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market-farming - Re: Making a living

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "Hook Family" <guldann AT ix.netcom.com>
  • To: "market farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Making a living
  • Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 10:23:07 -0500


I feel like I could have written this post as well. A person suggested to
us once you know if you hired some help you could double your CSA membership
ie we are now about 40 hire help and easily go to 100, but crunch the
numbers. Pay and maybe benefits to employee = increase of money from
increase in membership. It was about the same, I saw no sense in increasing
the commotion around here for the same gross income. My husband employs one
barely adequate teenager to help with his firewood business and around the
farm. The kid is sweet but tends to get sidetracked :). But my husband has
had many other teenagers who last one day and never come back. An adult
worker can't imagine finding one. A good intern would be fun a bad intern
just more work so we haven't gone there yet either. Then there is the what
if your intern, employee quits, then you are left doing extra work by
yourself. We learned a little bit the hard way that you have to keep the
work at just about the level that you or you and your spouse can do alone.
I like your work smarter, not harder I have been trying to think of ways to
do this for a while :). Here is a goofy idea (actually I read this in a
book): hire out your farm for TV, movies, advertising. The book did not go
into details and I have not pursued it other than a quick search for agents.
But I thought it was intriguing. Parts of our farm look unmodern, no wires
not building etc. Anyone ever tried this? Beth

> We don't. We struggle with this too. We figured last summer that one
good,
> hard-working, younger person would allow us to double production, which
> would probably pay. BUT, where to get that person ? Even the farmers who
> have labor requirements year-round have to hire immigrant labor here. The
> regular population does not want to do farm labor. We could use a summer
> intern, but don't have housing, and the scary stories about that are
keeping
> us from some sort of temporary housing for one. Then there's the factor of
> training, how long will it take, and how long will the employee stay ?

We're
> hoping that as we grow, we'll find some answers, and we're looking at all
> ways to "work smarter, not harder" Alison Wiediger
> > ----------
> > From: Sue[SMTP:swtgrssfrm AT nls.net]
> > I wondered how many on the list have employees? It is a real struggle
for
> > me because I am trying to weigh what I can realistically do by with just
> > my husband and
> >
>
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