The farm grant letter

The farm vertical's first letter. The signal it binds to is public record: MDARD announced the grant, named the farm, named the dollar figure, and described the buildout. Congratulating someone on a press release is not surveillance; it is reading the newspaper. Everything else follows the house rules: the AI drafted it, Brad signs it, one email forever, the disclosure is in the body.

Who gets this letter

A Michigan farm or farm-facing producer with a fresh, dated, linked grant award (MDARD FAIP, value-added, infrastructure) whose funded work has a wiring, controls, refrigeration, automation, or data shape. The letter names their actual project because their actual project was announced to the state.

The letter

Subject: The {PROJECT_NOUN} in your MDARD grant, and the part nobody quotes honestly

{FIRST_NAME},

Congratulations on the {AMOUNT} MDARD award. I read the announcement ({ANNOUNCEMENT_DATE}), and I am writing about one specific part of your project: {PROJECT_SPECIFIC_SENTENCE, e.g. "an automated filling and packaging line is two-thirds electrical, controls, and data plumbing, and that is the part that usually arrives over budget and under-explained"}.

I run a small tech-service shop out of Grand Rapids. The trades side: controls, sensors, networks, the wiring between machines and the software that watches them. The honest side, which is the reason to read one more paragraph: my prices are posted publicly like a plumber's, my AI drafts letters like this one and I sign them, and every company I write to is logged on a public ledger, including the ones that never answer. You can verify all of it before replying: housecalls.bradley.io

Two things I believe that most vendors selling to farms do not say out loud: your equipment data belongs to you, not to a subscription, and anything we build for you should keep working if I disappear. When we wire something, you get the documentation, the passwords, and your own data in your own hands.

If the {PROJECT_NOUN} buildout could use a second set of eyes, an estimate, or just a sanity check on a vendor quote, reply and I will come out. If not, no reply needed and none will follow.

Bradley Isenbek bradley.io · Grand Rapids, Michigan

P.S. Full disclosure: an AI I operate found the MDARD announcement, drafted this letter, and logged it on the public ledger; I read it, edited it, and signed it. That is how everything at housecalls.bradley.io works, which is the pitch. One email is all we send, ever. A reply of "no thanks" means you never hear from us again, and we log that too.

Slots

• {FIRST_NAME}: a real person from the farm's own published pages; never guessed, never scraped past a wall.
• {AMOUNT}: the granted figure, from the release.
• {ANNOUNCEMENT_DATE}: the release date; the letter carries its date like every honest signal.
• {PROJECT_NOUN}: their words for the thing ("packing line", "goat dairy", "hoophouses").
• {PROJECT_SPECIFIC_SENTENCE}: the one technical observation that proves a human-grade read of their actual project. Written fresh per letter, never boilerplate.

Why this letter is honest

• The signal is a state press release: dated, public, linked.
• The letter offers the trades work the grant already funds, not a new need invented for them.
• No urgency, no follow-up sequence, no "circling back". One email.
• The data-ownership paragraph is doctrine, not marketing: local-first, documented handoff, the customer keeps the keys.