John's Backstory - Part Three: Startup Struggles
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When you’re first starting out in farming, it’s daunting to wrap your mind around everything you need to know. No amount of reading, research, or YouTube videos can really prepare you for making money by growing things out of the ground.
So there I was: living and working on a new property, in a new role, on a new farming adventure. I had endless enthusiasm and passion, but I lacked a clear direction. I took on more than I could manage, and spread myself too thin, across multiple operations. In this way, I made farming more difficult, and wasted time, money, and energy.
For example: in 2014, I planted an entire 350-tree apple orchard, plus 1.5 acres of hops, and a 1/4 acre vegetable garden, in addition to raising sheep, broiler chickens, egg-laying chickens, and pigs. Each one of these ventures required my full-time attention. But, even with hired staff, there is only so much one person can take on before there’s no way to do anything well. And so, because I had spread myself so thin, most of those efforts were unsuccessful. I no longer grow vegetables to sell, or raise sheep, and that apple orchard is now defunct.
In the early days of my farming career, I had more failures than successes, and I learned many valuable lessons. The most important ones were: keep it simple; you’re going to be okay in the end; and remember – this is the path I chose for myself.
When it comes to farming, simple is best. Develop a core focus and guiding belief to inform your decisions. My core focus/guiding belief is that the health of food, people, and the planet comes from the health of our soil. Soil is the best tool we have to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and reverse man-man climate disruption. I have structured my life and my farm around this principle. You can read more about my mission statement here.
Learning that I would be okay, even when things went wrong, was another important lesson for me. Things will go wrong—it’s not a matter of if, but when. Farming is very humbling in that you will encounter many obstacles, but it’s crucial that you not get discouraged. Failures don’t mean that you’re a bad person, or that you, personally, are a failure. If you learn from your mistakes, you’ll be a better farmer and a better person for it. Even if farming does not ultimately end up working out for you, you’re going to be okay in the end, no matter what the outcome.
When I inevitably encountered challenges along the way, I reminded myself that this was the path I had chosen, and all the reasons that went along with that choice kept me grounded. I had chosen farming as a career because I wanted to be in control of my own life, to succeed or fail on my own terms. I also wanted to be intimately connected to the place where my food comes from, to be a part of a like-minded community, and to be there for my family. Taking a step back to remind myself of those things enabled me to regain perspective when things went wrong.
Despite all of the growing pains I encountered, I’m now a decade into my farming career, and I feel I’ve finally reached my stride. I have a clear focus and direction, I know what works and what doesn’t, and I am always getting better at what I do.
Read more about where I am now in the fourth and final installment of this series...