The turning calendar sparks reflection. This year it’s the turning of a decade as well as a new year, so we look back a bit further. Ten years ago, Beth and I were still working at corporate jobs, she with Arthur Andersen and I with Accenture consulting – on a long term project for Allstate Insurance. Richard, our oldest, was a baby and we’d just moved into our first home – life was good and comfortable. The general upward trend of the late nineties seemed like it would go on and on. Life on a farm hadn’t entered our thoughts, yet.

Of course, the tech bubble burst and consulting firms laid-off thousands – I landed a position at Allstate. Then, just as Beth went on maternity leave for the birth of Duncan, the Enron bubble burst and blew up the once revered firm of Arthur Andersen.  Bookending this personal turmoil was the 9/11 attacks and subsequent war.  In the spring of 2002, we visited my parents for Mother’s Day. Over dinner my folks explained that they had decided not to sell the farm they had had on the market and would be renting out the farmhouse soon.  Also, my mom very pointedly said, “It would sure be nice to have you kids closer.”  Well, it was quite a conversation as we drove back to Des Plaines.

We listed our duplex in June.  Beth’s job at Andersen ended in July, and I gave notice at Allstate. We closed on our house sale and were moved into the farmhouse by early August. Beth went to work teaching junior high special education at the end of August, and I became a CSA vegetable farmer and a stay at home dad. We moved fast and jumped in with both feet.

Our decisiveness was exhilarating. Had we known the steepness of the learning curve or the mountains of work involved, we might have hesitated. We delivered 20 weeks of shares to 50+ members our first two seasons, but we were feeling burnt out and isolated. As the first CSA (vegetable or otherwise) in our county, our farm was a small island of vegetables in a sea of mono-crop corn. We had thoughts of quitting, but community kept us in the game.  The summer of 2004, we met Larry O’Toole and the folks from Growing Home Farm who had just started their own CSA. We traveled to Michigan for a CSA conference that fall and met another couple starting a veggie CSA just a few miles north of us. Suddenly, we had an archipelago of sustainability – and folks to celebrate and commiserate with us

 We came home from our conference energized and smarter. Our vegetable CSA roster shrank as we concentrated on local members. This pullback let us expand our livestock enterprises and begin selling at farmers markets.  In mid-summer of 2005, we began attending the bi-weekly Logan Square farmers and gained confidence selling in the big city.

In 2006, our CSA grew back to its original level with us selling at and delivering shares to two markets a week – one locally in Ottawa and the Logan Square site.  We began selling our meat at the Logan Square market that fall. Also, Beth delivered our third boy, Jack that spring and resigned her teaching position to stay at home and farm full-time as well.

That’s all there is time for right now… the animals are expecting afternoon chores to get done, and I’ll need to help Beth get loaded for tonight’s delivery.  Check back in a few days for the rest of the story!

Each week I have sixty or more shares to build, for one, two or three delivery locations.  As our membership has grown I've developed a system for doing this pretty effeciently.

I begin early in the week looking at my member database to get a rough count of how many shares I'll need that week.  Then I look at the spread sheet where I keep track of what each location has gotten each month.  I try to plan share so that everyone gets a variety from month to month, and gets each cut at some point. With that information, I make a first draft of my packing list for that week's shares.
 
Next I go out to check the freezer, (we haven't gotten a computerized inventory system set up yet, but it's on my long range plan).  Now I can go back inside to finalize my list.
 
We have our butcher make packages as uniformly sized as possible, so I have a good idea of the value of each piece, although they aren't individually priced.  I put the price into the spreadsheet and keep adding cuts of beef and pork until I get to around $50.  I add in the eggs (one dozen, or two depending on availability) and finally I determine how much weight of chicken to include. 
 
Because the sizes of the chickens can vary significantly I set a weight that will bring the shares up to the correct value, then when I pack the shares I get to that weight with different combinations of birds.   Since it's difficult to get exactly the right weight, I err on the size of packing more than I planned.

Now it's time to make the shares.  We have six drop off locations, ranging in size from a dozen shares to over seventy.  I try to make the shares the same for everyone at a drop-off, that makes it much easier to fill the shares assembly-line style.   I usually fill 5 or 10 bags at a time, that helps me keep track of how many I have made, and how many to do.
 
Late in the week I finalize my delivery list, make any special shares (no beef, or no pork) and finally write the newsletter to tell you what to expect in your share this month.
 
The day of the delivery, we load the shares into the coolers and the coolers into the van, make sure we have the check list and we're off.

May 15, 2009

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain! I am tired of rain!  This week hasn't been quite so bad, until today which was SOAKING, all day long!  This is probably the wettest spring that we've had since we started the farm six years ago.  I'm totally tired of mud!  I feel for our friends and neighbors who are really late getting vegetables and other crops in the ground.  Jody's dad has been farming for close to sixty years said that this is the latest he's ever been getting his corn planted. 
 
I'm really glad that the improvements we made to the design of our chicken pens included the ability to cover them completely.  It's made a huge difference in them compared to the first group last year.  The pens are 10' x 12' and about 3/4 covered with tarp.  The new design lets us cover that remaining quarter when we need to, then open it up for sunshine and air circulation when it's nice.  It's odd, if it rains during the day the chickens will be fine, they'll stay toward the center, where they stay dry.  At night it's another story.  They almost always sleep up in the (open) front quarter and if it starts to rain they don't move!  We spent many wet nights last year going out to the pens and moving the chicks out of the rain.  (They'll die of exposure if they are soaked when it's this cool.) 
 
One of the things I like most about running our own business is the constant opportunity for problem solving (not the problems themselves!).  It's very satisfying to make improvements that have big and small payoffs throughout the operation.