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This is the final week of fall pickups, just in time for a hard frost in the forecast. After the crazy weather this year, it is a mercy to finally catch a break and have the frost hold off just long enough to get our full fall season in.
It truly was an honor to serve you all this year. We have enjoyed meeting and getting to know so many new faces and seeing so many familiar ones return. Several have already asked about signing up for next year. You'll be the first to know when and where we'll start accepting membership applications for 2018, hopefully soon!
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Brief Bites
A quick rundown of the latest news from the farm
1. Field status and post-season plans: Matthew is beginning to consolidate our 9 fields into 3 large ones. We're gaining some square footage that was previously used for aisles. One third of the fields have been tilled and planted with either garlic or a cover crop mix. These seeds went in right before Saturday night's quarter inch of rain.
This week, he'll focus on getting all the remaining sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots and greens out of the ground before the frost. Next week, he'll get the remaining six fields consolidated into two and plant them with cover crop.
After the fields are all tucked in for winter, he'll start working on the long list of things to do before the ground freezes. Chicken coops will be cleaned and moved again, and the newest needs to be painted. The scrap metal pile needs to go away, and the perimeter fencing needs to be finished. If there's time, he'll work to clear cedar trees and scrub from the pastures. The oil needs to be changed in the equipment, too.
Meanwhile, we're making plans to build a barn that could be used for pickups, equipment storage, vegetable washing, and housing a walk-in cooler. All that, and planning and advertising for next year should keep us busy until at least January when seeds need to be started.
2. I may take a week off from emails after this week, depending on how much progress I'm able to make on setting up a new system of online purchases and CSA signups. I was hopeful that the software we started to use at the beginning of the year would be the answer to all my administrative woes, but it is too expensive for my level of satisfaction with its functionality and aesthetic. I've gone back to the drawing board this month and I'm close to coming up with a new solution.
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Winter Egg Pickup Schedule
MONDAYS 4:30-6pm
Starting October 30
Pre-orders only
On-farm: front (red) door
AND
E.P. True Chiropractic Lobby
1905 EP True Pkwy, West DM
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Small Business Survival, the Stock Market, and Fun Stats from the Survey
The statistics say that after 3 years, about 67% of small businesses still have their doors open. We're thankful to be one of the 67%. At this time next year, we hope to be one of the 59.5% that are still around after 4 years in operation. Of those businesses that close their doors, 82% say it was because of cash flow problems.
Thankfully, the CSA model of doing business mostly takes that risk out of the equation for the farmer. Having a committed community of farm supporters as members is the only way we've been able to survive our first three years.
Of course, we have to have a certain number of members to pay all of our expenses. Year one, 25 daring families supported us. Year two, 54 brave souls signed up for shares. And this year, 83 families tried our new market-style free choice shares. Next year, we need to hire a helper, and we will need to at least double our membership to pay those labor costs.
In my first career, I worked with investments. We always preached dollar cost averaging (buying a fixed dollar amount of a particular investment on a regular schedule, like when you put a percentage of your pay into your 401(k) every month). And we encouraged a long-term approach to investing. Over time, the stock market goes up and down, but in general over the long term it consistently trends up. So if a person socks away something on a regular basis, they'll inevitably buy at both low and high price levels, and given enough time in the market, their investment should grow if they've picked a winner.
It's tempting to sell low when an investment is not doing as well as one had hoped, but it can result in disappointment if the investment rebounds in later years. If our 37 summer survey respondents accurately represent all of this year's members, about 60% of them had never joined a CSA before. That means that for many of you, this was your very first experience with CSA, and it was likely not what you had expected. You bought high and might want to bail out at a low point. One of our original members, someone with a longer-term point of view, commented that the lack of produce this year wasn't bothersome to her because she has seen the last two years and knows it will all even out in the end.
The survey also showed some amazing dividends that were paid to members this year beyond what they put in their baskets: 57% discovered they liked a vegetable they hadn't tried before (chard, mustard greens, okra and turnips were the most popular choices). We hope you can take a long-term approach with our CSA, and that those intangible dividends will make up for any years of slow growth.
If you considered this to be a low year in terms of yields and variety (as we have), we hope you can stick around for the ride and see what happens over time! If we're too risky of an investment for you, we understand; being risk averse is wise for many people. On the other hand, if you are able to take a little risk on a startup company, we would love to see you back here next year.
I'll end with my favorite disclaimer that we put on correspondence at the investment firm where I worked. I think it applies to so much more in life than investments: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
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