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?
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?