Andrea Warner 0:00
Welcome, everybody. Good afternoon as it is welcome. Thank you all for showing up.

today. As we wait for a couple more folks to arrive, we have our agenda up on the screen for you.

Thank you for coming to our market manager forum. for July, I can’t believe it’s already July. Seems like it was just march. We were all together in person not so long ago.

Unknown 0:30
There, they were off away from us. This was what I wanted Sunday was brought to me.

Andrea Warner 0:37
First, if everybody is able to mute their screen, if they’re not talking, that helps us with background noise. And while we wait, we give folks a little more time. Let’s all introduce ourselves and let everybody know where we’re from and what market we’re with. And I’d love to know,

the just, if you could quickly tell us like I said, your name the market you’re with and how long you’ve been a market manager. That would be really helpful. I’ll start I’m Andrea Warner. I think I know everyone here I’m the market manager liaison for the New Mexico farmers Marketing Association. And I also work in the nutrition incentives team with Double Up Food Bucks outreach. And my previous experience was market manager for the Silver City Market for four years. And I’m currently a board member with them as well.

And I’m gonna pass it to

Tiffany over here. I’m so excited. Our new Silver City Farmers Market Manager is here. Go ahead, Tiffany.

Tiffany 1:48
I’m Tiffany. I am the Silver City Farmers Market Manager and I’ve been manager for four whole months.

Andrea Warner 1:55
If you want to choose a name and pass it on, Tiffany.

Unknown Speaker 2:00
I’ll pass it over to Ron.

Ron M. 2:03
All right, Can y’all hear me? Okay? So I’ve been market manager now for a month and a half. I’m at the Black Mesa winery. My previous experiences. I’ve been a manager for most of my life. And I just happened to be a farmer and a participant. And then they said, Here you go. All right, I’m going by kind of like that. So now I got a handoff. It wasn’t that bad, but it’s still quite an experience by the learning experience. And then let me throw it to Scott.

Scott Knauer 2:42
Thanks, Ron. Good to see you again. Scott Knauer. Here I’m with the NMS ma as a marketing and technology specialist, joining you from downtown Clovis, New Mexico today. So good to be here. I will ask to Karen Bradshaw.

Karin B. 2:57
Hey guys. I’m Karen Bradshaw. I’m the foot with the farmers and crass market of Las Cruces. I’ve been a manager for almost two years. But I have been a member. I also used to sit on the board of directors here for five years, I was in charge of operations. And I’m a former vendor as well. So and who’s next? George? I see George, let’s give

it to George.

Andrea Warner 3:24
If you’re if you’re there and you can hear us. Let’s try.

Claudia J. 3:28
I’m Claudia Jeffery from the Sierra County farmers market. I’ve been on the board for five years in the market manager for two.

Courtney 3:35
Hi, my name is Courtney. I am not a market manager. But I am currently a small scale farmer and vendor in Alamogordo, which is in Otero County. And we’ve been participating at the market here for the last two years. And I just hopped on so I don’t know who’s gone yet. So I don’t know who to pass it to.

Andrea Warner 3:56
I think everyone we have now is nmma staff who are presenting today. So how about well except Pearson Why don’t we go to Kristen, who’s our special and mfma guest.

Ron M. 4:08
I’m just here to be a fly on the wall. I’m curious to know what the NMF from May and I run the fresher RX program. So I work closely with Sarah Thompson of double up and the nutrition incentives team. And several of your markets are doing freshforex This year, which I’m really psyched to see you all here. Let’s let’s pass it off to mark.

Please, Kirsten. Hey, everybody, Mark Chamberlin, marketing creative director within mfma have been here about seven months working out of Albuquerque. And much like Kirsten, I’m going to be mostly a fly on the wall. But I think the team has pulled together some great work that we’re really excited to share with you. Jena, how about you?

Jena Marquez 4:48
Hi, everyone. I’m happy to be here. My name is Jena. I’m the Digital Marketing Specialist here at mfma. And I’ve also been here since January. I’m excited to see so many faces Here, I think I’ve seen a couple before and a later forum, but super excited to show what we have planned for social media coming up. And always remember, I’m the person on the other side of Facebook and Instagram, if you’re ever messaging or looking for someone, and I’m trying to get a picture up here, so you can see my face, too. Thank you. I will pass it over to Oh, awesome.

Alison Penn 5:22
Thanks, Jena. Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Allison. I’m the Communications administrator at the end mfma. I’ve been here for about two years. Little over that. And, yeah, local food connects is a big deal. And we’re really excited to share it with you. So I think the last person is George. George, did you want to tell us your name your market and how long you’ve been a market manager?

Speaker 7 5:46
I have been a market manager for every day, it seems like and I want to quit the day. Let’s see. So 2009 is when I started by the invitation, my lovely wife, and I continue the process. What else can say?

Andrea Warner 6:02
Well, thank you, everyone. Like I said, Thanks for showing up. And being a part of our market manager forum today. I think we’ll just let Allison and the marketing team start their presentation now. And then at the end of the presentation, we’ll have time for questions. And regarding local foods connects month first and then if there’s time, any other questions that that anybody would like to bring up. So with that, I’ll hand it to you, Allison.

Alison Penn 6:37
Okay, sounds good. Scott, can you take us to the next slide, please. And that was just some housekeeping. This call is being recorded. So we can share it with everybody who wasn’t able to make it in lifetime, we’ve kind of covered everything else. So next slide. Let’s go ahead and just dive in. So August is local food connects in a month, and in the second week of August, it’s National Farmers Market Week. And we’re going to talk about both of those things. We’ve been doing this campaign since 2017. And the whole idea is to saturate social media, newspapers, newsletters, all the things we write and put out and get people to your markets, your other local food outlets. And the reason we do this is really just to engage them to experience and enjoy local food. When people come in August, they get to see like the heirloom tomatoes, and the green chili and the melons. And they think wow, this is incredible. And it just keeps coming. And that’s what we want for all of you, our members. And this campaign is easy to participate for you all. And you can download things from the weekly emails that are going to be coming out or you can just engage with us on social media, Facebook, and Instagram. And with our combined audiences, we’re going to be amplifying and creating a ton of excitement for local food connects. And the theme this year is August is peak season and fresh food primetime in New Mexico. So there’s no better time to get reconnected to all things local. Join us this month at your favorite Farmer’s Market farmstand or local grocery store to celebrate a food, flavor culture and people that make our state one of the tastiest places on the planet. Next slide, please, Scott. So this is kind of a first look at some of the graphics and things that are coming out Mark made this so get your local on, we’ll have another version of this and a video later on coming out. And we call these the announcement images, you’re welcome to share these we’ll be sharing these. There’ll be in our newsletters, media, and in the weekly emails that are going to come out starting Friday.

Unknown Speaker 8:44
Next slide.

Alison Penn 8:46
And the whole thing that kind of launches this off is the proclamation from the governor’s office. They’ve done this consecutively since 2017. So it’s just nice to have that statewide recognition. There’s a lot of great information in the proclamation that we share with new sources, and we can share it with you all as well. Next, please. And we also will be sending out a press release template that you can share with your local newspaper. There’ll be more excited to pursue a story if you have, say, a market vendor that’s been I don’t know selling a lot of Double Up Food Bucks or a farmer that’s been growing green chili in that region for like 200 years. They like things that pull them in and involve the community. So keep that in mind. If you do decide to use the press release template. We’re also going to be sending out a media package to the major newspapers and TV stations. And that will give the media a head start and just knowing what’s going on this month with with all of you all. Next slide. And that’s really all of my portion of the presentation. But the largest and I would argue most important component is our social media. So I will pass to pass this over to Jena Marquez. Thanks, Alison.

Jena Marquez 10:06
So here we have just a couple examples of some of the content. Just like the images that we’re going to be putting out on our social media, Instagram and Facebook for the month for local food connects month, we had a great brainstorm and went through and decided that we would be putting out content in five different content pillars, so basically just like five different categories, I did an extra one here for us to see but so some of the things we’re going to be highlighting will share a local food favorites. So you can see, the bottom three are just some good examples of some local food favorites that we have here that you can find at various markets, depending on you know, if you’re at Northern market or southern market, but most of them are, you can pretty much find these at almost any market, some type of variety. We’ll also be sharing stuff that high highlights local farmers. So we did just put out a local food guide, we have a great piece in there about the different types of farmers in New Mexico. And so we’re going to be highlighting all the different types of farmers that we have here in our wonderful state here, I have an example of indigenous farmers. So kind of like a format like that we have women farmers, backyard growers, first generation farmers, we have a big list, we’re going to be highlighting everybody, we feel that it’s very inclusive, and will be really, really great for everyone to share on their Instagram or Facebook. Another thing we will be doing is kind of reasons, reasons to go to your local farmers market. Why, you know, that’s kind of what we’re all here for. Right? We want to get people to the farmers market. So we went through, we have some, I think it’s 11. Right now we know there’s way more but there’s 11 that we feel are really, really strong to share that share that message of like community, why you should buy local and the strength in investing in your community. Here I have two little examples. One is a just like a small kind of little, it’s not a quote, it’s just like a little fact, why buy local, it’s the yellow one with the three happy friends here at the market. And then we also have kind of more that are a little bit supported more by facts, and we kind of call those reasons to believe. So they’re just they’re just kinda like, reasons to believe why you should be shopping local and going to your local farmers market. Um, what else whatever, Oh, one other one that I don’t have included here, but it will look very similar. As you’re looking at these images, you can kind of tell they all have a logo, kind of like a little head headline and a description and a nice, great, vivid photo with them. The other one we will be including is fun and events in the community or in your market. So that’s also another piece where I really encourage you as market managers. If you have time, if you only have time right now, put it in the chat. Let me know what’s going on in your community. Let us know Allison does send out newsletters asking for events. I know it’s hard to always have the time to kind of like, do that extra step of letting us know I do my best to search everything on social media. When I see something I always try to repost it if it’s timely. And we have enough time sometimes I’ll post it a couple days before to just make sure it gets visibility. But if you do share stuff with us, we do have room to include that in in our posts to make sure that we’re getting it out there. I think like an example we shared today might be yes, you just moved. I’ve seen that one a lot. Tiffany actually, I’ve posted it a couple times, but I will actually I will be posting it again. So um, one of the things Oh, like an example today, if you look at our stories, I think I shared county fairs and they’re just a county of county fairs that are happening by month. So I think I’m gonna use the car as an example because the crow is so active there’s a lot of members in the community that message message us a lot. They I know yours is in like September I think it might be like Labor Day. Week is that Labor Day I was gonna Memorial Labor Day. But yeah, so there’ll be sharing them by month, stuff like that. Also, if you have like people playing music, or just you know, something, you think that’s like an extra that that would drive people to the market, we’re always really happy to share that. And important stuff like if you’ve moved if you’re at a different location, or times or dates. And then the next slide here that we’re showing is kind of just for you to see like a it’s a calendar, a top level view of how many times we’ll be posting and when we’ll be posting these types of posts, they might move around because we want to leave room for like I said, if you’re sending us events or if you’re you have something to share or somebody creates some content that we also want to share. We have some wiggle room to do that in a timely way so that it makes sense to the the time but this is about like how How much we wouldn’t be posting. So they’re just they’re very simple just shows like The New Year grower, that was what I explained about, like our local farmers reasons to believe those 11 reasons, um, local food favorites, one that I didn’t put on the Choose, we’re going to be sharing a couple recipes, we actually have some really fun recipes that I’m really excited about. So I hope that those do get shared, Allison and I have been working on some really fun stuff. So hopefully those will get shared some local recipes and we’re gonna do like a you can see it on there, there’s a Khalifa is that we want posts that we want to do. So we’re really excited to just like Alison said, saturate kind of social media with all of these images. And one thing to think about too, is like, it’s okay, if people see these images, again, seen on social media goes so fast. So, you know, it really helps to create that sense of community with all of us if people are seeing these pictures or the information that for all the markets. So um, with that being said, Allison leads the newsletter, we will be sending out a newsletter with exactly like the posts that we showed in the previous slide, different ones each week for you to access and be able to just share immediately, you don’t have to edit them, you can if you want to, if there’s something you want to if you want to put your market on them. But I would encourage you to do that in the caption to make it even, you know, easier for you to just update, upload the picture, write a caption, and just have some things ready to go for your social media. And that’s kind of all I have, I’m gonna go ahead and let it go back to Alice. And I think but I’m also here to answer any questions about any of this, when we get to the discussion. Thank you.

Alison Penn 16:45
Okay, and this is just a little bit of the inspiration, some testimonials, things like that. This is a farmer in Santa Fe, and just a quote from her. That’s what inspired the main theme for the images that we’re putting out.

Unknown Speaker 17:00
Next, please.

Alison Penn 17:03
So now I’m covered, we’ve kind of covered local food connects in a month, which is all four weeks of August. But then the second week, it’s National Farmers Market Week. And that’s the most relevant to you all. And really what we’re doing this year, is sharing what the Farmers Market coalition puts out. They this has been their campaign for 23 years where members we support and are sharing their stuff. So this year, their theme is Farmers markets are changing the way.dot.we Eat shop connect and more. So I would say use that as a prompt, how is your market changing things in your community? How is your market changing the way and that will that all of these resources will be in the second week email, and newsletters, social media, so on and so forth. Next slide, please, Scott. And these are just some examples of the branding and what the Farmers Market coalition puts out. The one on the left, the periwinkle blue one that was a story that I shared from the farmers market coalition just as an example of engaging with another campaign. So the Farmers Market coalition, they provide the theme, they have this giant social media toolkit that we sent out in our last newsletter. And I can send out again in the next coming newsletter, and it has all kinds of things. There’s a planning timeline, there’s social media templates, captions, facts and figures. It’s it’s a huge resource, and one that can be used all year round. It doesn’t have to be just used for peak season.

Unknown Speaker 18:38
Next slide, please.

Alison Penn 18:41
And here we’re at the end, I will pass it

Unknown Speaker 18:43
to Scott. Thanks, Alison.

Scott Knauer 18:47
I’m excited to share this little tidbit with you because this is a project that some of us have been working on. Since our team kind of convened for the first time back in January. And we were brainstorming, what’s something that we can give vendors to get them excited to add some pizzazz to their booths. And we’ve come up with these really cool. We were kind of inspired by propelled Ocado flags that you see throughout the state during celebrations, but we wanted them to match some of the Double Up Food Bucks branding that you all are already doing around your markets and with your vendor booths. So these match so nicely. What we are sending out to you the best part of all you don’t have to lift a finger we’re sending these gifts directly to you as market managers and outlets throughout the state. You’ll be receiving boxes with a set quantity of these wonderful, very durable strands of flags. They measure 12 feet in length. The content themselves is about 10 feet to span your typical 10 by 10 tent, and they’re comprised of these really colorful panel flags that measure nine inches by nine inches. We wanted to make sure they were durable to withstand everything New Mexico throws at ourselves and your customers. The dirt, the wind. So these should last a few seasons. And we’re just encouraging you to identify which vendors are going to be really proactive and receiving these and displaying them at their booths. We’d also love to see what these booths look like. So add that to the content hopper. If you have vendors that are taking pictures of their booths with these flags light up, we’d love to see them, please share them with us by emailing them over, or sending to Jena via social media. And we can’t wait to see what you and your vendors do with these. These should be they’re in production. Now. We should have them, hopefully any day now early August in distribution to get them in your hands. So we’re hope you’re excited about that. And that’s all I have on these wonderful flags.

Unknown Speaker 20:52
Thank you, Scott.

Alison Penn 20:53
And the last thing I just want to tie this up, Fridays are the days that you’ll receive an email with all these resources. So kind of thinking of that as like a check in day, see what we have to offer. And then you’ll plan ahead for the next week. And those start July 28. So next Friday, so it’s already here. I’ll open it up for questions. Now. Does anybody have anything right off the bat?

Scott Knauer 21:18
In all, just Prelude questions, some of you submitted questions while registering for today’s event. We’ll get to those. But we’d love to take questions on local food connects month first.

Unknown Speaker 21:34
Harrison,

Ron M. 21:36
I just wanted to let everybody know that part of the intention with those flags is also to increase the visibility of Double Up Food Bucks at your market. There’s a big push going on, to try to raise visibility. And so those were kind of produced with double up funds. And we’re really hoping that your double up vendors will will take to them. And I totally hear you, Courtney, we are working on tablecloths. We had the same thought for some of our markets. So Courtney, stay tuned. We were trying to think of other ways to bring some color and vibrancy to the markets, including tablecloths and, and other things that vendors can use, it probably won’t

Speaker 7 22:14
go away. Thanks, everybody. Is everybody.

Andrea Warner 22:18
Sometimes at these market manager forums, we’re not all Double Up Food Bucks market. So we all Double Up

Unknown Speaker 22:25
Food Bucks markets here today. That’s good.

Andrea Warner 22:30
So I want to leave the the everybody’s welcome at these market manager forums, whether you are or not involved with level

Unknown Speaker 22:37
up. Thanks,

Andrea Warner 22:41
Justin, for bringing that up. And were there any more? We’re still looking for questions?

Ron M. 22:53
I don’t want to drop a question. But I did want to say that I appreciate the flags. I’m in two different markets. So it I think increasing the visibility is very important, because I’ve talked to two different people now. And they weren’t map eligible. And they had no idea that they could use it at their farmers market. And so on one of them use it and the other one, if they ever get over their back for a while maybe they’ll come visit and use.

Andrea Warner 23:28
Thanks, Ron. And I don’t think you were at our annual meeting this year where we put out all of the Double Up Food Bucks. Materials, we can get you some to your market. Like

Ron M. 23:44
I was kind of late to the show. I was I was told early, but didn’t quite get my head around everything until you know the first Did you so yeah.

Andrea Warner 23:59
We’ll get those resources to you as we can pursue

Unknown Speaker 24:11
with that any

Andrea Warner 24:12
were there any more questions about the presentations for the local food connects month in the farmers marketing week?

Alison Penn 24:25
I have a question

for the market managers. I saw a couple of people throw things in the chat. Do you have any adverse events planned for the month of August that you want us to know about right now?

Unknown Speaker 24:40
Okay, sorry, Andrea. What were you asking? Oh, Pam, we just wanted

Andrea Warner 24:45
to say thank you so much to our marketing team. We’ve had a marketing Alison for the last few years and now we have a team and this campaign is really their. Their brainchild and It’s nice to have more hands on staff to help. And I want to encourage everyone here to reach out if they have any questions, or tech questions or social media questions, because we really do have experts on staff now that are here and happy to help you. Jana Marquez, again is our social media person, and Scott is our resident Tech Ninja. And they’re both reachable. And happy to work with you and answer your questions. I know they’ve worked with me a lot and answered a

Unknown Speaker 25:40
lot of money.

Ron M. 25:42
So I have a calendar, that’s made out to October for the music at like Mesa winery. And that’s one of our features. Plus, we have our, if they spend 10 bucks, they get an entry into a raffle, so they can win some wine and flowers that I usually have. And right now, Pete wave has not been kind to the flower part. But you want that I mean, certainly any more advertising I can get for free. I used to do that all the time with Facebook, and then they started closing all those doors. So

Jena Marquez 26:22
yeah, of course we’d be happy to share. I know Alison also does like to share events in the newsletter too. So if you want the easiest way might be, I gave you our Facebook link if it’s easy for you to message to me on Facebook, or send an email or even Instagram like those are three different ways you can reach out. Even if you if you want to. If you feel like posting it here, whatever is the easiest way for you to get it to us. We will definitely include what we can in in the newsletters and then on I can definitely post in the stories on our Instagram or Facebook stories we don’t use quite as much but we are really active on the Instagram stories. I can definitely put that on there to have like reminders that pop up when you’ll be doing events. I was just looking at your Instagram right now. Is it the Black Mesa?

Ron M. 27:14
Well, there’s a black, there’s a Black Mesa cidery okay. And that’s there. And then there’s the farmers market and Black Mesa i We tried to change names to make all the names, book focus more on farmers market. But Facebook and Instagram were not. They weren’t kind. They didn’t want to allow us to change our name to what we want it to. So

Jena Marquez 27:42
yeah, that’s that’s like a really annoying you got to make a decision and you can never change your mind again when you make a sale.

Ron M. 27:50
Right. We did it you know, based on you know, years past we just we needed to take Black Mesa and move it further back but farmers market more in the prominent and whatever.

Jena Marquez 28:04
Okay, so I know that we follow up Black Mesa winery, I want to find this Black Mesa farmers you said it’s just called Black Mesa farmers market.

Unknown Speaker 28:13
Let me let me

Unknown Speaker 28:17
get the lake and I’ll drop it to you.

Jena Marquez 28:19
Okay, that’s perfect. And I will get on there and see and follow you and I can also message you, you there too.

Unknown Speaker 28:26
Okay.

Andrea Warner 28:27
I just wanna There was another question in the chat from Pam, asking about where to send those events and Alison shared the emails where your market has events that you want to share with, with newsletters or social media, you can share them to the Allison or Jena’s emails. And also for social media agenda do we have when I when I see something I’d like to draw Jena’s attention to or mfma Social media attention to I’ll actually link in a comment. Are AR and mfma handles, will you will you say those out loud Jena, if you’re on Facebook, it’s at.

Jena Marquez 29:23
Yeah, I’ll put them in the chat here. So they’re labeled so it’s easy for everyone to see them because they’re kind of confusing. Sometimes. I’ll label those in there. You’re also feel free to like you can share send stuff to like in the direct messages. You can always send us anything you have. tagging us in a comment is a great way to do it too. And, and this is like so casual, you can message whatever, you know, respectful messages you’d like to send to us in our DMS. Um, I it’s generally a faster way to get a hold especially like, you know, I know markets, most markets on weekends, not all of them but During the evening, so it’s a fast way to get a hold of us if you need. We do have, we’re pretty, I’m pretty quick on the messaging on Facebook and Instagram too. So I’ll put them Facebook and Instagram handles here. And I’ll put my email my email, as well. My number is on there too. The only thing that’s what my number, it’s fine to text me to Instagram is great, because I can see where your what your information is right away, it’s easier for me to share exactly what you’re trying to show me because it is such a visual thing. But if you need to text me something, that’s okay, too. I’ll put that information down here. And I also

Andrea Warner 30:39
want to just slow it down here for any market managers who are not very social media savvy. There are no wrong questions here. If you’d like us to, to go a little more in depth in how to access us or use social media, this is a really great time and place to ask those questions as well. So if there’s anyone who would like to understand a little more and isn’t quite following, all of our buzzwords here are happy to answer those questions right now. Or, again, please feel free to reach out to any one of us. And we can help you if you’d like to be more active in social media and you’re not quite able to get there on your own, please reach out because we’d really like to open those those marketing areas for your market as well.

Unknown Speaker 31:33
That’s the world we’re

Andrea Warner 31:34
living in now. Right. Yep, I see your hand. Claudia. Go ahead. And yeah,

Claudia J. 31:42
we’ve been putting lots of pictures on on Facebook and sort of doing a vendor week. You know, kind of making fun? And lots of lots of photos. Well, of course, some of those photos have prices of the produce on there, which sometimes opens up dialogue that is, well, yeah, higher than Walmart. And it’s like, oh, really just leave it alone. Is there a way other than not acknowledging it, what’s what’s the best approach?

Andrea Warner 32:23
To respond specifically to that type of response?

Ron M. 32:27
Yes.

Andrea Warner 32:28
Is that this that local? I’m going to think about that for a second. But But when when we have, there’s there’s a hand piercings.

Ron M. 32:40
Okay, just for fun, just for fun. Claudia, you might remember that one of our founders is Sarah grant. She’s an amazing advocate for everything small farm. And one of her favorite things to say to people is you’re so right, it’s more expensive than Walmart. But as you know, but as you know, there are there’s no such thing as a rich small farmer in New Mexico. So they’re not getting, they’re setting the prices they need to set to feed their own families. And thank you for supporting them. So this thing is rich, small farmer in New Mexico. There are other less flippant ways, but that’s a Sarah grant kind of come back and she’s used it for 35 years.

That’s a much nicer way of seeing things. And I certainly

Andrea Warner 33:29
I see Pam has her hand up their hand up as well go ahead, Pam,

Speaker 3 33:33
you can also mention that it’s, it’s it’s a lot fresher, and it’s gonna last last a lot longer, and not go rotten, like some of the stuff in the grocery stores. And a lot of times it’s you know, organic, and I needed to specify that if it is. So that’s, that’s the difference.

Ron M. 33:56
And the money staying in your town. When you shop at Walmart, we’re sending the money to Walmart, if you’re if you’re shopping a Claudius market, you’re supporting Claudia’s neighbors in your own neighbors. So those are some of the things our organization tries to home, being in everybody’s heads over and over. Farmers are not getting rich, and the money stays local. And the quality is just there’s no comparison. So you can pull any of those out of your hat and they’ll still be people who complain I think

Jena Marquez 34:27
we actually have like the we were talking about the reasons to believe also inquiry I’m assuming this is like on Facebook or Instagram where people are commenting this type of stuff to pictures that you’re posting. I can share the reasons to believe document here and I think Allison it might be a great thing to share in our the newsletter maybe the first one that goes out because there’s a lot of great responses to that that are very, you know, they’re they’re kind of safe and that they’re giving facts and information just like information back instead of Nobody wants to like argue with, you know, a potential Farmers Market visitor or somebody on their social media. So it’s nice to always just kind of come back with some some just like statistical type information to just present to why like these prices might be different. And they’re very simple, like a couple sentence responses very aligned to what Kristin was saying, but I think they’re very applicable to, there’s a couple on there that you could that are very applicable to like a response for, for that response, so that you don’t feel that you need to be to like it’s and you’re responding, you’re not ignoring them, you’re actually given them an answer back that other people can read and learn from too. So we can definitely share those. Because I think I think that that list has a ton of amazing reasons to support, you know, why shopping at your local farmers market is going to be more expensive than Walmart. And here’s 11 Like really, really great reasons why. So I will go ahead and share that too, with you. And then just kind of touching on that communication in social media when people are commenting. Um, whenever you can respond or like, or comment or engage. That’s really important. And it doesn’t always have to be. I think just the engagement with the community is good. So that it’s really nice to hear you say how can you respond to that, Claudio? Versus just like kind of ignoring it and not not giving it a response? So yeah, we’ll send you some tools for that as well, too. Thank you. That was a really great question.

Unknown Speaker 36:37
Jena, can we

Andrea Warner 36:38
include you in when there’s a on social media? When there’s a comment like that? Well, you jump in. And

Jena Marquez 36:47
I mean, like I said, you’re always free to message me like, if you want some, if you want to ask me for a response, I’d be happy to send you like a quick little type of that you can copy and paste that refers it will probably refer right back to that. Because that’s that’s generally how we would respond to yeah, like I said, I’m always available. I wish people would DM me more, I get bored. Sometimes I’m like, can somebody message me on here about anything? No.

Claudia J. 37:14
Can I ask one more question? Yes. So I had another there’s this truck that’s going to show up in tear see at the parking lot at the Tractor Supply that’s going to be selling me cheap. And it says that they can take snap money. And so of course, everybody is a professional, they know everything, right? And the first comment there was, well, you can buy meat at the farmers market, and I’m going you and you get your double at bucks you can spend with me at the farmers market. And I’m like, no, no, guys, you can’t do that at the farmers market. You can, you can, you’re not going to get double bucks to spend at the farmers market for me. But you can take that money and use it for fresh fruits and vegetables. And then somebody else gets on there and says, Well, you know, we the farmers get a stipend from snap for taking their money. And I’m going no, nope, that’s not so not true that they become snap. They that you have to go to the farmers market manager, you have to get the snap coins, the coins from from the manager and they take the coins are then given to the customer and the customers and spinning them and then the farmer brings the money back but there is no stipend so really short version of what that does. Might be nice to

Andrea Warner 38:57
I’m sorry, I missed what who does I missed that cut? A short version of what I missed, I missed the

Claudia J. 39:05
well just, you know, I sat there and and responded. And it took me 10 or 15 minutes to finish his this guy who knew everything about everything, correcting him? No. Is there something in writing that talks about? That short and sweet and to the point? Or should I just continue to I you know, I know, dude, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. But let me help you. This, this is exactly what we’re doing. And I was kind and polite and professional, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But this guy just was totally convinced that he that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I’m going but I’m the manager of the market and I do know what I’m talking about.

Andrea Warner 39:53
Yeah, correcting people who are wrong on the internet is one of my favorite hobbies. So and you But I what what comes to mind, Kiersten is the comic strip that we have that that we’ll be sharing here shortly as well with our Double Up Food Bucks materials this year. And that’s a really nice way, I’ll send you one of those Claudia. That’s a really nice way to show how the program works really quickly. And Sadly though, sometimes just correcting people who are giving misinformation is the way to handle it. And but

Ron M. 40:32
in your free time, because we all have so much of it, you might want to go to a USDA website, or a specific snap website and steal some wording right from there, copy and paste it keep it on hand for some of your biggest snap or USDA type, because snap is run by USDA, right. So there’s information about Snap at the USDA at the USDA websites. And there’s probably I know there’s some snap Ed websites and you know, spend 1020 minutes on those and to steal their wording and that way, you’re not getting anything, we’re not getting anything wrong, right? We’re getting it 100%, right? Keep it somewhere, write it down, zap it back to folks, or send them a link to the website and say check it out for yourself. You know,

Andrea Warner 41:14
that’s a great point, our website also has really and then we have our new Double Up Food Bucks, New Mexico develop new mexico website, and the farmers market Coalition who has created this campaign for the for the National Farmers Market wheat, I’ve been spending a lot of time on their website recently. They have amazing, amazing resources for farmers markets on there, I recommend all of these managers here, when you go look at your New Mexico, your the National Farmers Market Week, information that they’ve put out, go look at their website. Today, I was listening to farmers market blogs, I’ll share all of that with you. We’re market managers, we’re having very similar to what we’re doing here. It was quite interesting. George, you had your hand up and Mark, you also I think Mark, you had your hand up. And then I saw George with his hand up. Did

Speaker 7 42:07
you have a small question or comment rather than the question? During the little trainings that we have, and also the little booklets that we hand out, here’s a little blurb, what you can do and what you can’t take for what produce market needs, whatever is listed on there as for which coins can be used. There’s never any mention of any stipend going to any buddy else other than the stipend of double up your food bucks. If you’re a Double Up Program units, it’s it’s really simple. There should not be any kind of confusion on that. And that’s a great point.

Andrea Warner 43:01
I there is that, that is a great point. It also always pointing people back to how it supports community and how we support farmers. Something I like to remind folks about as well is that our big egg folks, they get substitute subsidies from the government corn and wheat. You know, a lot of that food is subsidized. I see Double Up Food Bucks is how we subsidize our local growers. We can make the food more accessible to people keep and make sure that they get their price.

Unknown Speaker 43:35
Thanks, George. That’s a great point.

Andrea Warner 43:38
Mark, did you have your you had your hand up earlier? And I see it’s down now. But I wanted to give you an opportunity to

Ron M. 43:46
I just wanted to add that we have recently released this local food guide. And it essentially is one big, as Jena mentioned reason to believe like why supporting local food, your local farmers spending your money in state. And not just from a purely utilitarian standpoint. It’s like the experiences that you can get in the markets, the people that you meet in the markets. And yes, it’s it’s reducing your carbon footprint. And yes, it’s good for the economy. But if you guys would be interested in having these on hand in your market, we can we can send some of those out to

Andrea Warner 44:28
all markets should have received it. Is there anybody here who hasn’t received a box of 300 local food guides yet? Yep. I think everybody here has received those. And another, more kudos to the marketing team for creating a local food guide for us this year. Yeah, that was a big Venter. And these are the folks who put it together for us.

Ron M. 44:53
Oh, great. Scott just actually posted a link to it online which we just we just got as well so you could actually even forward that link on to somebody if they’re asking why buy local. So that’s all. Thank you. Thanks.

Andrea Warner 45:09
there any other questions? We have about 10 more minutes and our monthly forum. And I’d love it if you bring your burning market questions here so we can help answer them.

Scott Knauer 45:21
There was a question in the registration submissions, I believe it was from Courtney was asking for some more information and educational materials on nm grown if somebody wanted to speak to them. That’s right.

Andrea Warner 45:34
It was the approved supplier program. Courtney, did you want to elaborate on that question for us?

Claudia J. 45:41
Or we can? Sure, um,

Courtney 45:46
I’m actually a part of the New Mexico Grown program. But one thing that I have noticed since we’ve started our farming slash market gardening journey, is that in the area that we’re located, there’s just not that much knowledge about the New Mexico Grown program. And there’s only our farm and one other farm here that are part of that program. And in general, there’s not that many growers here at all. And I wanted to figure out, really, I wanted to figure out ways to help kind of like spread the word or let consumers know about the New Mexico Grown program, but also connect with like our local school district and the preschools and the senior center, because I’ve tried calling the school district to talk to them about it, but it’s like, Who is she, you know? And so I was wondering, like, how to be able to get our school district to connect with people from the New Mexico farmers Marketing Association, so that they can learn more about the New Mexico gram program as well.

Andrea Warner 46:53
That’s a great question, Courtney, we have a whole other team. And they’re not right now we’re market side. So we’re in our farmers market with our managers here and then New Mexico grown is more on our grower side. And so that team is the Mexico grown approved supplier team. We’ll send you their email Alyssa Pisano is the I’m sorry, Elena Pisano is the is the director of that program. And I know that she’s been going around the state actually your Did you say you’re in Otero? So we’re going to be having I guess you’re kind of far from Grant County. I know. And I think Jena posted the list of places where they’re going to be doing some outreach meetings across the state. I know in August, we’re gonna have one here in Grant County. And so we’ll put you in contact with the New Mexico grown team because I know they would love to hear exactly what you just shared and help you brainstorm ways to get involved. Jena, you have your hand up? Yeah, I

Jena Marquez 47:56
was going to I’m looking for the flyer right now. I’m actually on the New Mexico groan coalition as well. So I I am more than happy to share with you. We are having a couple of regional networking events. I don’t know off the top of my head, what’s going to be closest to Alamogordo. As Andrea just said, we do have one coming up on August 22. But it is in Silver City. And I know that’s like about two hours away from you. We were literally literally having this discussion. As we were planning this meeting this week about regionally what makes sense for everybody. But we do have one plan for that area, I believe all posts what we have so far. We also have Yeah, we have those events coming up. So I’ll post the flyer and I’m happy to connect you afterwards or if you have questions as

Speaker 7 48:44
well, to talk with you. So thank you.

Andrea Warner 48:50
Thank you that George was sharing his New Mexico grown with tradition. You want to share that with us again, George put that up for us. Now this is different than the New Mexico Groden but this is a campaign that has been launched through the NMDA again, it’s a logo program. And you this is something that you can through NMDA and I think that Ellison didn’t you link to it in this month’s newsletters didn’t you? Yeah Are you can sign up and receive logo. This looks like a sticker. George has I know they have bags and other nice swag for for free for vendors who are part of the tasty tradition program.

Speaker 7 49:36
What the program is, I don’t know whether you can get into this zoom on that little thing too. scandalous. But it’s an invitation for a relaunch of this new program. Relaunch section it’s a it’s a relaunch for the moon logo and the entire program actually. So if you can enlarge that, and that way anybody that wants to scan it, they can.

Andrea Warner 50:12
I don’t know if we can see that George, but we can definitely get a link to the

Ron M. 50:18
granulator granulated for my computer to do it. Not George.

Speaker 7 50:24
Well, in any case, is with a new, nice the Department of Agriculture. And you can apply alphabet Elevate, and M mag.com. It’s really a simple process to get into you, right, they have all sorts of little things, if you’re proud of what you go. And you want to put some of these stickers on your area of the table, or stack the stack in a paper bag that should give out with your groceries, you can do that. They have all sorts of little things that you can use. They have produce bags, which you can buy by the rolls. It’s really inexpensive process. It’s a great, George, we

Andrea Warner 51:29
put a link, we have a link to it here for folks to check out. We have about five minutes left. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I just wanted to say at see if there’s any one else who I see we’ve lost some of our folks here. Um, if there’s anyone else who is interested or has a question that we can answer at this time, or you can drop it into the chat and we can get back to you via email. Thank you everyone, for attending any of our our and mfma folks have anything they want to close us off with hear about Mexico grown months, or

Alison Penn 52:11
I just want to echo thanks for being here. And we look forward to celebrating this with you all in whichever way you choose to do feel free to reach out to us at any any time.

Unknown Speaker 52:20
Thanks.

Andrea Warner 52:21
Thanks for all the links in the chat. And if you’d like to save all of that information from the chat, something I always forget to do. I’m going to do it right now. How do we who can help us have save? How do we save the TAT I’ve forgotten. There are

Scott Knauer 52:40
three dots down along the little toolbar in the chat window, you should be able to click that and say save chat, which I do right now. I’m also the person posting this to YouTube where you can circulate it to your colleagues and peers that weren’t here today. I’m trying to get a little more savvy with saving the transcripts and the chats and all the resources and bundling them up into one place where you guys can get at that conveniently so a continued work in progress and try to make that easy for everyone. But thank you all for the great conversation personally speaking I want to say I can’t wait to see these flags, hanging out your your vendor booth so please take some snapshots for us.

Andrea Warner 53:19
Thank you all again for joining. We’ll see you next month. Keep an eye out. We’ll be sending the dates and the times and the topic out here shortly. Get us on the calendar