In the North, June is the month of getting things done. Crops are flying into the field, weeds are growing, strawberries and peas are ripening. For us type-A farmer types, it’s time to get out there and Do, Do, Do.

But it’s not enough to just get things done. We have to get the right things done, and the things done right. More than at any time of the year, in June we need to take the time and set aside the mental energy to manage activities on the farm.

I don’t think anything is harder in the long days and fast pace of June. And I don’t think anything is more important.

Getting the Right Things Done – Now is the time to take the process of capturing, collecting, deciding, acting, and reviewing more seriously. When you’re standing in the firehose of reality, it’s the hardest and most necessary thing to do.

Pay attention to what has your attention. When you see something that may need a response, make sure you have a way to capture that information without having to solve the problem right that minute. Whether it’s a notepad or the camera on your phone, you need a way that the million distractions on the farm – I need to weed that field, what’s that bug, what if I had this tool – can get out of your head and into a place where it can actually do you some good.

Collect that stuff all in one place. Scraps of paper and pictures in the Gallery on your phone don’t do any good unless you get them into a place where you can focus your attention on decision-making. Email pictures to yourself, and put those notecards into an inbox on your desk so that you can…

Decide what to do. The time to decide what to do is not when you are standing there looking at bugs on your broccoli but need to be leading your crew. Set aside time each day to process through the items in your physical and email inbox and make decisions about what to do. Make decisions and write them down so that you can…

Do. Don’t let management turn into an excuse for inaction. (This is one my foibles.)

Review. Review. Review. You’ve got to stay on top of whether things are getting done right, and have a systematic way of gathering information about what’s going on with the things we’re managing. Review to-do lists at the end of the day to make sure things are getting done. Confirm with your employees that “we’re done weeding the carrots” means “the carrots have been weeded.”

Take time every week to walk every field on your farm to determine what needs to be done. You’ll notice things as you move throughout the farm every week, but taking time every week to intentionally observe what’s going on everywhere on your farm is a key success factor.

Then take time to allocate the time and labor you have available to get it all done, so that you can prioritize the things to do that will get you the biggest results, and head off potential problems at the pass.

For many of my friends in the northeastern United States, the spring of 2015 is starting off with a nasty dry spell.

Even in a non-drought year, water often goes lacking on vegetable farms because of a lack of infrastructure, poor practices, insufficient monitoring, and a simple failure to get out there and put the water on that your crops need.

In 2012, during the extreme drought that we experienced in the Midwest, I had the opportunity to work with and visit several farms, as well as to drag my own farm through the dust. It was a great year to learn about what to do, and what not to do, when it comes to managing irrigation on your crops.

Use a Pressure Gauge – Running an irrigation system without a pressure gauge is like driving a tractor without a tachometer. Nozzles and drip emitters are designed to work at specific pressures (drip emitters are generally designed to work best at 8 – 12 psi), and you can’t judge those pressures by eye or by feel.

You want to check pressure at the beginning of your distribution lines. For drip irrigation systems and other low-pressure systems, I like the pressure gauges that are mounted on a stake, with a barbed poly connector to tie into the header line.

Monitor Soil Moisture – Nobody has spoken to me more strongly about the potential for irrigation management to maximize yields than Jim Crawford of Pennsylvania’s New Morning Farm. Jim monitors soil moisture using a standard soil probe, and the “Look and Feel” method for analysis. A soil probe like the JMC Soil Sampler with Footstep from Gempler’s lets you take a core sample twelve inches deep without too much bending; you can buy cheaper ones, but this is a nice option for making water sampling easy.

Most guides to monitoring irrigation with the “Look and Feel” method for monitoring soil moisture just duplicate information. Louisiana State University has a guide, Irrigation Scheduling Made Easy, with a better-than-average presentation of the concept and practical applications.

Keep in mind that most vegetables have fairly shallow root systems, generally from 6 – 18 inches. If you aren’t keep that area of the soil profile supplied with adequate water, you’re hampering your crop’s ability to perform.

Size Your Supply Lines – Irrigation systems, no matter how small, have supply lines, header lines and distribution lines. The supply lines get water to the field, header lines get the water to the distribution lines, and the distribution lines put the water in the field. These supply lines should be bigger (or at least not smaller) than the header lines, and the header line should be bigger (or at least not smaller) than the distribution lines.

Too many farms that I visited had supply lines that were just too small, reducing pressure and restricting the flow of water, which reduces the efficiency of water distribution. Beginning farmers especially were relying on garden hoses, the most expensive and least effective option for supply lines.

Set up Overhead Irrigation Systems Correctly – For most irrigation systems, lay out sprinkler heads such that the arc of each sprinkler just about reaches the next riser, and so that the sprinklers are offset from each other in adjacent lines. This ensures full, even coverage.

Monitor Your System – You can’t just turn your system on and walk away. When you turn the irrigation system on, you need to check to make certain everything is operating correctly. Is the drip tape leaking? Are the sprinklers all rotating?

Water at Critical Growth Stages – If you have to triage your water supply, focus the water where it will provide the most benefit. Germinating succession crops is obviously critical if you want to keep a supply of vegetables in the pipeline. Pay special attention to water supplies during tuber initiation for potatoes; fruit set and sizing and tomatoes, zucchini, and other fruiting crops; and head sizing in crops like broccoli and cauliflower.

One farm I worked with during the drought had a massive crop of tomatoes that was essentially dry-farmed all summer long. Just as harvest was getting under way, they got the first drenching rain in months – and cracked every tomato on the vine, resulting in massive crop losses.

If You’re Not in a Drought – If you’re in the vegetable business for long, you will experience a drought sooner or later. In 2012, the farms – beginning and experienced – who had invested in adequate and practical watering systems had their most profitable year ever. Irrigation is one area of the farm where, when you need the capacity, you just can’t get by without it. And there is no reasonable work-around. I’ve watched vegetable farmers haul water in 1,500-gallon tanks during a drought, and it’s a money-losing proposition. Invest now. Not only will the investment pay off in a drought year, but an easy, efficient irrigation system pays off in increased yields every year that you use it wisely.

Every growing farm has had to struggle with letting go of tasks and responsibilities. I haven't met many people for whom delegation comes easily. Farmers especially suffer from the understanding that they are the best person to do the job, and the conviction that nobody can do it as well as they can.

For effective delegation, remember that people thrive on two main things at work: knowing what's expected of them, and having what they need to do the job. If you can provide those two things, you've gone a long ways towards effective delegation.

When you really flesh out what's expected when you delegate a task, you give people an important tool for figuring out the variables on their own. To do this, focus on the objective of a task, rather than the method. Objectives are rarely one-dimensional, like, "wash the carrots." Instead, they usually have multiple variables that contribute to achieving a successful outcome: "wash the carrots so that that they look ready to eat without any further cleaning, keep the leaves in good condition, pack them 18 to a tote in alternating layers of three; you should be able to do these 120 bunches in one-and-a-half hours. When you are done, put them on the market pallet in the cooler."

How will I know when I'm done washing the carrots? When they are clean enough to eat and the bunches are packed into totes as described and put away. How will I know if I did a good job? If the carrots are ready to eat, the tops are clean and in good condition, and I finished in less than 90 minutes.

When you give people what they need to do their job well, you set them up for success. What do they need? They need resources: information, tools, and time.

Tools: Give people the tools they need to do their job right - and make sure you include how to use them in your instructions. The best tools, like this asparagus knife, almost tell the worker how to use it without any further instruction (see this video: https://youtu.be/EE-ng8wvdhU). Take the time when you are delegating a task to remind workers of the tools they will need - and be as specific as necessary - don't just tell them to "get a hoe" when you want the work done with a collineal hoe, and they should remember to carry a sharpener with them.

Time: Too often, we delegate tasks without sufficient time for the worker to get them done. Remember that what takes you fifteen minutes to get done may take a newbie thirty minutes or more. And it really helps to know what you can expect from your employees. Measure how long it takes this year to equip yourself better to provide guidance in the future - if you consistently underestimate how long it will take a worker to complete a task, you set them up for failure and disappointment.

Information: When you delegate a task, work hard to give the right amount of information about how to do the job, as well as the desired outcomes. A neophyte carrot washer will need a different level of instructions about the best way to get the job done than somebody who's been washing carrots all summer.

Think as well about the obstacles a worker might face in completing their job. "If you run the pressure washer at too much pressure, you'll rip up the carrots; if it's set too low, you won't be able to get them clean."

And remember to ask right up front: "Do you have any questions?" You're probably delegating tasks so that you can get on to other things, but taking time in the moment to provide all of the necessary information will save you time and money in the end.

On a similar note, make sure that you check back in on a delegated task in fifteen minutes. That's enough time for somebody to get started, but not enough time to do too much damage in most situations.

Here's an inherent contradiction that you won't be able to get around: new workers tend to come onto the farm when your work is tremendously time critical - precisely when you can't afford to give detailed instructions. But just like putting seeds in the ground, providing good information to new workers is an investment in the future. (Also, just like putting seeds in the ground, the more you've been able to think this through in the winter, the better you'll be able to execute a plan for transmitting information.)

When a company buys your product to sell it to somebody else, they charge more to their customers than they pay you - that's how they cover their own expenses, and how they make money in return for their management expertise, risk, and investment.

The additional amount they charge can be expressed in two different ways: as a markup, or as a margin. A markup describes the additional percentage a reseller makes on the product, whereas a margin describes the percentage of the selling price that a reseller makes over and above the price they paid for it.

Understanding margins can help you estimate the price a store or wholesale distributor is paying for their product. Margins are also part of the language of the trade, so understanding margins puts you on a more professional footing when you talk with buyers.

Margins are useful because they describe the "gross profit margin" that a reseller actually gets. The margin has to cover all of the reseller’s expenses related to selling produce. For example, natural food stores in my area use a 42% margin as their basis for calculating retail produce prices. That 42% of their selling cost has to cover all of the store's direct expenses related to selling produce: the labor, bags, and display items, as well as the overhead costs of running the store: electricity, rent, bookkeeping, cash registers, and everything else.

In other words, if the store is charging $1.00 for a bunch of parsley, they’ve got $0.42 to cover all of the costs of selling that parsley, because they spent $0.58 to purchase it for sale in their store.

And, even though they use a 42% margin to calculate their prices, they expect to realize only a 35% margin on their produce sales overall, since they lose a certain amount to "shrink," due to spoilage, trimming, blemishes, customer handling, and so forth.

Different outlets have different cost structures, so they use different margins.

A wholesale distributor I've worked with uses a standard margin of 23%. They have lower expenses per unit sold than a retail store does, so they don't need to charge as high of a margin.

In fact, different product lines in a grocery store also have different cost structures, so the margin on canned goods is going to be different than it is on fresh produce, since canned goods don't have the same risk of spoilage and don't have the same labor requirements as fresh produce.

And that's where margins matter to market farmers. When you have higher selling costs, you need a higher margin. When you sell produce at farmers market, your costs - labor, stall fees, shrink - are higher than your cost to sell to a retail store. If you sell at a retail store and at a farmers market, your prices in each of those markets should reflect your costs in each of those markets. It costs the same amount of money to grow a bunch of kale for your farmers market stand as it does to grow a bunch of kale for a retail store, but it costs a lot more to sell that bunch of kale at a farmers market.

We'll continue this topic next week when we get into margin math, so stay tuned!

Jordan Marr at The Ruminant was kind enough to have me on his podcast recently for two episodes talking about successful culinary herb production in a farm operation.  In the first episode, I make the case for focusing on herbs, and discusses the proper sourcing, and subsequent propagation, of herb cuttings.  In the second episode, I talk about how to harvest herbs in a way that strikes a balance between high production and low labor costs.

Episode 34 - Part 1
Episode 35 - Part 2

In any cropping operation, you're going to put a lot of energy into weeds - it's your choice if you want to put that energy into preventing them, controlling them, or dealing with them.

Prevention takes two forms: an ongoing reduction of the numbers of weed seeds in the soil over a number of years, and the use of crop rotations to set following crops up for success.
If one year's seeding is seven years' weeding, then keeping weeds from going to seed is perhaps the most fundamental principle of weed prevention.

The creative and judicious use of crop rotations can also work to prevent weeds. At Pennsylvania’s Beech Grove Farm, Anne and Eric Nordell combine shallow tillage with the following crop rotation in a technique they call Weed the Soil, Not the Crop.  Complete details of their process can be found in their book.

Year 1: Late-planted cash crop
Year 2: Fallow and cover crops to winterkill
Year 3: Early-planted cash crop
Year 4: Fallow and cover crops to overwinter

At Illinois’ Angelic Organics, Farmer John Peterson emphasizes weed prevention using the following four-year rotation:

Year 1 and Year 2: Perennial cover crop
Year 3: Early-season vegetables followed by winterkilled cover crop
Year 4: Hard-to-weed vegetables

On both farms, fertility is applied to the cover crops, and work is done to prepare the soil for the following year, reducing demands on spring tillage work and labor.

Control depends on the right operation of the right tools.

It's easy to invest in weed control tools- it just takes money. It's a lot harder to invest in the will and the systems to use those tools effectively. Invest in basic, versatile tools for weed control - sweeps and knives for the tractor, stirrups for the wheel hoe - then work to get the weed control systems working right before you invest in fancier tools.

Weed control tools must be applied early, often, and well.

Early: The right time to kill weeds is before you can even see them. It takes serious monitoring and awareness to target weeds before they break through the surface, but hoeing or cultivating weeds in the white thread stage hits them at the weakest link in their lifecycle. Every day after they break through the soil surface makes them a little bit stronger.

Often: There is not a magical number of cultivations that constitutes sufficient weed control. You're done controlling weeds when you're done controlling weeds, not after three wheel-hoeings or two hillings. And count on hand-weeding - even with great weed control, a few hardy specimens are likely to slip through.

Well: Time spent adjusting cultivators is an investment, not an expense. Time spent setting things up right ensures that you maximize returns on time you spend driving through the fields. If you farm anywhere other than the desert, you never know when you'll get another chance to kill weeds, so kill every single one you possibly can each time you hit the field with a cultivator, flamer, or hoe.

Dealing with weeds is just depressing.

Weeds compete with plants for sunshine, water, and nutrients, reducing your yields. They reduce the airflow around the plants, increasing drying time and allowing fungi to propagate and bacteria to multiply.

Plus, harvesting in weeds takes more time than harvesting in clean fields - and can keep mechanized harvesters from working at all. More time harvesting means more expense, lost opportunities, and lower quality as it takes longer to move crops to the cooler.

I've picked my share of beans in pollinating ragweed, and pulled my share of weeds out of salad greens. And I must say, preventing and controlling weeds is easier on the spirit, not to mention easier on the bottom line.

Rotational grazers call the resulting growth pattern a "grazing wedge"; at Rock Spring Farm, we called it "the harvest wave" (I've always had a fascination with surfing, and waves sound much more fun than wedges). Sometimes the wave got ahead of us - the chard leaves would grow over-mature and develop spots, or the oregano would show signs of flowering - and we would cut back the over-mature portion of the bed to manage crop quality and productivity.

Surfing the harvest wave allowed us to minimize harvest labor by reducing the number of steps taken because it encouraged even regrowth and discouraged workers from hunting-and-pecking their way through the field. It also maximized yields by helping us identify when a section of the bed needed maintenance to stay green, healthy, and growing.