the website for those who might not read this newsletter.

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Upcoming Schedule: Order September 16-19 for pickup Friday, September 22 SKIP Order Sept. 30 – October 3 for pickup Friday, October 6

Saturday, October 7 – Dothan Nurseries Fall Festival!

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JBW FARM FRESH:Weeds, Forbes, Peanuts, Cotton… Did you know that a peanut plant that comes up in a cotton field is considered a weed? There are many, many weeds in our fields/pastures. We do not spray to single out one variety of plant, we want a diversity of plants in our pastures. The weeds, or what people call weeds, are actually forbes. These forbes are amazing, they have many nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that are important for our animals. Where most people are bush hogging their pastures, we are bush hogging with our sheep and goats. They thrive off of forbes. They turn the forbes into fertilizer, allowing the dung beetles to take that fertilizer down into the soil. By the activity of the dung beetles, it creates soil aggregation which helps with soil erosion. (Soil aggregation is soil particles that bind together—to resist breaking apart when exposed to external forces such as water erosion.) It is truly amazing to see how much thought the Lord put into creation, how every living thing is to work hand in hand with each other. 

MOUNT MORIAH FARMS:  I can’t believe it’s now September!!! We are two months away from kidding season starting and I am eager to meet all the littles that will be born. I am working on preparation for that time. We are still milking eight does, that number could go up to 13 in November! I absolutely love milking the girls. It is our special time together, as I’m sitting milking I am able to look everyone over and make sure there isn’t anything different. I am seeing some bellies growing! Prayers are already being said for a healthy kidding season, if you want to say some as well, we will certainly appreciate it! 

We look forward to seeing you next Friday at one of our pickup locations. Thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!