Category: Business Philosophy - Purple Pitchfork

CSA Marketing Triangle

2/18/2016

Mark Boen says CSA members want three things: choice, convenience, and connection to the farm.

Which is why he’s moving away from CSA as a way to market his produce.

The choice, convenience, connection trio of the CSA is similar to the contractor’s trio of fast, cheap, and good. Everybody wants all three, but you only get two at most.

It’s your job to decide which ones you’re going to promise. Making the right promise will be key to retaining members.

Urgent or Important?

2/11/2016

Fixing the sheep fence is important before the sheep are out on pasture.

Fixing the sheep fence is urgent when the sheep are eating your beets.

Changing the oil and performing other maintenance on the tractor is important.

Fixing a broken tractor becomes urgent when rainclouds are on and the crew is ready to go out to the field for transplanting.

Spending focused time with your kids is important.

Dealing with a meltdown is urgent.

Getting the flame weeder set up and ready to clean the weeds off of the carrot field the day before the carrots germinate is important.

Flaming on the right day is urgent.

Eating well is important.

Being hangry is just ugly.

Importance tends to bleed over into urgency as time passes. And it tends to ramp up the work and the stress level and the expense. Not fixing the fence before the sheep get out means that you not only have to fix the fence, you have to put the sheep back in.

Plus, you’ve fed the sheep on relatively expensive beets. Just be glad they didn’t find the radicchio.

When you take care of the important things, the urgent things don’t show up as often. And it almost always takes less time. Taking two extra minutes to make sure the fence is hot and tight means that you don’t have to chase the sheep.

It’s a Trap

1/21/2016

Poor performance begets poor performance.

When things don’t go well on the farm, you have less money, so you try to get by with less.

You skimp on fertilizer, so you don’t get good yields. Labor efficiency goes down because less-than-vigorous crops take longer to pick per harvested unit than high yielders. Now you’ve got less money, so you have to find another place to cut.

You skimp on hired labor, so you have less time and energy to focus on managing your operation and creating a rich family life. Without adequate help, timeliness of operations suffers, so you don’t get crops seeded, transplanted, and weeded on time, which reduces saleable yields and increases labor inputs. Again, you’ve got less money, so you have to find another place to cut.

Your shop’s a mess, so you don’t put your tools away, so the next time you need them, you have to spend extra time hunting for them, so by the time you’ve finished cranking that nut you’re in a hurry to get back out to the field, and the wrench goes back in the pile instead of getting put away where you can find it again.

One farm I worked with even tried to cut seed expenses to the bare bones, until the managers had a vigorous debate over whether they could buy seeds for the fall storage crops since they had already spent their seed budget!

And so it goes all across the farm, round and round and round again. Until, like the fabled and quite endangered Malaysian Concentric Bird, which flies in ever-smaller circles, you finally disappear up your own backside.

Unlike manufacturing, on the farm, many of our expenses are actually investments. Buying more charging ports doesn’t result in more iPhones. But adding more fertilizer will result in more crops, improving yields and income at a rate great that the increased expense. Adding more water – pumping more water and spending the money to manage the irrigation system – can dramatically increase yields (and, sufficient water is key to maximizing the utilization of soil fertility). Properly managed labor increases the farm’s productivity by accomplishing tasks in a timely manner that frees you up to focus more of your energy on actually managing the operation.

(Of course, this is only up to a point – but most market farms I work with simply aren’t at that point.)

The only way out is to invest more time, energy, creativity, intellect, or money into the things that are holding you back.

[HT to Edward Abbey for the Malaysian Concentric Bird.]

Stack the Deck

12/24/2015

I think it’s fair to say that most of the success factors in market farming can be described in a bell curve. As the bell curve implies, most of us have okay access to markets, and we farm ground that’s okay for market farming. We have okay business acumen, okay marketing skills, okay land-access arrangements. Our available labor is largely okay, we have okay innate organizational skills, and okay willpower to get out there and get the right work done on the right day.

Most of our models in farming, however, have something more than okay: they’ve got several factors located far out to the right on the bell curve. They’re located close to concentrations of wealth and enthusiasm for social righteousness and good food. They got into the market at just the right time. They inherited land or bought it on the cheap. They acquired business acumen in another line of work. They discovered what they wanted to do early in life and had a few dominoes tip in just the right way. They’ve inherited or developed the traits that help them stay organized, intuit what needs to be done, and relate well to people.

That’s not to say that our models don’t work hard, develop new skills, enhance value, innovate, and do a thousand other things right day in and day out. If you’re going to succeed in this business – any business! – you’ve got to do a lot more than get lucky. And “getting lucky” is almost always a function of hard work and smarts in addition to having life’s dice roll your way. “Making it” in market farming, especially over the long haul, is never handed to you on a silver platter. (If it is, I haven’t seen an example.)

But it does mean that many of our models in farming can get away with things that those of us without a stack of lucky breaks at our backs can’t. They can get away without a monthly cash-flow budget, or filling out financial statements, or getting a line of credit at the bank. They don’t need to understand financing because they don’t have to incur debt in order to reach their goals. They don’t require a system for employee management because it just comes naturally to them.

The rest of us need to stack the deck – and the best way to stack the deck is to increase the intentionality that we bring to the management of the farm. And that means increasing our use of the plan-monitor-control cycle.

And if there’s one area that drives everything else when it comes to management, it’s money. Because money is the bottom-line expression of value and ability to continue farming in our world. That’s not to say that money has to guide everything you do, but money provides the foundation that allows every other expression of our values to be present in the world. It allows us to farm another year.

And this time of year – right now, as a matter of fact! – is the best time to put together the three key tools you need to monitor your farm’s financial performance: a balance sheet, an accrual-adjusted income statement, and a statement of cash flows. As we move towards the start of the new year, it’s the perfect time to take inventories of our supplies, and set aside an hour on New Year’s Eve to check balances on our bank accounts, accounts receivable and payable, loans, and credit cards.

These three tools, conventional as they are, can provide insights into your farming operation, especially when compiled year after year, when plugged into various farm financial ratios, as described in resources such as this Farm Financial Scorecard. Tracking these year after year can provide not only important measurements of your farm’s performance, they can also help diagnose problems and provide an early warning of negative trends in your business.

(Please see the October and November issues of Growing for Market – available here if you don’t subscribe already – for my articles on assembling financial statements, as well as the book, Fearless Farm Finances, which I coauthored.)

Debt is Like a Chainsaw

12/10/2015

My friend and fellow financial geek Paul Dietmann says, debt is like a chainsaw. With a chainsaw, you can cut a lot of firewood in a hurry – increasing your capacity to keep your house warm over the winter at a reduced cost.

Or you can cut your leg off.

Like any tools, it’s all about how you use it. Yes, it has risks. But it also has rewards.

Good debt serves a defined purpose to create long-term outcomes. It includes a plan to service the debt – not just a gut feeling that you’ll be able to do it. And good debt creates value for your business.

Good debt – especially long-term debt – should increase the productive capacity of your farm.

Good debt provides a return on investment commensurate with the cash flow required to service it. If you’re borrowing money for your business, the borrowing should create additional cash flow in line with the payments that are due. This is why an operating loan or crop note usually doesn’t require monthly servicing of principal –it takes time for those tomatoes to grow and yield a return on your investment so that you can pay it back.

The payback terms of good debt matches the time it will take to achieve your returns. Don’t finance capital investments with short-term debt, and don’t shorten the term of your debt on your loan documents unnecessarily. By all means, pay loans back faster than the schedule laid out in your loan documents – but you want to be the one providing the discipline to pay down debt quickly, rather than asking the bank to do it. After all, you’re likely to be a lot more flexible if something goes wrong, or if another opportunity presents itself.

The balance on good debt falls faster than the value of the item it was used to finance. When you borrow money to buy a tractor, that tractor will probably be worth less than what you borrow on it the moment you drive it off the lot (or, if you borrowed money to buy a two-wheeled tractor, the moment it’s delivered to your door). If you’ve made a smart investment, the tractor will retain enough value that, pretty soon, it’s worth more than you owe on it – that way, by the time you pay off your loan, you’ve got an asset that has contributed to increased equity on your balance sheet.

Remember: debt doesn’t just take the form of cash borrowing from banks and relatives. When you sell CSA shares, that’s a kind of debt: you’ve borrowed your customers’ money with an expectation that you are going to provide them with vegetables. Too often, I see farmers move CSA sales from winter and spring into the fall to cover cash shortfalls, which creates an unhealthy spiral because they’re bringing cash flow that they’ll need next year into the present – it’s the equivalent of sticking your finger in a hole in the dike. It may be a good way to plug a leak for the moment, but it isn’t a very good long-term strategy.

Likewise, when you pre-sell farmers market vegetables, you’re taking in cash now instead of taking in cash later. Since most pre-sale arrangements come with a discount, farmers who do this run the risk of borrowing from the future at a rate much higher than what would be charged by the bank for an operating loan.

Alternatives to debt also have risks and rewards. By refusing to borrow money to make smart investments, you might miss out on opportunities to grow your business, or enhance its sustainability. Forgoing good tools and the right facilities because of an aversion to debt can be the equivalent of cutting your firewood by hand – a noble undertaking, but one that might result in far more work for the same results.

Thanksgiving and Golf

12/3/2015

At the Thanksgiving table last Thursday, the conversation turned to golf. My partner and my dad’s both play golf, and both tried to convince us that we should go along when the grass greens up in the spring. We both insisted that we have gone along for golfing, but they were both pretty adamant that mini-golf doesn’t count. Okay, fine, we said, we’ll come along and drive the cart with the beer cooler. Nope, they said. You should play. You’ll enjoy it!

Dad and I are both pretty clear that we would find it pretty frustrating, and would probably lose our tempers. At least a little bit.

My partner said that she gets frustrated, too. “You know, sometimes you have the game of your life, and the next time you go out and act like you’ve never held a club in your life.”

We all laughed, but I took out my Universal Information Capture Device (the note cards and pen that I carry in my shirt pocket) and made a note, which made everybody laugh.

I wrote it down because that’s the difference between an amateur and a professional. Professionals get consistently positive results. They don’t win all the time, and they may have an occasional off game (or season), but they consistently get it more right than not.

Consistency. And consistent improvement. Let’s go there.

(Just don’t make me do it while I’m holding a golf club.)

Why I’m Not Talking about the FSMA Produce Rule (Yet)

I’m not talking about the FSMA Produce Rule, which was recently released, because even the experts and people who have been immersed in it for the last several years are still parsing it out. Expect more information as we know more, including a podcast planned for release next week with Sophia Kruszewski from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition about what we know at this time.

In the meantime, NSAC is posting rule interpretations here http://sustainableagriculture.net/category/food-safety/.

Please keep in mind that, for most of the regulations, farms will have between two and four years to come into compliance. And I’ll be doing my best to help you make the new rules work for you and for your farm.

You are Not Your Customer

11/12/2015

When you sell your goods, remember that you aren’t your customer.

Your customer has different values and different perspectives than you do.

You may look at an heirloom tomato and think, “I wouldn’t pay $4.00 a pound for that!” But you can grow it, and they can’t. And they’re watching Bobby Flay tell them how great it is. (Actually, if you’re a farmer, the fact that they have time to watch cooking shows probably tells you that you are not your customer.)

Don’t set your prices based on what you would pay.

Taking Up Space

11/5/2015

Things that you have, but aren't using, suck up resources.

Equipment sitting in the bone yard requires you to mow around it if you don't want a thistle patch. And sitting there, it occupies space on your balance sheet that could be converted to something productive.

An unread book sitting on your bookshelf provides a great excuse for procrastination.

Boxes that you no longer use take up space on the shelf, requiring you to work around them.

Policies that you don't enforce erode your authority as an employer.

Categories in your chart of accounts that you no longer use encourage mis-allocation of spending.

Items on a to-do list that you don't intend to complete creates a soul-sucking cognitive dissonance.

Resentment and bitterness occupy mental space that would be better used on love and kindness.

Cleaning up and clearing out frees up mental, physical, and financial energy. It allows you to focus on the things that move your farm, business, and life in the direction you want to go.

What can you clean up and clear out to free up your energy to more productive and rewarding uses?

It’s the Coffee, Not the Cup

10/29/2015

I grew up in Seattle. Back when Starbucks sold beans, but not coffee. Back when the mermaid still had her navel. My dad and I used to wait in line on Saturday mornings to get the beans for the office coffee, and the nice woman at the cash register would let me have a chocolate-covered coffee bean.

I remain a coffee snob.

Actually, I’m kind of half-assed as a coffee snob. I don’t have a fancy brewing machine, and I have a run-of-the-mill Braun grinder, and a Chemex coffee carafe. But I won’t compromise on the beans. I order the beans in bulk from Café Mam out in Oregon because they consistently supply me with the best coffee beans I’ve ever had.

If you start with good beans, you can make your coffee incrementally better with a burr grinder and a fancy coffee machine. You can even make it better by putting it in a good cup (white, thick ceramic with a nice lip). But if you start with crappy beans, no fancy grinder, high-priced machine, or solid coffee cup is going to make your coffee any better.

The most important part of any enterprise is the foundation – until the foundation is sound, everything else is just a distraction.

If you grow crops, manage your soil fertility before you worry about making compost teas.

If you raise livestock, see to your fencing, water supply, and feed before you dig into aromatherapy for your cows.

If you use a tractor to cultivate, master the basics of knives, sweeps, and shovels before you invest in the latest fancy weeding equipment.

If you manage employees, don’t just read books and go to seminars about managing employees – actually do the things they say to do.

If you grow vegetables, make sure you can keep them watered and get them cold before you make promises about delivery and freshness.

If you buy an app to manage your crop planning, make sure it handles planting dates smoothly before you worry too much about how pretty the maps are.

If you run a food hub, figure out how you’re going to get your margins so that you can pay your employees before you start promising prices.

If you want to speed up your vegetable harvest, master weed control and fertility before you expect your employees or harvest machines to perform miracles.

It’s the coffee, not the cup, that really matters.

Tools for Managing and Motivating Employees on the Farm

Employees make it possible to get more done, but managing workers and their work takes dedicated time, energy and processes. Whether you manage one seasonal worker or a large year-round crew, good management can make the difference between making headway on your farm's work or just creating headaches. Join veteran farmer and educator Chris Blanchard to learn how to create a productive, positive work environment by communicating clear expectations and implementing systems for efficiency and accountability. In this workshop, you'll learn how to: utilize practical tools to increase employee satisfaction and productivity, remove emotion from management decisions and actions, and build a team culture.

Upcoming Events:

Cedar Rapids, Iowa | Monday, November 30
hosted by Iowa Valley Resource Conservation and Development
10:00 AM - 2:30 PM

Columbia, Missouri | Tuesday, December 8
hosted by Missouri Young Farmers Coalition
10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

A Pricing Rubric

8/20/2015

Pricing can make or break your business, and you have to approach it with care - especially when making adjustments for customers buying in quantity. The less you charge for your product, the more certain you need to be that you are pricing it right, because the costs are going to be much closer to the price that you receive.

First, you’ve got the cost of the product. This is what it takes to actually make the thing - what it costs, including labor and overhead, to grow and harvest a carrot.

Second, you’ve got the cost of selling. This is the money and time that you spend to get the thing to market, sell it there, and get it back home. You might want to think of this as an entirely separate division of your farm - or even another “business” entirely - as the processes here bear very little relationship to those of actually farming.

If you do a farmer’s market, this is the time to load the van, drive to the farmer’s market, set up, sell sell sell, break down, load the van, drive back home, and unload the van. It’s the cost of fuel and a market stall. That’s a lot of time and money, and you should get a lot of money for it.

If you take orders from stores and restaurants, this is the time it takes to send out information about what you’ve got, answer questions, take the orders, put the orders on pallets, load the truck, write the invoice deliver the product, and drive back home. It’s the cost of fuel and boxes. It’s probably less time and money per carrot, and you’re probably going to get less money for it.

This is a key point: you lower your per-unit price when you lower your per-unit costs. If you are taking orders from a restaurant for one bunch of carrots at a time to make up a $25 sale that you deliver, that’s not a wholesale sale, even if it is a business-to-business sale. It should be priced at retail prices. (When my business shops at Staples, I pay the same prices that I do when I go there for my daughter’s back-to-school supplies.)

Likewise, when you sell something to a food hub or a distributor, it may not make sense to take a lower price than you already get for selling to stores and restaurants unless they are buying in a quantity that significantly reduces your cost per carrot sold.

Third, you’ve got the risk of selling. When you sell a product at farmer’s market, you harvest, wash, and pack that product without ever knowing if you will sell it. If it rains, if there’s a big game on, if traffic is bad… you might wish that you had taken less product to market. Every carrot you sell has to pay for the other carrots that you took but didn’t sell. (The bank charges higher interest for risky loans because they still have to make money on the loans that don’t get paid back.)

When you take orders before you harvest, you reduce your risk because you can harvest only what you’ve already sold. This lowers your effective cost per unit, because you don’t have the risk of harvested, but unsold, product.

Take the time to understand the why behind your pricing levels for different customers and different quantities, and you’ll be one step closer to making great pricing decisions.

Another Perspective on Management

8/13/2015

I really like this definition of management: the organization and coordination of resources and activities to achieve a defined outcome.

But how do you do it?

You plan. You monitor. And you control. If necessary, you make a new plan.

If I’m want to go to buy groceries, I make a plan for how to get there: I’m going to head down East Washington to Baldwin and turn left, then turn right on Willy Street.

Then I get in the car and start driving. When I’m in the car, I monitor things at all different levels - I check the tires before I get in, and glance at the fuel gauge when I turn it on. I watch the speedometer. I check my mirrors every seven seconds. And as a I drive down East Washington, I watch for the landmarks that tell me I’m getting close to Baldwin. I also pay attention to where the car is actually going - I’m almost always a little bit off to the left or to the right, and I make constant little corrections to stay on track.

If I stop paying attention to keeping the car on track - if I decide to send a text, or to check my email - suddenly a few seconds can go by and I’m waaaay off track, with potentially disastrous consequences. Constant monitoring and small corrections keep me on the road; when I stop monitoring and correcting, I’ve stopped managing, and suddenly things can careen crazily out of control.

(I went cold turkey on texting and emailing while driving over 18 months ago, and I’m still going strong. Nothing’s that urgent.)

I want to monitor the right things at the right intervals. I don’t need to check the fuel gauge as I drive down the road, and I don’t need to check the oil every time I get in the car (at least, not in this car. I’ve had cars where it was prudent to do so).

If something happens that’s very much not to plan - I miss my turn on Baldwin Street, or I run over a nail - I go back to square one and replan. This might mean that I need to turn someplace else (if I missed my turn), or that groceries are off the list of things to do today entirely (if I run over a nail).

Here are some monitoring schedules you might think about applying to your farm business (these are by no means meant to be exhaustive. Sorry.):

Crops
Daily - Do the transplants need water? Do freshly seeded or freshly transplanted crops need water?

Weekly - What needs to be done on the farm? Scout for pests. Scout for weeds and weeding opportunities. What’s ready to harvest this coming week? In two weeks? What needs to be seeded or transplanted according to the plan? Did the transplants or seeds do what I expected them to do?

Yearly - How did the crops do? Did we perform according to plan? What went right, what went wrong? Do we need to plant more, or less, or earlier, or later?

Finances
Weekly - Are there bills to pay? Do I have money in my bank account? What’s my credit card balance?

Monthly - Are there any outstanding receivables? Does the bank think I have as much money as I think I have? How is my financial plan working out?

Quarterly - What do I owe the government?

Yearly - What do I owe the government now? How have my assets, liabilities, and equity changed in the last year? Did I make progress last year?

People
Daily - How is the work going? Are staff meeting standards? Is heat or cold an issue to be addressed?

Weekly - How are my people doing? Are staff meeting standards? Are there people on the crew who shouldn’t be? Do we need extra help? What’s coming up for family events?

Monthly - Do people know how they’re doing? What adjustments do we need to make? Am I spending enough time with my crew, my kids, my partner?

Yearly - Do I need more staff or less staff? Do we need to change the staff structure?

Yourself
Daily - Am I hydrated? Am I eating well? Am I giving attention to the things that need attention?

Weekly - What am I trying to accomplish right now? What do I need to do next? Am I getting enough sleep? How’s my healthy? Is my allergy season coming up? Would a visit to the chiropractor now prevent a bigger problem soon?

Yearly - Am I doing what I want to be doing? Am I heading in the right direction?

Say What You Mean

8/6/2015

I drove by a McDonald's recently. The sign on the front advertised Artisan Grilled Chicken.

I went in my local co-op and saw baby carrots that were just big carrots that were cut into pieces.

I went to farmers market and saw growers selling Sungold cherry tomatoes as heirlooms. Also, Green Zebra was released in 1983.

I've worked with any number of clients who call their experienced employees managers, but don't give them any decision-making power or the training to exercise it.

I have a daughter who says she's literally starving to death. She's not.

Various companies market CSAs that have very little to do with community, support, or agriculture - other than the fact that the food did originate with a farmer.

Language is a powerful tool, and its misuse does us all a disservice. I know my daughter isn't starving to death (that's what ramen noodles are for), but when I use language carelessly with customers and employees, I am setting myself up for misunderstandings and disappointments.

Is It Part of the Job?

7/2/2015

We all want to spend more time focused on the things we want to focus on. We want to farm, not (pick one or more) clean the packing shed, do the bookkeeping, fill out the records, market CSA shares…

Likewise, our employees want to get their jobs done - they want to bag the spinach, pick the chard, transplant the broccoli, rather than keeping the records and adjusting the transplanter.

Too often, critical tasks end up being “not the job.” I’ve seen large farms without records, discovered fields of freshly transplanted lettuce with the top of the soil block sticking out of the soil, and irrigation running with only half of the sprinklers turning - but at least the water was on, the lettuce wasn’t in the greenhouse, and the crops were getting harvested!

On my own farm, critical tasks often didn’t get the attention they were due, because they were treated as extras until the moment they had to be done - writing CSA newsletters, bookkeeping, greasing zerks on machinery, even the record-keeping (and we had a reputation to uphold!).

It didn’t change until we began to make things “part of the job.” Rather than writing CSA newsletters after the kids were in bed the night before deliveries, we began to dedicate time early in the week. I set up a system to rapidly sort bills and receipts as they came in to make bookkeeping easier, and set aside an hour a week to entering them into QuickBooks. We developed a system of written plans and instructions that were incorporated into the same sheet of paper where the records were kept, so that the record-keeping was already in the same place as the work that was being done.

We also worked to be clear about what the job actually was: harvest wasn’t finished until the quantities and fields were recorded in the right place; and we stopped just “getting the lettuce out” and “getting the irrigation running” and started defining what done looked like.

To make something “part of the job,” you need to do one of two things: dedicate time and resources, or make the task inseparable from the work.

SWSWSWN

6/18/2015

When it comes to dealing with sales, it's important to remember SWSWSWN.

Some will. Some won't. So what. Next.

Some folks will buy what you're selling. That's great.

Some folks won't buy what you're selling. It doesn't matter how good it is, how fair the price is, how righteous your growing practices are.

So what? That's business. Rejection of your product or your offerings or your price is not a rejection of you.

Move on to the next prospect, the next product, the next project.

(This works with crops as well as sales. Some crops will make it. Some won’t. It’s not about you, and it’s not always about your skill as a farmer. Sometimes things are simply beyond your control.)

The Plan Never Survives First Contact with the Enemy

6/11/2015

Farming, like war, rarely goes according to plan. But farming, like war, rewards careful planning.

The Prussian general, Herman von Moltka, noted that the plan of battle never survives first contact with the enemy. But he also knew that you never to go battle without a plan.

Why do all of that planning if it doesn’t survive first contact with reality? Because it’s the process, not the plan, that really matters.

Time spent planning is time spent assessing the objectives you want to achieve, the benchmarks you’ll need to achieve along the way, the resources you can bring to bear, and the activities you will need to coordinate to get there.

When you spend the time and focus to develop a plan, you develop a deeper relationship to the constraints and opportunities present in the field, whether it’s a field of battle or a field of vegetables. This increased awareness helps you make better decisions when the plan inevitably doesn’t work out.

Don’t abandon planning just because your plans don’t go the way you expect them to. Plan because it provides the information you need to know if you are on track, and, if you aren’t, how to bring things back to the center when it comes to meeting your objectives.

Focus on Success Instead of Failure

4/9/2015

When I started working on farms back in 1990, I got pretty lucky. Early on, I got to work on farms like Santa Barbara’s Fairview Gardens and Wisconsin’s Harmony Valley Farm, and moved through several research operations and even managed the gardens at Seed Savers Exchange – places where weeds simply weren’t tolerated, and where crops were, by and large, successful, even in adverse conditions.

My first year at Harmony Valley Farm – back then it was about 35 acres of vegetables, although it’s much larger now – was 1993, one of the wettest years on record. Despite the horrible growing conditions, not a weed went to seed on the farm (that sounds bold, but I am not exaggerating) – I clearly remember weeding crews bucketing weeds out of the fields so that they wouldn’t re-root in the ongoing rainfall.

And the crops performed well; in fact, I still have nightmares about the bumper crop of celeriac that year, which I spent day after day trimming and washing.

At Fairview Gardens and Seed Savers Exchange, the gardens were public or in public view, and image mattered, so fields were clean and the fields were well maintained.

At all of these farms, trucks and tractors were expected to start. Machinery worked when it was hooked up. Greenhouses didn’t freeze or overheat.

I was also very fortunate to be exposed to farm after farm where there was an internal expectation of success. Funny how that works – successful farmers tend to refer you to successful farms. When I saw farms that didn’t work, it left a deep feeling of unease that kind of gnawed at my gut – that’s not how things were supposed to be.

So when I started managing a farm on my own, and again when I bought my own farm, I expected the fields to be free of weeds. They weren’t, but I knew that it was possible, and had an expectation that I would be able to create that result. I expected tractors and trucks to start, and machinery to work, and when it didn’t, I had an expectation that things would look different. It wasn’t always easy, and I didn’t always succeed, but my early farm experiences had created a frame of success that I could picture my own farm inhabiting.

Too often when we face failure, we focus on what went wrong, the mistakes that could have been avoided and the factors that kept us from getting the results we wanted. It is far more profitable to focus on what success looks like, so that you can begin to frame a model of what your farm’s success could look like.

Find successful farms – not farms that are a little bit successful, but farms that have withstood the test of time, that have respect in the community, that look like they work.

And when you do find success, work to understand what has fostered success on those farms: What are the circumstances that made this farm work here, and how do they apply in your situation? What skills do the farmers have that make them stand out, and how can you develop or hire those? What attitudes and attributes does the farm’s team bring to its work, and what you do to foster those same attitudes and attributes in your approach to your farm?

It's Not Just About Fast

12/25/2014

I love to work fast. When I worked on a fish-processing ship in Alaska, I would simply show up to work twice each day and put 120 fish each minute into the filet machine, heads down and bellies to the right. What a great job! - I just showed up and cranked all day, then ate and slept and did it again. I lost track of time more than once in that fever dream of fish, as the days and weeks slipped by in the fluorescent hold of the ship.

But it's not just about fast. You can be the fastest fish slinger in the world, but if the filet machine doesn't work, or the fish aren't in the hold, or the crew is sick, you don't get to crank.

I love throwing twist ties around bunches of kale as fast as I can, watching the harvest crates and little kale palms pile up in my wake.

But it's not just about fast. A thousand things have to be done right and at the right time before you get to throw twist ties on the kale leaves.

Before you can even think about the harvest, it's about having the tools and the techniques and the people and the energy you need to get the kale seeded and watered, the ground ready, the plants transplanted, and the weeds and the diseases and the bugs taken care of.

It's about endurance If you blow out your back or push yourself to exhaustion getting the kale plants out to the field, you won't have what it take to seed the rutabagas tomorrow.

When comparing investment opportunities - whether for spending money on equipment or spending time on systems development - the mental exercise of figuring out how much money a new tool or system will save is an easy lure, and with harvest labor taking up such a large share of a vegetable farm's expense, it's tempting to put the time and money into those systems. But we need to think about more than just the cost savings - we have to think about getting the crop in ahead of a rain, getting the rows straight to make cultivating easy, and getting each job done without leaving yourself gasping for breath at the end of it, too tired to do it again tomorrow or next year.

PICNIC Problems

12/11/2014

Over the years, I've spent some time dabbling in the world of FileMaker database design. (Maybe more than dabbling - I built several databases for my own use when I organized presentations for the MOSES Organic Farming Conference and for managing my farm, and helped design and implement a large project for event and customer management at MOSES.) Recently, I was reminded of a problem that I learned about through the database world - the PICNIC problem.

Sometimes, computer-techie types run into problems that they just can't solve through programming, file structuring, or procedure writing. Often, this is a PICNIC problem - Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.

In any case... I was working on some computer-y issues this past week and getting very frustrated - to the point where I actually picked up the phone to call customer service to try to get some help, whereupon I promptly discovered that the problem was staring me right in the face.

Problem in chair, not in computer.

I spent a lot of time on my farm assuming that the problem was external - that the workforce was lazy, that this one customer couldn't manage their inventory, that the tractor dealer didn't think I was important enough to make me a priority.

Over time - and through a lot of personal and professional pain - I learned that as the manager of the farm, the solutions had to lie with me. Employees not doing what I want them to do? I needed to give them better tools, better structures, and better motivations to get what I wanted out of them. Customer couldn't manage inventory? I needed to help them understand the dates in our lot code, inspect my product in their cooler, and share ways that other customers managed their inventory. Tractor dealer didn't think I was important enough? I needed to find a new tractor dealer.

Gradually, I learned that the problem was with me, not with the people and things that I was interacting with. And even if the problem really did belong to them, I had to take responsibility for making change.

(The funny thing about a PICNIC problem is that if the system design actually took into account human limitations, there wouldn't be a problem in the chair. Can you design your farm systems to take into account your own human limitations?)

Six Things My Tractor Taught Me

11/6/2014

When necessary, a tractor works all night. A tractor doesn’t quit because it’s dark, or cold, or because Monday Night Football is on. I don’t think many farm tractors work all night, every night, but when it’s necessary, they perform. On the farm, every year, there are a few days and nights that make a critical difference – to run a successful farm, you’ve got to be willing to get out there and go the extra mile.

Maintenance matters – and there’s more maintenance to do than you think. Putting the time and money into maintenance makes certain that when the tractor needs to work all night, it can. And maybe more importantly, it means that when you need the tractor to start because the crew is waiting for you or the rain is on its way, it will. Too often, I see clients skimping on the necessary maintenance over the winter due to financial or time constraints – that’s a mistake that just costs more down the road, in increased repair expenses and lost opportunities.

When a tractor’s off, it’s off. On the flip side, a tractor doesn’t do the work half way. It’s either on, or it’s off. When you’re off work, be off work. Find something to do , even just for a few hours a week, that isn’t farming: take Taekwondo, join a reading club, go bowling. Find something to do that allows you to turn off from the farm.

It’s either the gas, or the spark, at least on a gas tractor. I have all the mechanical aptitude of your average ape, so dealing with old tractors isn’t easy for me. However, a neighbor helped me understand early on that you have to go after root cause – if your tractor isn’t working, it’s either got a problem with the amount or quality of the gas the engine is getting, or it’s got a problem with the spark that fires the pistons. Once you know that, the detective work to figure out what’s wrong becomes a lot simpler.

Unless it’s the muffler belt.

In an emergency, step on the clutch. The third farmer I drove tractor for told me that, unless you’re in road gear or going down a hill, if something starts to go wrong with the tractor, just step on the clutch, and you’ll come to a stop. Then you can start to deal with everything else. Despite the generally slow operating speed of a tractor, things can go wrong in a hurry. Stepping on the clutch, killing the PTO, and dropping the forks brings everything to a stop, allowing the operator the chance to take a moment to consider the situation – not a bad lesson in any situation, no matter how fast-moving it seems.

Not everybody can drive straight – especially in the creeper gear. It actually gets harder to drive straight the slower you go, and not everybody can maintain that kind of focus. But it’s exactly the focus you need as a farmer – every bit of attention you pay to keeping that row straight pays off when it comes time to seed, so you figure out how to keep the tractor straight and the beds evenly spaced. Care and attention matter, and the little things add up.

Outcome Orientation

10/9/2014

October is a busy month. Anywhere but the south, it’s time to get the crops in, get the garlic planted, and get the fields ready for a winter’s nap and spring’s hustle.

Actually, every month’s a busy month for farming. And just about every other business out there.

When the pressure’s on, it’s easy to get focused on marking tasks off the list before the deadline bears down on you. Add in the additional pressure of keeping costs under control, and it’s even easier to try to get the work done with the bare minimum of resources – especially labor.

But it’s not enough to get the tasks marked off the list. If you want to maximize outcomes, you’ve got to take the time and expend the resources to get the tasks done right.

Pilots go over the pre-flight checklist even when they’re running late because the cost of a less-than-optimum outcome when you’re miles up in the air isn’t a pleasant thought to contemplate.

Even when the fall harvest is in full swing, take the time to get things right – especially where consequences are significant. When you undercut the carrots before harvest, use a spotter to pull out roots every fifteen feet to check the depth of your undercutter. When you plant garlic, make certain the spacing and row markings are correct, and make your crew take the time to separate every clove. Take the time to through the tools and materials you need before you head out to cover crops ahead of a frost. Keep checking the oil in your tractor.

A focus on outcomes will create long-term results. Your carrots will have nice tips, and you won't discover missing ends that keep them out of the wholesale market or make them look sad at market. Good clove separation means more big bulbs. And checking the oil in your tractor every day - too busy or not - not only keeps it running, but gives you a moment to breathe, take notice, and think about your next move.

No Partial Credit

9/18/2014

My daughter just started algebra, and as I’ve looked over her shoulder at her homework, I’ve been reminded of the best math teacher I ever had. On our first day of Trigonometry at Seattle’s Roosevelt High School, Mr. Ames showed a video of Galloping Gertie, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed in 1940.

“The engineer who designed that bridge,” he said, “got ‘partial credit.’ And I don’t give partial credit. Your answers are right, or they are wrong.”

In much of agriculture, you get partial credit. If you fail to take good care of your corn crop, you may suffer reduced yields, but rarely ever a complete crop failure. Even in livestock, you may have high mortality or reduced feed conversion, but rarely ever an absolute loss.

But in the world of vegetables, absolute losses are much more common. Buttoned broccoli, beetle-chewed arugula, and lettuce with rusty-butt are all unsaleable. Weedy salad greens can’t be harvested effectively, and nobody wants bolted cilantro or tomatoes covered in sooty mold growing on aphid juice.

You’ve got to get it right, and you’ve got to get it right every step of the way. Seeders and cultivators must be adjusted correctly, soil fertility and pest control need timely attention, and employees need to know precisely how to get a twist tie on a bunch of kale and get it into the cooler. It isn’t enough go through the motions.

If you’re going to settle for partial credit, don’t plan on success – in Mr. Ames’ trigonometry class, or on the farm.

(By the way, the Tacoma Narrows bridge bounced and rolled in the wind every day until it collapsed. And the wind was only 40 miles per hour the day Galloping Gertie collapsed – not an exceptional gale by any means. Accepting ongoing less-than-good results can be one way to set yourself up for failure.)

Growing More, or Just More Growing?

7/31/2014

The end of July is good time to assess the utilization of your resources. Are you harvesting what you planted? Are your crops showing up in nice successions? How is your weed control? What does your pack-out rate look like? Are your plants suffering from a lack of nutrients, or a lack of water? How are your workers doing – burned out and grumpy, or tired in a healthy way and still smiling?

And how about you? Are you experiencing the rubbed-raw, sunken-eyed, hollowed out sensation of being used up and hung-out to dry, or are you – while maybe not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as you unload your truck at farmer’s market – still finding smiles and feeling energy at the prospect of your work every day?

If you aren’t succeeding at the fundamentals this year, you don’t have the foundation for growth next year. You should be able to plan on succeeding with the vast majority of your plantings every year – the really successful farmers I know don’t plan on, and don’t have to deal with, crop failures. Before getting bigger, they got better.

If you can do better on the acres you’re already farming, that’s a surer path to success than an ever-expanding number of acres. That’s not to say that you have to start planting more intensively – not at all – but it is to say that when you do plant, you should harvest; and when you harvest, you should be getting optimal yields of quality produce from your plants without having your face in the foxtail. If not, look at what you can do to increase the output from the resources you've already got in play, and make some notes now so that you can make a better plan this winter.

Don't Forget to Smile

7/24/2014

The transition from July to August isn’t easy. It’s hot, the battle with the weeds isn’t getting any easier, and you’ve still got to get the turnips planted.

But that’s your problem, not your customer’s.

When you’re greeting a customer at farmers market, or writing a newsletter for your CSA, or engaging with your employees, don’t forget to smile. It’s a good life, people, and we’re all lucky to be here. Smiling reminds you, and everyone around you, that that’s true.

Don't Make People Miserable

7/3/2014

Every so often – especially as pea-picking season winds up and the bean-picking season gets started - I’ll hear a farmer or a manager say, “I’ll just make that person so miserable they’ll quit. That way I don’t have to fire them.”

I think this approach stinks.

First, it’s mean. And it lets everybody else on your crew or staff know that they don’t know where they stand. If you consistently dump somebody on the garbage jobs without telling them what’s going on, you aren’t just making them miserable, you’re demonstrating your inability to communicate clearly about your expectations and to hold people accountable for meeting them.

Second, it’s cowardly. Yes, firing people is a difficult thing to do. Get over it. You’re the boss. It’s your job to do the hard things, especially the emotionally hard things. Anybody can muck out a pig pen, but it’s another matter entirely to have a frank discussion with an employee about the termination of their employment.

Don’t make people miserable. Cut them free so that both of you can get on with it. It’s uncomfortable, horrible, and one-hundred percent the right thing to do.

Ten Thoughts about Employees

6/26/2014

Happy employees are productive employees - and productive employees are happy employees.
The right tools plus the right people equals maximum productivity.
The boss sets the tone and sets an example.
The boss is never tired. Even if she is.
Be certain going in that what you say you want is what you really want. If you have a partner, discuss this with them.
Some people are fast. Some are not. You probably can't do much to make dramatic changes, so figure it out before you hire. After you hire, either find a way to deal with what you’ve got, or change what you’ve got. Only two choices.
Be clear about goals and be clear about standards- and make those standards quantifiable. 50 bunches per hour. No more than 3 cercospora leaf spots on a Swiss chard leaf.
Be certain. Don't tell people to "do their best"... describe best. Don't make a big deal about changes in procedures- it makes even good employees think they know as much as you.
Poor performance by one employee drags management and labor down.
If you have a partner, be certain you agree on goals and procedures. Anything else encourages dissent and confusion.