Hey guys! It been a month…yikes!! ~we have been very busy here at NextGen Farms and we are a very small team. I have loads of information to share but I’m going to fast forward to this post…..

It’s official we now have our product in the market and we couldn’t have come in at a better time. We came in when there was a scarcity of our product…so we were able to build up a client base faster than we expected….yay!!! We have learnt so many lessons along the way which I hope to share but right now let me introduce you to Oyato tomatoes. My Yoruba folks know what Oyato means for the rest of us it means different. The name came about in a very interesting manner….my cousin came round while I was packing my tomatoes for my customers and she is like Kofo awon tomatoes yi yato o (means this tomatoes are different o). She then asked what I’m branding it as and I was like Eva tomatoes and she is like why?….abeg call it Oyato….I’m like…hmmmm….loads of my family members were around so we took a poll and everyone seemed to like the name and there we go…the birth of Oyato tomatoes :-).

So we went live on the 19th of June and it hasn’t been easy but it has been a lot of fun….This was our first few harvest. It should have been more but we had a number of challenges getting to this point…but I’m thankful.

Yes o! I’m the chief harvester, for now I do all the harvesting. To be honest there are only 2 of us that work in the green houses, so he is busy doing what he needs to do and I do the harvesting and other things I need to do.This is what my office looks like on the farm. We harvest every week but not everyday. Days I don’t harvest I crunch the numbers…We always weigh our produce both the good and the bad. We have a big scale, medium scale and a small scale…. hahaMeet some of my glorious customers and business partners. They were the first set of customers. Yayy them!! Peep the somehow branding. Ok so the truth is that when we started harvesting I wasn’t ready to go to market, we didn’t have our packaging ready…but we handled it within the first 3 days but we were still selling o…. :-). I can’t come and carry last….More glorious customers 🙂 See how happy Oyato tomatoes is making them!Smiles that inspire and when your clients gradually become your friends!This is how we package and deliver to our clients.Tomatoes all packed, branded and good to go!More tomatoes! Peep that green large one…I found so many interesting shaped tomatoes…Tomatoes on the vine…look at the colors and the star-shaped tomatoesThe journey to this point has been very humbling. I think I’m a lot more patient, kind and tolerant. I’ve learnt that mistakes are inevitable and there is always a lesson so be learnt…so I need to get over it as quickly as possible and keep doing what I need to do.Thank you so much for stopping by and please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions! Heart you guys :-)Please follow me on instagram and twitter for more regular updates @nextgenaffarmer