Episode 59: Building Community Around Bread Day W/Daniel Shear

My guest on today’s podcast is Daniel Shear. Daniel and his wife are the founders of Seasons Yield Farm, a Bakery & Farm in the Heart of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that offers organic, wood-fired, wild-leavened sourdough breads and pastries, whose mission is to connect their community with nourishing products, wonderful people, and the crafts of talented local artisans. In this episode Daniel shares his journey from being in special operations in the army to making a stark transition and moving to rural America to start a farm with his wife, after making the decision to be more present as a husband and father. Daniel shares how they started Bread Days every other week that now bring hundreds (sometimes a thousand) people together around bread, coffee, wood fired pizza, and community. This community and hospitality piece of their business has been pivotal to their success. And listen to the end as Daniel shares the 5 ways he defines success in the different areas of his life. So with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Self-Employment Success Podcast with Daniel Shear.

https://seasonsyieldfarm.com/

Transcript:

Leland Gross (00:01)

All right, welcome Daniel Shear to the Self -Employment Success Podcast. Thanks for being here.

Daniel Shear SYF (00:05)

Thanks, Leah, for having me. It's very humbling, humbling to be asked on. Thank you.

Leland Gross (00:10)

man, I'm excited about it. To give listeners a backstory, Daniel also has a podcast called The Baker and the Farmer or The Farmer and the Baker? Baker and the Farmer with his good friend Buddy Powers who was on my podcast a little over a year ago and they're good friends on the other side of Virginia and have their own podcast interviewing.

Daniel Shear SYF (00:20)

Baker and the farmer, Baker first.

Leland Gross (00:35)

local small business owners in different communities around the country. And I was humbled and fortunate enough to be on their podcast. And so, yeah, just excited to kind of get to have you on mine when we met. I was like, this guy's fascinating and I want to have him on. So thanks for making the time. Go ahead and tell the listeners who you are personally and professionally.

Daniel Shear SYF (01:00)

Awesome. Personally, I live here in Rayfee Virginia, little rural Virginia, just north of Lexington with my wife and five children. And we moved here after getting out of the military seven years ago. And that's when we started our entrepreneurial journey. Started out as farmers and now we're running

commercial bakery so we can get into the weeds of that transition and what that looked like but left the military to run a small business and doing so here in rural America which is richly rewarding and so had a thought I was going to be military for my whole career and then left after about 10 years in the army to do this. So that brings us here into

into Virginia and we have a commercial bakery on the farm that is the production hub for several different outlets. One of those is a cafe that we have in Lexington. We're about 12 wholesale accounts of cafes and restaurants outlet for the product. We also host bread days. Those are the core of the business where we host the community for. Yeah.

bread and farmers market and live music. And we do that every other week. And that's a real mainstay of the business. And then within the last six months, we've started shipping nationwide frozen pizza dough and croissants and cookies. And that's a new outlet that's been really exciting for us as well. So little fingers everywhere pursuing where the hungry.

hungry customers are for pastries and breads. And we're a sourdough -based bakery, so everything we produce is sourdough, naturally leavened with as much locally grown flour as possible. And most of the baking at this point is done in a wood -fired oven outside the bakery. some primitive, antiquated processes that I think are really cool and make