Self-Milking Cow? Getting on the dang bicycle! How can I make this more Ronin? Can't decide the headline! :)
I decided to say "What the heck" and follow @Travis Sago 's advice about just having fun. So... I love raw milk. As in unpasteurized, straight from the cow (once cooled in a professional milk cooling tank of course), not homogenized, pure raw milk. It's super healthy, delicious, and a totally different experience from the stuff you get in the Krogers. For a couple of years now, my family and I have been going to an Amish farm nearby to get our own milk from the farm. And we formed a little group of family and friends who also learned to love it and the health benefits. So, as I was reading some old posts of Travis's about a self-milking cow paying for itself, a little idea popped into my head. "I wonder how many other people out there love raw milk and are passionate about it and if there's a pent up demand?" Turns out a whole TON! So I decided to have a little fun and start with distribution. I found two already moving parades of websites where people can find directories of places and direct farm to table people can get the milk. I created the name of a farm, set up a simple google form for a waitlist, got an AI logo done, and had a placeholder for a website. Then, I created these listings on these sites, and holy cow Batman, within 2.5 months, I had a list of 155 people who were frothing at the mouth (without milk mustaches yet) to get their hands on this raw milk from the Amish farm. And every day I get about 2-3 more. So I began reaching to onesy-twosy (I know, bad) to each person saying we have a spot for you in our herdshare. I now have 30 gallons spoken for for a weekly delivery. :) My current supply isn't the first farmer I've bought from. So I then went to the farmer that I was previously buying milk from (Farmer A), and he gave me the name of his delivery driver who was going that direction anyways. Turns out he indeed has extra capacity and is going that direction anyways! (underutilized asset, and leveraging off someone else's energy and efforts already in the works).