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Date: 11/9/2021
LUDLOW – Between its deli, garden center, homemade ice cream and locally produced goods, Randall’s Farm offers something for everyone throughout the year.
Karen Randall, Randall’s Farm’s president, said the farm’s focus is selling local products, including local produce and making its salads and entrees from scratch at the deli.
“Our focus is local and everything from locally grown flowers and plants that we sell in the garden center to locally grown produce. One of our biggest departments is our bakery, deli and prepared foods. We make our food, our salads and entrees are from scratch, we bake every day and we make the gourmet sandwiches,” she said.
Since the farm’s inception in 1962, Randall said it has always been family owned and has grown alongside the community.
“We are community-based and we have grown with the community. We started in 1962 in the building that is Elsie’s Creamery right now and then in 1997 we built the building where Randall’s is today,” she said. “I run the business with my two sisters; it has always been family owned and operated, very community based, we have grown because the town and the towns around us have grown and gotten busier.”
Randall said the busiest season for the garden center is in May when people are planting their gardens, but October and December are also busy because of pumpkins and Christmas trees, respectively.
“The garden center has plants for all seasons, the biggest season is May when everybody is putting in their garden and buying their flowers. Fall is big because of the pumpkins, decorating and the mums. And then we have something for all the holidays, we sell Christmas trees, we make gift baskets, and we have flowers and food for all the holidays,” she said.
While the creamery is only open for window service May through October, Randall said the farm’s homemade ice cream is available for purchase by the half gallon or pint year-round.
“We sell it in half gallons and pints when the creamery is closed and then when the creamery is open May through October, we offer window service at the creamery,” she said.
For Thanksgiving, Randall said the farm cooks everything but the turkey.
“Thanksgiving is big for pies and turkey gravy; we say we cook everything but the turkey because we make our own gravy, stuffing and pies,” she said.
For fall activities, Randall said they offered scarecrow making and pumpkin decorating but had to scale the events down due to COVID-19.
“These last couple years we offered scarecrow making, and pumpkin decorating workshops on the weekends and then we have kits to make your own scarecrow or decorate your own pumpkin that you can buy and take home,” she said. “We have really scaled it down since COVID because previously we had hayrides and pumpkin picking.”
Despite the changes over the past couple of years, Randall said the farm is coming off a successful fall season due in part to the warmer temperatures this year.
“It has been a warm and genuinely very nice fall, no frost yet which is unusual for Oct. 20, so it has been quite busy,” she said.
After Halloween. Randall said the inventory begins to ramp up toward the holidays.
“We will be fall right through Halloween and Thanksgiving. Typically, after Halloween we start to introduce a little Christmas into the mix including decorations for sale and holiday ordering. It goes quick, you think there is going to be time between Halloween and Thanksgiving but there really isn’t, it kind of evaporates,” she said.
For the holidays Randall said there have been some changes due to COVID-19, but they will still offer take home kits and a holiday bonus weekend the first week of December.
“Typically, in the greenhouse we will have some type of kits ready to make different types of decorations for people to buy and bring home. We did previously have workshops but those have gone the way of COVID also. We will also have a promotion the first weekend in December and have a holiday bonus weekend where there will be sales incentives,” she said.
Once things start to return to normal, Randall said some of the missing activities during the fall and the holidays will return.
Like many other businesses, Randall said she has seen supply chain issues for meats and some ingredients, but produce has not yet been affected.
“It has, things may not be exactly the way they were because of an ingredient that is missing or packaging or that kind of thing. It does not seem to have affected produce yet but more Boar’s Head meats,” she said.
While some businesses are struggling to retain employees in the fallout of COVID-19, Randall said the farm tends to hire people in transition in their lives, such as students, so there is a bit of employee turnover.
“It is the general business atmosphere; we employ a lot of people in transition who are typically students. Because of the work environment, they have a lot of opportunities if they are college students for a field they might go into. We tend to have a long retention time but, in some areas, there is more turnover because the employee is in a transition part of their life and go onto a career,” she said.
At the end of the day, Randall said her goal is to have happy customers and happy employees.
“We have great customers and employees, that is the goal, happy customers and happy employees,” she said.