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.

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?)

Every winter, I look forward to farming conferences, where I get to see old friends, get new ideas, make new connections, and find inspiration for the coming year. I can’t imagine farming without that regular coming together of our smaller and extended communities.

And I’ve never been to a farming conference where I didn’t take away enough information to pay back the time and money I spent to get there. Even for the most expensive conferences, the investment pays back quickly, and the new knowledge becomes a permanent asset that provides returns year after year.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to go a conference and let the knowledge slip right on by. Game-changing suggestions, enriching connections, and even bigger opportunities can easily  slip right by, especially when you have to return from an event and get right into the greenhouse or the field. By approaching a conference like an investment, you can make the most of the opportunities and information that come your way.

Just like anything having to do with farming, you dramatically increase your likelihood of great results by taking a little time to prepare.

Set Goals - Once you’ve decided to go to a conference, decide what questions you hope to get answered. I find that it’s easier to get concrete results if you identify specific questions, rather than just an area of interest: “How should I organize my packing shed to maximize workflow and ergonomics?” rather than, “I want to know more about packing shed organization.”

Plan Your Time - Take time to review the workshops, and plan your attendance. Often, organizers post the conference program, with expanded workshop descriptions and updated schedules, in the days or weeks before an event. Figure out where you are likely to get your questions answered, and what presenters you might want to connect with after their workshop is over.

The exhibit hall can provide a rich source of information, as well. Take time to review the exhibitor listings to decide who you want to visit, and what you hope to get out of each conversation.

Prepare Your Kit - Finally, pack your business cards, a pen, and some paper. When that one key idea or one life-changing contact comes along, you don’t want to be stuck without the tools you need to make the most of it.

The show isn’t all about work, but a few key actions can dramatically increase the value you get out of the event.

Engage the Material - You can increase your retention by actively engaging with each workshop you attend, rather than passively receiving information. Interpret key points for how they apply to your specific situation, rather than just writing them down - rather than just writing, “Point shovel points down to move more soil into the row,” add a note: “- would help with weedy broccoli!”

At the end of each talk, I like to take a moment to distill the entire talk down to one key point: “I can build organic matter on my farm by allowing cover crops to get through flowering,” or, “I really need to put together an income statement and balance sheet for my farm, effective January 1.”

Identify Actions -  I take prolific notes (it works for me, your mileage may vary), so it can be hard to identify the concrete actions that a speaker helped me realize I need to take. Even where I don’t write down a ton of information, I like to write a dash (-) to the left of each action item; when I scan my notes after the conference, I can quickly identify items to put on my task list, and show that I’ve done it by turning the - into a +.

Ask Questions - Please, ask questions! Speakers dread having a disengaged audience, and there are few things more unnerving than leaving the requested ten minutes for questions at the end of a talk and facing a silent audience. Remember the questions you wrote down in preparation? Now is the time to get them answered. Questions don’t have to be limited to the material just presented,

Make Connections - Be approachable when you aren’t in a session. Don’t immerse yourself in your phone or the conference materials. Likewise, approach people. Everybody’s there to make connections, and a room full of strangers can be a lonely place. Walk right up, introduce yourself, and ask about the other person.

Make the Most of Connections - Use your business cards liberally - handing out a card is a great invitation to get one from somebody else. Take a moment to write down a note on the back of the card so that you remember the context, or something that you would like to follow up with. The value of a conference connection isn’t always apparent, and I’ve benefitted from connections with connections over the years.

Process Connections in Real Time - at the end of each day, empty the business cards from your wallet, quickly sort them into three piles: the first for those that you absolutely plan to follow up with, the second for those that you want to put into your address book, and the third for, “who is this person?” Throw the third pile away, and keep the other two accessible for when you get home.

For the cards in the first group, write a note on the back about your intended action - “send info on L245 for sale,” or “ask for contact for greenhouse company.”

You’ll get the most from the conference if you follow up in real time, while the information and connections are still fresh. Reviewing your notes, information, and connections shortly after the event is a great way to increase retention and internalize important messages - and makes certain you don’t get caught up in the work that’s waiting when you get back before you have a chance to fully realize the value of being at the event. By changing the context and the format of the information, your brain uses different pathways to log the same information, improving your ability to remember and access it later.

Identify Actions - Shortly after you get home, pull out those notes. Review the actions you identified, decide if they are still meaningful, and put them into your task management system.

Follow Up with Connections - For the cards that you made notes on about following up, make that happen. Waiting until weeks after the conference allow you to slip from their minds, and any urgency they feel to respond to you can easily go by the wayside. Add everybody else to your address book, and consider reaching out to them on Facebook or through a quick email.

***

A good conference can be a great place to get inspired, chase some intellectual rabbit trails, and meet a ton of new people - but that’s not worth the price of admission all by itself. Those of us in the world of farming have chosen a life where knowledge and connections can turn into real actions to improve the planet, provide real food, and build community, as well as to provide a return to our businesses. A little bit of additional effort - before, during, and after the event - can provide a real boost to the outcomes a conference creates on your farm and in your life.

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.

When customers complain, it can feel like a blow to the gut. You’ve put your heart and soul into growing and delivering your crops, and after that kind of effort, rejection really hurts.

But complaints result from one of two things: either you’ve got a problem with your product, or you’ve got a problem with your customers.

If customers complain about the quality of the product they get from you, you need to determine why they’ve gotten low quality produce from you. Did you pack rotten vegetables in their boxes? Do you lack the cooling capacity or procedures to get product cold fast, reducing respiration and increasing shelf life? Do you understand the commercial requirements for the product you are selling? Do you need to up your disease-control and insect-control game, or make changes to your soil management practices? Do you have what you need to maintain the cold chain – or at least a semblance of a cold chain – from the time your product leaves the farm to the time the customer takes control of it?

Or does the problem lie on their end? Did your farmers market customer leave their salad mix in a hot car for hours before it found its way to their refrigerator? Does your wholesale buyer adequately manage their stock rotation? At Rock Spring Farm, I offered a no-questions-asked refund or replacement the first time a customer complained about quality issues; but if customer-specific quality issues arose again, I turned into a detective to figure out the source of the problem.

If customers complain about prices, either you aren’t providing the value they expect, or you’ve got the wrong customers. Value – what a bundle of goods and services is worth to a customer – has little or no relationship to your particular cost of production; it’s a function of customer perception. You need customers who value local, organic, family-farmed vegetables (if that’s what you’re offering), and you need to provide them with a quantity and quality that matches what they expect. No small feat!

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.

Risk is the sum of probability and seriousness, less the preventative and contingent actions taken to reduce it.

To get all math about it:

Risk = Probability + Seriousness - (Preventative Actions + Contingent Actions)

In the context of food safety for fresh produce, it's easy to forget this. So many resources spell out the things we can do to mitigate risk - from washing your hands and keeping food off the floor to using sanitized pallets and requiring workers to bathe daily - without providing any context about the probability of contamination.

Prevention in food safety comes down to keeping the poop off of the food. Preventative actions vary in their effectiveness. For my money, good hand washing - thorough scrubbing in running potable water with soap and drying with a single-use towel afterwards - provides the single biggest risk reduction. Everything else (except not dumping raw manure on your vegetables) pales in consideration.

Operating under the assumption that our produce is contaminated, we take contingent actions to keep the bacteria from spreading or growing. Washing in running water, sanitizing wash water, and cooling produce to slow enzymatic activity all reduce risk.

Of course, the seriousness of a food safety outbreak is high - E. coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella enterica can kill people. But the probability is relatively low - in the 2006 spinach - E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak, only three people died, and a couple hundred were sickened, despite over 250 billion servings of fresh bagged salad greens having been sold in the United States that year.

Effective food safety plans leverage preventative actions that are relatively straightforward and common sense to reduce the risk of a contamination incident, and back them up with contingent actions that reduce the risk of a single contamination incident spreading or multiplying.

When you are considering a food safety plan for your farm, focus on those preventative and contingent actions that yield a high return. A series of one-percent reductions in risk will add up, but you get far more bang for your buck by focusing first on those actions that yield big results.

My first real farming job was at a farm on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. We would wake up early every Wednesday and load the pickup truck in the dark before heading south to a farmers market in Santa Monica. Just the thought of driving the overloaded little truck through L.A. rush hour traffic added a nice touch of stress to the morning.

My first week on the job, we arrived at market and began to set up a rather elaborate stand that included an overhead structure to hold long, gorgeous garlic braids (this was back when garlic braids were still new and kind of unusual). The structure had to be nailed together, and, unfortunately, we didn’t have a hammer.

The farmer sent me off to find one. One vendor finally directed me to an old Japanese farmer: “He’s always got his tools.” I got the hammer, we put up the stand, and the market was a success. And I came to two important conclusions:

1. When I got my own farm, I intended to be the guy with the tools, if only to help the poor kid who got told to go find a hammer on insufficient coffee; and
2. We had to do something to make certain we had what needed at farmers market.

I went home that night and put together a checklist to make certain we would never again get to farmers market without everything we needed to have a successful market. I’ve been a big fan of checklists ever since. We used them on our farm for deliveries, farmers markets, washing and packing workflow, opening and closing the packing house, and hooking up implements to the three-point hitch.

Here are a few tips adapted from The Checklist Manifesto for creating a great checklist:

1. Make them precise.
2. They should be efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations (hung-over, tired, or emotionally stressed).
3. Do not try to spell out everything. (again, brevity is important).
4. Provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps – the ones that even highly skilled professionals using them could miss.
5. Above all, make sure they are practical.

(The Checklist Manifesto is a great read, and even a pretty engaging audio-book!)

People feel better when they do things right. Unfortunately, conveying expectations about just how to do a job can confound even experienced managers – especially if you have inexperienced workers with very little idea of what a successful outcome looks like.

Even for experienced workers, incomplete instructions on the part of a supervisor can result in poor performance, even if they have done exactly what they understood needed to be done.

When you give somebody a new task, make it a point to check back in fifteen minutes later. That’s enough time for somebody to get started, but not enough time to do too much damage in most situations. Make it clear that it isn’t a matter of trust – you want to be certain you’ve conveyed the instructions and parameters correctly.

Management is its own job, and you only get the results you want by managing.

The office has always been an important part of my farm. Unfortunately, the farm’s office work often takes a back seat until the sun has set and the kids are fed. Too often, that back seat also means that we don’t take the time to make our office a more efficient, smooth-running part of our operation.

Here in northeast Iowa, we still have some snow on the ground. Before things get too crazy with spring planting, it’s a great time to look into some key time-saving performance upgrades.

Monthly Filing for Financials.  Stop filing your paper financial documents by vendor, account, or anything else. Start filing them by month, instead. After you’ve processed a receipt or a bill into your accounting program, just put it in a file labeled, “March, 2014.” If you find you need to refer to it later, you’ll be able to look up the transaction in QuickBooks, and cross-reference it to the correct month; finding the occasional receipt this way will take far less time than filing every receipt in its own alphabetical system.

Get a Headset.  Market farming is all about communication. If you have to kink your neck or use a hand to talk, you can’t take care of other things at the same time. You can’t type notes on the computer, you can’t enter orders or take messages quickly, you can’t water the plants while you’re waiting on hold.

In any case, you’re a farmer, and you don’t need a kinked neck leading to yet more chiropractor bills.

Learn Some Keyboard Shortcuts.  Every vegetable farmer knows that time spent moving your hands is time spent not working. When you have to move your hand from your keyboard to your mouse, that takes time; and then you have to move it back. Every program has keyboard shortcuts, and most of them are the same across every program on your operating system. Learn them. They take a little more time than mousing when you are first getting used to them, but a few sessions spent intentionally not using your mouse will pay huge dividends.

A few of my favorites:

• Ctrl + x = cut
• Ctrl + c = copy
• Ctrl + v = paste
• Ctrl + n = new
• Ctrl + s = save
• Ctrl + a = select all text
• Ctrl + z = undo most recent action
• Home takes you to the beginning of the current line of text
• Ctrl + Home takes you to the beginning of the document
• Shift + Home highlights the text between your cursor and the beginning of the current line of text
• Ctrl + shift + home highlights the text between your cursor and the beginning of the document
• End works the same way, except that it takes you to the end of the line of text
• Alt + Tab toggles between open windows
• Ctrl + Tab toggles between tabs in your browser, or multiple windows in a program

By the way, most forms, whether in a database, in a spreadsheet, or on a website, can be navigated easily using the tab key to advance between fields. Type your first name, hit tab, and it takes you right where you want to enter your last name. Tab again to get to the address field. Shift tab takes you back to the previous field.

Browser-based apps usually have their own shortcuts. I use Gmail to manage my email, and the keyboard shortcuts (see this link) allow me to manage my entire inbox from start to finish without ever touching my mouse.

Besides, if I don’t touch my mouse, I can’t click on the bookmark for Facebook.

Supercharge Your Keyboard Shortcuts.  I have used a fantastic little program called ActiveWords since 2007 to do all kinds of things with just a few keystrokes. For example, if I type frwx, that immediately expands to “Flying Rutabaga Works”. Rsfx expands to Rock Spring Farm. Typing cellx expands to my phone number. Datex expands to today’s date in my preferred date format. Fsig expands to my business email signature; listx expands to the signature I use for list serves.

I find it especially handy to use ActiveWords for hard-to-type words, such as post-harvest handling or E. coli 0157:H7.

You can use ActiveWords to substitute text, insert formatted text, open websites, open programs, open files, open folders, and open control panels from anywhere you can enter text. Most of what you do on your computer you do over and over and over again; why not automate that, rather than clicking through multiple windows?

Over the years, I have used ActiveWords to facilitate answering emails (csafull could expand to the standard statement you use to explain that your CSA is full), make data entry consistent, share data that I can’t remember (whslx expands to the url for Rock Spring Farm’s wholesale sheet, http://www.rsfarm.com/WholesaleSheet.pdf; tfrlink (short for The Flying Rutabaga link) expands to the link to sign up for this newsletter), and input a formula in a downloaded payroll report.

Manage Your Passwords. Do you have time to deal with hacked accounts in August? Neither do I. Get LastPass to manage unique, high-security passwords for all of your accounts. LastPass uses a master password to bring all of your other passwords under one roof; an extension in your browser and an app on your phone make it easy to access and recall usernames and passwords for individual websites. I won’t pretend to understand the technology behind it, but I’ve seen enough referrals from people who do to go with it.

The LastPass browser extension also provides form filling; unlike the form-fillers that already live in your Chrome or Firefox browser, you trigger the form to fill. You can even use LastPass to store credit card information so that you can fill payment information quickly and easily, without having to let web stores store your information.

I grew up in Seattle, so watching the Seahawks dominate the Super Bowl was a special treat. One of the best parts was watching coach Pete Carroll's postgame speech. Praise and praise and praise, all of it legitimate and all of it earned.

He praises the team members so much that they take it up themselves! Imagine what that means to everybody who worked so hard, to everybody that felt like they sometimes came up short, to everybody who doubted himself as he worked to accomplish something that stretched beyond his comfort zone.

I like to imagine a harvest crew having finished loading the truck for an early departure, and a farmer extolling their virtues: "We have done everything the way we wanted to get it done... I am so proud of what we've done... And how about that kale crew! Three people in two hours packed 240 bunches! And what about the CSA line! 200 boxes down the line in 87 minutes!"

It's too easy to let the small mistakes dominate, and we forget that at the end of the day - we got the truck loaded for market! We packed the CSA boxes! We hoed that broccoli!

"We're all we've got! We're all we need!" the players chant at the end. When we believe in ourselves, when we believe in our team, we play hard, we work hard, we have fun, and we succeed - together.

Employee performance is a function of outcomes compared to expectations.

If you want to get all math about it, Employee Performance = f (outcomes/expectations).

You can't evaluate employee performance without the ability to measure outcomes against defined expectations. If you haven't been clear about your expectations, you don't have any ability to evaluate outcomes - and more importantly, employees don't have a way to measure their own performance.

And ambiguity breeds poor performance.

When employees and teams fail to meet your expectations, the first question to ask yourself is, "Was I clear about my expectations?"

When a ship maintains a heading, it's rarely on course - almost always, it's just slightly off, and the helmsman makes a small correction, then goes off course again and makes another small correction. But a good helmsman gets the ship to port through the course of these small adjustments.

The only time you need to make a big correction is when you're way off course. But a good helmsman doesn't let that happen.

That means you've got to pay attention, even when it's not much fun. You monitor if things are heading in the right direciton. Catching budgets, crops, and employees when they've gotten a little off course is a lot easier than trying to spin that wheel round and round to make a major correction. Even if the ocean is boring - I've been there, and sometimes there's nothing but horizon and flat water as far as you can see - you've got to keep your hand on the wheel, and you have to keep steering the ship.

I can describe to you what it feels like when you jump into the pool, and I can tell you how to move your arms and legs - but until you actually get in the water, you're never going to feel it and you're never going to really know what it is that I am talking about.

It's all too easy to forget this when working with employees. You can spend all the time you want telling prospective employees how hard it's going to be, how hot and how muddy and how intense, but until they actually get to your farm and start working, they won't really know.

The same is true for documenting procedures. You can spend all winter writing about how to drive a tractor or making videos of how to put a twist tie on kale, and that's tremendously useful, but in the end, the person who's going to do it has to get on the tractor and go. You can read tips and tricks for driving straight, but you still have to do the work of driving straight to really learn it.

At the same time, you can capture some important information this way. There's nothing worse that trying to figure out how to do something this year that you know went right last year! And documenting procedures lets the lowest-possible skilled person do the work. You're not going to hire a packing house manager with no experience, hand them a manual, and expect them to succeed; but you can hand that same document to somebody with experience and expect them to understand how the processes work on your farm, and what the end product should look like.

So, yes, write it down. Describe the wetness of the water and the angle of your arms as well as you can, but remember that your people will still have to swim before they really understand.

There comes a point in the growth of any business where working harder doesn't get you significantly more results.

When you start out as a farmer (or any entrepeneur) on a few acres or with a few hundred chickens, you can rely on hard work to get you by. The tractor breaks? I'll use the rototiller. The beans are weedy? I'll just take longer to pick them. Behind on the bookkeeping? I'll stay up late and get it done.

Unfortunately, this works. It works so well that a lot of farmers work themselves right into a successful operation based primarily on their ability - and sometimes the ability of a loyal crew - to just work harder. For a farm where a significant portion of the labor comes from the farmer, increasing the number of hours you work, or ramping up the intensity, makes a big difference. You plant more acres, pack more boxes, sell more at farmers market, piecing together equipment, working late, and figuring it all out until suddenly it stops working.

On a few acres, labor-saving implements just save labor: if you miss a timely weeding because the hydraulics go out on your cultivating tractor, you can put a couple of enthusiastic workers out on hoes for a day or two and clean up a lot of weeds. On twenty acres, not so much. And at some point, depending on your location, coming up with more people on short notice simply becomes impossible.

And on a farm with ten full-time employees, adding another day to the farmer's workload just doesn't make much of a difference in the overall output of the farm.

I've heard beginning farmers say, "We're so small that efficiency doesn't matter." But that's completely backwards. When you're small is the time to figure out how to make the most of your time, to set up the patterns of work that make certain the tractor has been maintained so it isn't going to break, to document procedures and communicate expectations so that you can attend to urgencies and emergencies while knowing that the work is proceeding and proceeding well, to put systems and processes in place that are transparent and linear.

If you don't do it when you're small, you'll have to do it when you're big (and if you aren't going to get bigger, this still applies - working harder is a lot easier at 30 than it is at 40!). And it's a lot easier to do it up front.

We used to have a problem with counting. Every week, the harvest and packing logs would say that we had 180 bunches of Swiss chard, but we'd have 178. Either way, each week the CSA line would grind to a halt, and we would scurry around to harvest a couple of additional bunches, which wouldn't get properly washed and chilled before we packed them into the remaining CSA boxes.

Or we'd have 210, meaning that 30 got composted because they didn't have a home.

I tried emphasizing that getting the count right mattered. I talked about quality. I talked about 30 composted bunches represented wasted money and wasted resources. I explained how it held up the CSA line. I pleaded. And nothing worked.

Finally, I added a new column to the harvest and packing logs where the person responsible for the count and the quality wrote his or her initials. I was certain that this would provide me with the tools I needed to find the responsible people and take corrective - or even disciplinary! - action. I had every expectation that I would soon have the opportunity to open a big ol' can of whoop-ass and solve this problem.

But that didn't happen. Instead, suddenly, every count was right. It didn't just improve, it changed completely. We went from regularly mis-counting items to nailing the count time after time.

As a result, I implemented this accountability all over the farm, anywhere we were keeping records or requiring tasks to be done. Pallet stacking sheets, closing checklists, tractor work directives, and bathroom cleaning logs all came with a place for the responsible worker to make his or her mark.

A recent article in the New York Times shared the results of a study that monitored restaurant employee behavior for signs of theft. The surveillance did cut down on theft, but it also had the surprising side effect of encouraging employees to do the right thing: savings from theft were modest, but after installing the monitoring software, the revenue per restaurant increased by an average of 7 percent. Workers pulled back on unethical practices, but they also put more efforts into things like prompting customers to have dessert or a second beer. No whoop-ass necessary.

Monitoring employee performance, whether actively by tracking productivity or passively by requiring accountability, changes behavior. The same people making mistakes, moving slowly, or simply not making the effort to do their job well can be set up to succeed. And that's a win for everyone.