Growing Pains :: Part Four ...

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!

Growing Pains :: Part Three ...

I believe the best way to describe the first two years of growth at the farm would be to use words such as: Chaotic, Uncontrolled, Stupid, Out of Control, Spastic, Dumb, and Survived. What I'm trying to say is that if I had it to do all over again there are one or two or ten thousand things I would do differently! We bought the farm, built the house, brought twenty cows and calves to the farm with no fencing, purchased pigs, bought tractors (they broke ... a lot), and much more! Oh yeah ... and we didn't know anything about farming except what I had read in a book!

Because of the blog and other opportunities that I have had to share my farming experiences I'm often asked what advice I would give to someone wanting to start a farm. I think my most shared piece of advice is that people shouldn't do it and I share with them why they shouldn't do it! My thinking is that if they take my advice they probably shouldn't have been farming in the first place, but if they go ahead and farm anyways then they probably have at least some of what it takes to make it past the first couple of years. I digress ... that was just public service announcement and not a discussion of the farms growth!

What I am trying to say is that for the first two years I was just excited to be farming and I wanted it all ... and I wanted it now! There were too many times where I would bring animals to the farm and then begin to build or look for a place to put them and because of that I had more problems than I can even count or recall. In my effort to have the farm of my dreams I sort of acted without thinking and in some ways that may have even set the farm back a little. One thing is for sure though, it caused more stress than I should have subjected on my family!

I would like to think that I have learned slightly from that though. The last two or three years things have grown much more slowly. I had to force myself to slow down and think a little before I acted. Because we slowed down a little bit we were able to focus in on some things that needed to be done as "catch-up" and focus on building a market (which is now the reason we want to scale up). We only added new ventures when we were mostly ready for them (I'm not perfect!) and there are some aspects of the farm infrastructure that work well now.

But, the biggest thing is that we didn't have to borrow anything to do any of this or cut back on our extra mortgage payments. We were able to stick to our financial values and because of that even though I made mistakes along the way there were just flesh wounds as opposed to farm killing things (if that makes any sense). Besides the financial values we were also able to stick with our other core values and even make improvements in some areas.

I guess if I could sum it all up I would say that growth on the farm has been difficult. It's really just like life ... there are times of easy growth and there are times when you learn very difficult lessons and have to learn from them ... and grow!