Hopefully everyone is aware that the season is over. If not, when you come out to pick up at the farm you might have to clear a path so bring a snow shovel. It’s pick-your-own week!
First of all, thank you all for supporting the farm this past season. It was a season with many new challenges, some of which I’ll talk about below. I hope we met your expectations and if not you are comfortable enough that you will share where we missed (gently please, no rants!) Without your support we would not exist. So thanks again!
Second, we are taking orders for the 2021 season! If you’d like to reserve your spot for 2021 now is the time. And by signing up now you can lock in 2020 prices for 2021 veggie shares. To reserve your spot you can do one of the following things: 1- send in a deposit check for $100 (if you are currently a member of the farm), B – order your share online (for new and existing members), iii – send $100 via PayPal using my email address (again for existing members). For existing members, please send any changes to me via email (phone number, share size, etc.)
Third, we are also taking orders for winter/spring FruitShare. Winter/Spring FruitShare is a great way to get great tasting organic fruit all winter long — and into spring! It is like our summer FruitShare but with winter fruit, and a few less drop sites. We have two drop sites — here at the farm and at our Cathedral drop site in St. Paul (near downtown). The season starts November 4th so please order soon. Payment plans are available. Click here to order!
And finally, again, thank you for your support.
Farm News
After farming for the last 18 years I start to feel like I can sense the coming weather in my bones. Or maybe my gut. Maybe gut when sensing forecasts and bones when we experience the weather. Or maybe appendages when sensing the impending cold and head when the heat is coming. No, I think it is gut, with bones a close second. Yes, we’ll go with gut. So last week my gut told me that last week should be the last week. How did I have this gut feeling? Obviously you aren’t paying attention. I said it was due to my 18 years of farming. So last week my gut told me that we should end the season and what happens this week? We are out of veggies. That gut is pretty smart. Well, out of veggies and anything left in the field is covered by 8 inches of snow. Which brings up one of the unwritten rules of Fresh Earth Farms — the season ends when we have to shovel snow to get to the crops. Since we already ended the season this rule was not in force but this is the closest we’ve ever come to using it. Hopefully it will be another 18 years before we have to consider the snow rule again.
Anyway, with my gut screaming at me (we’ve all been there. Not even a Tums or Pepto Bismol can stop the noise!) we worked hard to get all the outdoor chores done by the end of day Monday. Unfortunately we weren’t successful. So into Tuesday we worked outside and thankfully were mostly done before there was more then 2 inches of snow on the ground. We still have a couple of things we need to do (specifically winterize the tractors and mulch the garlic [see picture above]) so we’re hoping for a warm, dry spell sometime in the next few weeks. My gut seems to be gurgling so I’m not optimistic.
How was the season? Well to put it in perspective we have to go back to a simpler time, when twerking hit the mainstream and politicians were occasionally honest. That simple time was the year 2013. The 2013 season was a time when membership in our farm peaked at 360 shares (the numbers don’t reflect the number of families due to varying share sizes but it gives a good representation of the size of the farm). For the seasons following 2013 we would lose a few more members than we would recruit back and so slowly the size of our membership dropped to where last year we were down to 236 shares. It wasn’t where we wanted to be but sometimes you have to work with what you are given.
I’ve speculated in the past as to the cause of this decline. Was it increased competition? A decrease in wanting to eat healthy? Or was it economic? It seems odd that as the economy improves our membership would decrease, but I think this year confirms my suspicion. As the economy improved people were traveling more, people were eating out more and people were cooking at home less. With less at-home cooking, members over time decided that a CSA share wasn’t worth the time and effort. I think this is a bit sad but I also understand with extra disposable income why hassle with cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, etc. when you can just eat out and leave the work to someone else? I could tell you why but that isn’t the topic of this newsletter.
So what does this have to do with this season? Great question! When we started the year in January we were down to somewhere around 175 shares. We knew some of our existing members hadn’t joined yet and had a propensity to wait until later in the spring to join (usually the first warm, sunny week). But we were still concerned that the trend toward fewer shares was continuing. So we started looking for ways to increase sales. We signed up for a number of table top get-togethers where people who might be interested in shares would congregate. We also designed and purchased fancy post and business cards. We looked into direct mail and worked with an organization that promotes CSA to target people in the east metro. None of these seemed to be working. The get-togethers didn’t work because by mid-March they hadn’t happened yet. The mailings didn’t work because maybe they never work. We weren’t getting any calls or emails from potential customers. We were at a loss as to what to do. And then it hit us.
Have we ever tried a global pandemic to increase sales? I can honestly and truthfully (something increasingly rare these day) say, “No”. So that’s what we did. Well, we didn’t do it. It just happened. And suddenly as the country and the world were shutting down we were ramping up orders. Where we used to see at most maybe two orders a week, we were suddenly seeing four, five or more orders a day! It wasn’t long before we hit our target for the season, with more orders still coming in.
So Rebecca and I (Rebecca is our most senior employee who has been with us for 16 of the 18 seasons) sat down and talked about how we could ramp up the farm. With a bit of tweaking (tweaking, not twerking!) here and there we figured we could get to 250 shares with no problem. We might have to hire another part-time person but with unemployment heading to the double digits this seemed easily achievable.
Well, that was fast. Once we decided to go to 250 we were sold out almost immediately. So we sat down again and with paper and pencil formulated a plan as to how to get to 300 shares. We felt it would be nice to sell more shares from an economic perspective but we also felt a sense of obligation since the news reports were talking about food shortages. We spent well over an hour figuring out how to modify our plan to allow for more share sales. We could certainly increase the number of transplants of vegetables we haven’t planted yet but we were somewhat locked into the number of certain plants that were already planted. After some consideration we came up with some solutions to handle an increase in our sales given the current state of the farm. For example, we figured we could plant more peppers now and pick them green instead of waiting for them to ripen, which might not happen if we get an early frost. And of course with the increased number of shares we’d have to employ another part-time person or maybe a full-time person but with unemployment continuing to increase we figured this won’t be an issue. So that’s what we did — implemented plan C.
Well, the sales surpassed 300 almost in the time it took us to come up with plan C. At this point we paused the online store and replaced it with a note telling people we may have more shares available so send us an email and we will update you shortly. We then sat down again looking at past notebooks of what we grew, how mush we planted, etc. specifically looking at 2013 which was when we had sold 360 shares. We determined that if we purchased extra plants from other suppliers — specifically peppers and onions — increased the number of transplants we grow in our own greenhouse and plant more rows of direct seeded crops, we could support the increase of shares to 350. Of course we would have to hire another full-time person but with unemployment closing in on 20% that shouldn’t be a problem.
At this point we opened up sales again, sent email to the 20 or so people who asked to be informed when shares were available and quickly sold out of even this new amount of shares. At this point we felt we had to close to additional sales. We knew we could handle 350 since we’ve done slightly more than that in the past. But we weren’t sure if our infrastructure — e.g. cooler space — could handle more than that. So we closed sales, put a link to send us email to be put on next season’s contact list and marched forward with a new plan. What could possibly go wrong?
Thankfully not a lot — but with one big “Shoot!” I’ll explain in a bit. To accommodate the increase we felt we needed to be more efficient so we spent considerable time and money increasing our wash area. We double its capacity and installed some automation to make it easier to use. We purchased additional seeds to provide for additional direct seeding we foresaw. In some cases our usual varieties were already sold out so we substituted other varieties and were pleasantly surprised by their success. We commenced on the hiring process to hire a couple more full-time employees. We already had a couple of high school kids lined-up to work part-time once the school year ended in June.
This is where the “Shoot!” hits the proverbial fan. We could not find anyone to work here at the farm! Employment was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% yet try as we might we were coming up empty. We had a couple of interviews and made a couple of offers but they found work elsewhere or what I suspect is more likely, they knew they could make more on unemployment than we could pay them to work hard in inclement weather. I have to say I probably would have made the same decision.
We eventually patched together three high-school part-timers and Rebecca and I to do the work of what three full-time people (including me) and a couple of part-timers did in 2013. In other words we were at least one full-time employee short. Some of the improvements we made to the washing and packing area helped alleviate the shortage of help but it still made for a long, tiring season with little time off and some important but not time sensitive projects left unstarted.
Which brings us to today. Upon reflection I feel we deserve an A+ for effort. We worked hard, we sacrificed where it would least affect the customer and we put out a reasonable amount of produce. However I would give us a C+ or B- for success compared to what would have been accomplished with sufficient labor. There were a few things we’ve always done in the past that got left behind. The one that specifically comes to mind is our herbs. As the season progressed and the workload increased beyond our available labor we had to let something go and herbs were the unfortunate victim. There were a few other crops that did poorly that maybe we could have had better success if we had enough help but that may just be wishful thinking. Sometimes Mother Nature is a cruel mistress.
So what does that mean for next season? That is another great question. All season as we worked we thought about how to improve next year. We always do this but I think it was more acute this year. And the answer that came back time and again is we need to reduce our dependency on hired help. So you members have to start volunteering more. No, that’s a joke, but as they say there is always some truth in jokes. We actually had a good deal of volunteering this season which was extremely, extremely helpful and appreciated! Actually what we need to do if we want to continue with the size membership we had this year — and I say we do because it works really well with the current infrastructure — is more mechanization. We need to invest in tools and equipment that makes farming less labor intensive. This equipment does not come cheap so there is a certain size membership we need to make it cost effective. If it takes longer to set-up the equipment than it would to complete the task by hand the equipment isn’t helpful. So we need enough members to make the equipment save us time.
If we could sell out at 350 shares again for the 2021 season it would be cost effective for us to buy equipment like a potato digger or a barrel washer or a plastic mulch layer or a transplanter or maybe all of these. Each of these attack a certain area of our farm where there is a lot of necessary labor. For example, digging enough potatoes for 350 shares using our current techniques takes about eight person hours of time. I anticipate a potato digger will reduce that to around two person hours. We dig potatoes around seven times a season so that alone saves us 40+ person hours. It won’t pay for itself in a season but it would allow us to use that extra week of time on weeding.
Anyway, for this to make sense we need to sell enough shares early in the off-season to feel comfortable to make the commitment to purchasing equipment. So here is our plea: if you plan to rejoin please do so as soon as possible so that we can get a sense as to the feasibility of investing in this equipment. No need to pay for the whole season upfront. Simply sending in your down payment (only $100) shows us you are committed to 2021 and reduces our anxiety about purchasing new equipment.
I hope you come back. I would love everyone to come back. We had a great mix of returning customers, new customers and previous customers (people who were with us in the past but not last season). It was a pleasure providing you all with nutritious, delicious local vegetables this season. And even if you choose not to return I do appreciate your support this past season.
As always, do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc. I have a lot more time to answer them now!