Farm growth is a funny thing … it both does and doesn’t happen overnight. For a person like me, with the patience of a 3-year-old, that is sometimes a very difficult thing and is part of what I call the “growing pains”. I have already mentioned that I like to have things “now” which has gotten me in trouble before because I’ve brought enterprises to the farm before I was ready. Besides that though my desire to have things “now” also causes me frustration and “growing pains” when I see a marketing opportunity is available, but I’m not able to jump on it right away because some things just take time.
For example … I believe we could sell more eggs, pork, lamb, and beef without any more marketing than we are already doing. In order to do that though we need to raise more chickens, pigs, sheep, and cattle. And … in order to raise more we need to have more … and in order to have more we need to have places for them … and in order to have places for them we need to build them … and in order for them to grow we need to feed them … and in order for them to be fed we need to buy feed … and in order to buy feed we need to have money … and then after all of that is done there is still a nice long wait before we can “harvest”! I’m not complaining because I realize that this is just part of the growth of any business … but, did I mention that I could be inpatient!
All of that is to say that 2013 will hopefully be a big year of changes for Crooked Gap Farm. In the coming weeks we are going to be meeting together to plan out what is going to change on the farm and how those changes are going to come about. It will be a tough meeting, but one that I think is important for the life of the farm. Of course I will share the outcomes from the farm meeting …
The biggest challenge to me though is that with all of the changes I probably won’t be able to see the benefits on the marketing end until 2014 … oh patience … I pray for patience!
I’ve beeb told to never pray for patience.
I’m with you brother, and I’m 62… and still doing it the wrong way…
Welcome to farming Ethan. Yes, patience is necessary. So many good ideas and so little time or money. You also give a good example of one decision leading to many, many others. It’s never simple.
Well I am 65 and still struggling!
Things do take a lot of time. But good things come. Each year you make it a little better. Each month, each week, each day you progress forward. Occasionally there are setbacks, some pretty major, but keep pushing and the trend is improvement.
One of the things that I find is important is to rinse and repeat. That is to do things over and over. Practice makes perfect, or some approximation there of. We herd, select and sort pigs every week for market. We get very good at this because we do it over and over. That’s a weekly rinse and repeat. Breeding is aided by this because we have our production cycle on a weekly basis rather than a yearly basis – it means we get to cull and improve the herds 52 times a year rather than once or twice a year.
Other projects, like our butcher shop, take far longer. We’ve been working on it for four years – the pay off is near. I like to think about how far ahead of schedule we are – I had only planned to start work on that project in 2014 so if I get done this year I’ll be done a year before I planned to start! 🙂 We started early because of a bit of a disaster looming – the butcher we worked with was closing. Sometimes things that were very anxiety provoking and seemed like catastrophe turned out to be the boot in the pants to a path of something better.
Persevere!