Target Audience
A storm just blew through, something you know in your bones if you’re a central Texan. The type of storm that probably still has you huddled under blankets without power, surrounded by the limbs of ancient trees that couldn’t bear the weight of so much ice, being brittle from the stress of the drought-ravaged summer we just endured. It’s leaving the type of scars we’ll point towards and mutter about “the ice storm of ’23,” fingers shaking, not with age, but because the memory will leave us rattled.
Our farm fared well, all things considered. A few fences down and hundreds of limbs lost and trees split feels like nothing when the power grid holds and the roofs are intact. Between the storm of ’23 and the storm of ’21 and the pandemic of ’20 we’ve all adjusted our expectations to the bottom rungs of the Hope Ladder. Are you warm? Did you eat? Are you dry? Are you hungry?
Good enough, then. Good enough.
So it chafes me raw, to have endured this, and that, and the other. To have whittled myself down to a toothpick while shaping this space and sheltering these animals from an economic downturn, and so much pivoting that I can’t stand straight without swaying, inflation, recession, drought, flood, pandemic: and then receive a request to discount a $40 ticket for an event that includes 2.5 hours of unlimited food, drinks, and – more priceless – a guided tour through the depths of our ranch alongside our goat herd.
It. Rubs. Me. Raw.
My initial gut punch reaction was to slow breathe, but Jeremy’s gasp of laughter when I relayed the request validated my feelings. “That’s not really our target audience, Jenna” he said in that steady voice, half-smile way that is a lifeline. “That’s not our community.” And of course he was right, but I posed the question anyway to my private Facebook account which is filled with lots of small business owners but also just lots of people I’ve known from one iteration of my life or another. Maybe college, maybe grad school, maybe one of my many old jobs.
The responses were shockingly enlightening. A few people suggested that because we are a small business, people maybe feel prices can be haggled, like one would with “a car” or “a home purchase.” That if we were a larger company or a ticketing agency for a concert, perhaps they wouldn’t feel so inclined to ask but because of our small stature we are – perhaps- more approachable for the request. Times are tough all around, they said. “Never hurts to ask. Don’t take it personally. Don’t let it bother you.”
But here’s the thing. The very act of stating that I shouldn’t be bothered? It’s what is so damn disconcerting.
Don’t take it personally? It’s a sentence that flits like ticker tape across my brain this evening, as I slug through the rivers of mud and shit, inevitable detritus in a thaw after an ice storm. As I shove a thermometer up the ass of a goat with green snot and diarrhea who maybe didn’t endure the 50* temperature swing so well, whose life is perched precariously in the palm of my hand.
I wonder if the person who asked for the discount has ever stretched on their belly inside a barn during a TX ice storm and caught slippery babies from shivering mothers, dragged oak limbs drowned in mud from the entrance of barns so that the animal feed is not blocked, trained naturally feral beasts to be milked? I wonder if these people HAVE EVER MILKED AN ANIMAL WITH THEIR HANDS?
And the people who suggest none of these requests be taken personally, I wonder if they, too, have ever had only themselves to rely on to create a paycheck from the abyss, counting on an endless well of creativity and grit to create something. From nothing.
I mean from actual, physical dirt.
Tonight was beautiful. It was outrageously gorgeous. The full moon rose in the east as the sky was set on fire in the western sunset. You wouldn’t know the ranch just endured destruction equivalent to a tornado just days before, except for the skeletal remains leaning as silhouettes, backlit in the sunset, their downward motion captured like the victims of Pompeii.
Our space is, unapologetically, spectacular. I know that. I give thanks daily. But it didn’t come to us for free, or with a single structure, clearing, utility, ANYTHING. And it’s years away from being manicured or pristine (my god I hope it’s never pristine). The ranch, both the original space at Bee Tree and the newer venue up at Honeysuckle Ranch, are alive and transforming, experiencing tiny re-births and deaths – daily. That’s the definition of wild things. It requires an extraordinary amount of care, the sort that could never be quantified, and represents an awesome responsibility that brings me as close to spirituality as I’ll ever get. The truth is that I’ve been agnostic my whole life, until serving as steward to such an expansive piece of land and to the creatures I shepherd. It’s a powerful, often powerLESS, role. It makes me believe in God, ok? This is the first time I’ll make the admission.
This farm makes me believe in higher powers.
My business model is complicated, the lines of which have been smudged to oblivion over the past year. We no longer make cheese, so we’re not a food business, but we do create products from our goat milk, but we do not sell milk, but we offer all sorts of events at the farm, but we are not a bar or a restaurant, and we will (soon) offer lodging. But it’s not a hotel. This makes marketing tough, and I tow the line constantly of marketing just enough, and not OVER-marketing to expose our precious place to an audience so wide that I risk getting strange little notes like the one received today. Requesting a discounted ticket. As if entrance to our place is a carnival ride. Or a product to purchase and stuff in a plastic bag.
Just another expendable part of every day in America.
I guess the fact is I take it EXCEPTIONALLY PERSONALLY. And while I recognize this could cloud my best business sense, the emotional tremors upon which the foundation of my “business” is based, I thank the God I’ve only recently acknowledged for giving me so much privilege and worry with the stewardship of this ranch. There is nothing more personal to me than what we built here.
You want to haggle prices? Go shop on eBay, or Facebook Marketplace. Buy a ticket to a movie and stuff your hands into fake butter drizzled over popcorn after eating dinner in a suburban strip shopping center. How much will that night cost you?
The value of our experiences are, alas, in the eye of the beholder. The time and effort that goes into maintaining a high enough quality and safety of our roads and facilities is something – I truly – can’t begin to calculate. But I can qualify the journey that made it all possible. I do it all the time. Just read the goddamn blog.
I know what we offer here does not fit many molds, and I’m finding a tenuous peace in realizing that my target audience is not your average consumer of a “good time,” but a person interested in investing in community. Because we have created one over the many years that our gates have been opened.
So to our community I say: you are so valued and so appreciated and so welcome and so essential to keeping the goats fed, the power on, the roads clear, the joy intact. Thanks for coming, we’re so happy you’re here.
