Successfully Small -Shooting for the Stars in a Big Ag World Pt. 1

​Forking out a 1000 lb round bale of hay with a pitchfork every night gives a girl’s mind a lot of time to spin.  
I do love conversing with the ladies as they pop their heads in and out of the stanchion, trying to snatch a bite before I push the load by.  But eventually they run out of things to tell me (or maybe their mouths are too full.) 

Today I was thinking how nice it is to be here in this leased barn pushing hay, rather than out on the quad in pouring rain and mud pulling a trailer loaded with four square bales for our little group of 10 cows in 2014.  Running two old farms and 200+acres is expensive, so we invested what we could spare every year right back into the land and tools to maintain it.  Eventually, things have become a bit easier and less physically demanding.  The hilarious thing is…I am still here, forking hay with a pitchfork to 50 cows.  Have we made progress?  Yes.  But it's still a huge labor of love, a work in progress.

Our little herd in 2014

It's worth it.  I think.

 We are first generation farmers.  We both came from middle class families with minimal farming and business experience, and we jumped right into running family farms immediately after marriage in 2012.  As stubborn first-borns we can “kick some honeybuns” when needed.  Lemme tell you right now, small farming is not for the faint of heart, but it's pretty amazing to experience the accomplishment of hard work.

There is a lot of interest in small scale farming now, and for good reason.  A lot of millennials and gen Z's want to grow things, have food security, and bring back ethical, environmentally sustainable, and regenerative practices into vogue.  The right thing is usually not the easy and most quickly profitable way, so having a vision for the future and perseverance is what literally kept our dream alive all these years.    

Making a Small-Scale farm profitable

If you are like we were and are starting out without a ton of experience or capital to work with, I have happy things to say to your tired heart.  We too, have spent many an evening wondering “Why are we doing this!” Is it worth it?!” I’m here to tell you, it IS.  But building a small-scale farm from the ground up does not happen overnight (unless you are a millionaire or something.)
Here are a few thigs to remember as you strive toward success with your small farm:

• Have backbone and conviction.

 Be willing to put your product out for criticism and ready to listen to ideas and advice from strangers who take the time to offer it.  Research everything about what you are doing so you will know exactly how to make yours the best and be able to explain why it is.

• Be flexible 

You might have to change your ways to meet consumer demands.  A good salesman can sell anything, but salesmen we are not.  If you want to be a farmer, find a need and fill it. 

• Embrace marketing

Try to keep up with trends and implicate a strategy to benefit your brand.  Learning how to effectively market a product is not always a lot of fun, (I’d rather be on a tractor) but if you want to support your farm, you need marketing skills. ​

He'd rather be on a tractor

• Keep detailed records.

Keeping track of finances is the only way to know when it’s time to pull the plug on something that isn’t a good fit for you or your small farm.  What do you do if you have 50 ducks, feed them 40$ per week, but can’t sell a duck egg to save your life?  Maybe make the ducks into Duck La Ronge and try growing salad greens.  We experienced pigs.  Need I say more.  We had no source of free or cheap feed, and “pasturing” them in our climate was a joke.  Their constant escapes pushed me to the very edge of good Christian conduct.

It was a love-hate relationship with pigs

• Understand that "profit" isn't always $$

 (I.e. you keep ½ a cow, eat 50 doz eggs, 50 lbs salad greens grown on your farm.  Maybe you can give these products as gifts to your friends.  (They will totally love a dozen pasture eggs more than the socks you were going to get them.)  There is no paper trail, but negative $$ on your grocery bill equals profit.

• Only do what you love. 

Yes, I know it seems silly to include this, because everybody has a natural desire to do what they love.  The funny thing is, in farming, your heart probably doesn’t know what it wants until you have tried all the things.  Trust me, you will never survive running a small farm enterprise that you don’t absolutely love and aren’t willing to sacrifice for.   Particularly in the case of livestock…I am 100% sure that how much you love and value your animals directly affects their productivity.  Find your happy place and stick to it fiercely.

Surrounded by sheep is my happy place. It's actually ridiculous how much I love them.

• Don’t put your proverbial eggs in one basket, but don’t try to carry too many baskets.

Frequently I hear big names in the “small-farming advice” circles  say that having a little bit of everything is beneficial to keep your business afloat throughout the season.  While this may be true, it is easy to take this to the extreme and spread yourself so thinly that you can’t excel at any of it.  I’ve been there SO many times!  There are not enough hours in the day to be a farmer-of-all-trades and rise to the top in every category. 

​  Here are a couple things to remember:   1. You don’t have to do it all to be successful, and you may be crippling yourself if you’re doing too much.  2.  Self-sufficiency is a sham that keeps you from building awesome relationships.

Find out what others in your community have already mastered and build a network.  Value other local producers by supporting them in their enterprise.  You’ll have more time to market, produce, and research the one or two things that work best for you and your farm, and you'll find a lot of cool people who are skilled and passionate about other things you want in your life but seriously don’t have time to grow (like bacon.)

• You won’t love it every day. 

If you’ve ever sobbed on your knees over the sick and dying body of an animal you loved; stared in disbelief at the garden you poured yourself into for months, crushed into the ground by a wild herd of animals who burst through your cheap and ineffective excuse for fencing; or sunk thousands of dollars into a baler that made one bale and then broke down irreparably in the middle of hay season, you already know that being a first-generation small-scale farmer is more baptism by fire than walk in the park. 

​The best days will be your best, but the hard days are gut wrenching.  Some things get easier with time, but some never do.  Don’t give up.  The world needs more people like you who have soul, conviction, and a love for all of God’s creatures, and in the end, all that you gain is worth anything you lost. 

Brownie and Ginger <3