How did you decide what to grow?
Some people like to grow lots of different things, and that can work for them, but after a lot of trial and error, I’ve settled on a core set of crops. For a vegetable to stay in my product mix, it has to meet three key criteria: the crop has to grow well on my land, I have to enjoy growing it, and it has to be something that my family and I enjoy eating.
For example, if my carrot harvest goes really well, and I don’t sell all of them at market, I know I can take them home and my kids will eat them, or I can freeze them for the winter. If I grow a bunch of radicchio and don’t sell it all at the market, what am I going to do with it? It becomes not only a financial loss, but also that feeling of waste really wears on you.
But I’ve also found that farming is too hard to grow something that you don’t like growing. For example, peas grow really well in my soil, and I can sell them well at market, but I really hate the process of growing and harvesting them, so it just wasn’t worth it. If one crop is really bugging you, it’s going to impact how well you do with the rest of your products.
There is also the fact that you have to grow things that people are excited to buy. There are certain crops I grow that I don’t think are very profitable, but the fact that I have them brings customers to my booth, where they buy other things that are more profitable, so it works out well in the end.
How do you decide how much of each crop you’re going to grow?
Again, this has been a process of trial and error. The demand for products is ultimately unpredictable. Maybe one year you’re the only person at market growing winter squash, so you sell a ton of it, and then the next year, someone else starts growing it, and then you don’t sell as much. It’s not a bad thing because competition ultimately drives the quality higher.
But, it’s really important to be responsive to your customers. I find that most farmers at the market are really supportive of each other, but some folks get upset and blame others when they don’t sell all of their product. Just because you grew something doesn’t mean you’re entitled to sell it. I have to distance myself a bit and see it as information. If I’m not selling something, but another farmer is, what do I need to change about what I’m doing? It’s important to be adaptable and to be ready to refocus when you need to.
In general though, I reference back to the year before and think about how much I grew vs. how much I sold and try to adapt accordingly. Because I have always been juggling taking care of kids while farming, I don’t have the most detailed record-keeping system, but I do keep track each week of how much I sell, and then I can generally remember the number of rows I dedicated to each crop. I also use my phone to take pictures of what’s happening on the farm, and those automatically have dates, and I’m often posting those pictures on Instagram, so I’ll sometimes use my Instagram feed to help me remember what I did when.There is no “right way” for farmers to keep records except the one that works. Some folks mark what they did each day on a physical calendar or in a little notebook they keep in their overalls; for me, I find that having a photo record is easiest.
What has your experience been with hiring employees or interns?
It has definitely been a learning experience. Honestly, I had two really bad experiences in one year and after that I decided I wasn’t going to hire anyone I didn’t already know and know well.
But over the years, I did hire both WWOOFers and folks off ATTRA and Good Food job postings.
One thing I learned was that having good boundaries is really important. When people come out to live in the middle of nowhere, away from their support systems, it’s a lot for them and then that becomes a lot for the farmer, who really just needs hands. Sometimes you’re putting a lot of energy into training someone who knows basically nothing about farming, and then when they find out what it’s really like, they’re not that interested, so it feels like you’ve wasted all that time. It becomes an educational thing, which is beautiful, but most farmers don’t have the spare time for that, and it’s not like they’re paying you for the education. You’re even expected to pay them, even though you could do the work much faster yourself.
For me–and I think for all small businesses–there’s a point in the business where you have to invest a lot to take your business to the next level, to really be able to hire people and pay them well. For me, because I have kids and not a lot of support, it just wasn’t safe to take on that kind of risk, so I chose to scale back instead.
What’s one thing you wish you had known sooner?
I wish that I had known how hard farming would be on my body over the long haul, and I wish that I had done more to take care of it early on. Farming tasks are often really repetitive and work your body in really uneven ways– like maybe you’re always kneeling on the same knee.
Especially farming through pregnancy and postpartum, I didn’t really address healing my core, so I was throwing my body around in ways that were even more detrimental. It does catch up to you after five or 10 years, your body is going to show the impact. Now I try to make some time to take care of my body with stretching and to go just a bit slower and move my body in a way that’s more balanced.
What do you think has made your business endure and succeed all these years?
I think my work ethic has been the driving force, which in some ways was initially fueled by a toxic relationship, but is also based on my deep love of farming. You don’t have a successful farm if you don’t truly love the act of farming. You don’t have a good farm if you don’t have a strong connection to the land.
I got lucky starting with access to land and good water, but I also had a lot of challenges that I wouldn’t have made it through without pouring my whole self into farming. And if I can distance myself a bit, I think I probably have some good business acumen for which I don’t give myself much credit.
