Our thoughts on 2009

(CSA Newsletter: Main Season Week 17)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

Last week I wrote about the beginning of planning for 2009. As part of our planning, we gave out CSA surveys, which we hope you will fill out so that we can hear about your experience in 2008 so far.

Today, however, I want to briefly reflect on our experience as farmers in 2008. We’re still mid-stride, but as we approach fall, we feel that we have a clear sense of what we hope to change for next year.

Overall, 2008 has been a success. We feel like the vegetables are better than ever. In particular, we think this year we grew the best beets and chard we’ve ever seen. We have also enjoyed the abundance of tomatoes and peppers, which were an unexpected delight after a relatively cold summer.

We started 2008 with the aim of improving our systems and infrastructure and have successfully done so: our washing is more efficient than ever; our new greenhouses are more effective than the one they replaced; and our field maintenance routines have become quick and relatively pain-free.

However, even with so many clear, marked improvements, we’ve struggled a lot this year too. 2008 was a surprising year. I think we thought our third year as a farm would be easier that it has been.

The cold spring was a challenge, and we’ve seen some clear crop failures/disappointments directly related to the cold weather: notably the melons and eggplant. We hope that a relatively warmer season next year brings us success again with those crops.

Water was another huge, defining challenge of the summer — again. Although now we have enough water (hoorah!), until just a few weeks ago, properly irrigating all our crops was a trial. As we look ahead to 2009, we are excited and relieved to realize that we should not be repeating the water woes again.

The final big quandary for us this year (which we’ve been slightly less open about until now) was physical time and labor. Each time we’ve added more efficiency to our farm, we’ve also added more customers or sales. So, this year, even with efficient infrastructure in place, we found ourselves completely maxed out for labor on our small vegetable farm. To put it another way: between the work we do for the CSA, market and other sales, we have been stretched thin … painfully thin.

Casey and I had our first clear realization about labor early this season on a Monday when we were trying to get important fieldwork done and harvest for the CSA. The fieldwork (weeding the garlic) left us both exhausted, but we still had to harvest. Casey was so exhausted that his arms were shaking, and I just looked at him and thought, “Oh my gosh — are we going to be able to get this harvest done?”

As we’ve learned to do in moments of extreme stress, we sat down and were quiet for a moment. “I can’t live this way for long, Casey,” I said. He shook his head. “What are we heading towards now?” I asked. “What do we want our life to look like?”

We managed to get the harvest done that day, but the moment stuck in our heads this summer. We’ve spent much of the summer trying to answer those important questions. Now that the farm is up and running, we realize we need to set a pace that we can sustain and that allows us to have a functional, well-tended farm and functional well-tended lives.

Yes, farming is a lot of work. We know that. But even with our busy schedule, we’re not getting all our work done. Many important maintenance and care tasks never make it into the day’s work — for the farm and for us. We could probably run the farm this way for a few more years, but then the neglect would start to show and cause some serious problems.

We considered hiring an employee, but upon further consideration realized that adding an employee wouldn’t necessarily ease our stress, net us more of our income, or decrease our workload significantly. Besides, we actually like the work we do. We just need to ease the pressure so we can complete our work in a complete and happy manner.

So, we came to the difficult conclusion that we should actually decrease the amount that we’re trying to grow and sell next year. After many days of consideration of the different options, we’ve decided to not be a vendor at market again in 2009 and instead focus exclusively on the CSA program.

We’ve sold at the McMinnville Farmers Market for the last three years, and it has been a fun, growth-filled, fulfilling experience. But the CSA has consistently been the most satisfying, popular, positive aspect of our farm. We have a waiting list of people who want to join the CSA, including many of our best market customers. We’re ready to focus on the CSA, improve it, expand it to accommodate more people, and have more time for important fieldwork (and housework too!). Not going to market each week during the summer will open up two more work days at the farm each week and allow us to plant less.

While this was a challenging decision for us to make, we feel strongly that it is the right decision for our business right now. We also feel affirmed by the fact that we’ve watched other farmer friends make similar simplification decisions recently as they seek more sanity and security. Some have moved away from the CSA model towards more markets, and others are focusing on streamlining what they grow to best suit their land and eliminate expensive failures.

I think many young farmers are realizing that we don’t need to do it all — each farm can focus on what it does best and enjoys the most. For us, that has always been the CSA. The CSA concept is what originally inspired us to become farmers — it provides a uniquely powerful yet simple connection between eaters and their food. We hope that by focusing on the CSA, the quality of veggies will continue to improve along with the other benefits (newsletter, events, etc.).

On a more personal note, as we look farther into the future and our life on the farm, we do hope to see second-generation farmers cropping up some day. Kids are still a couple years out, but we realize that as a full-time farm couple, we need to plan our business and farm life to accommodate little ones.

Having water and a plan for change makes us both very hopeful for 2009. We are excited to expand the CSA slightly (from 76 to 100 members) and excited to have more time on the farm. We will miss the up-beat chaotic energy of market days, but we’re looking forward to a calmer, steadier pace to our life and work. Although our gross income will go down, we hope that by growing less and having fewer big capital expenses (such as new irrigation wells), our net income will actually go up next year. When we picture next year with these changes, we imagine a simpler, more sustainable farm and business.

Today, we’re still in the tail end of market season, trying to balance late summer fieldwork with the final market harvests and continued CSA shares. Although summer is winding down, we feel like this decision marks the beginning of our future farm life — one we’ll be able to sustain for years to come.

We’re looking forward to reading more of your reflections on 2008 and hope that you all have had positive experiences this year. Thank you for your support these last few years and into the future. We couldn’t have made it through one single hard day without knowing that you all are there. Thanks too to the friends who have helped in the fields this summer: Anna, Doug, Lucy, and Bradley. Life savers!

We still have three more weeks of the Main Season CSA, followed by the Late Season. We’ll begin signing people up for 2009’s CSA season in the next few weeks, but lots of delicious fall vegetables still await you in 2008. Enjoy!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla