Christmas Chronicle
Christmas is approaching and I’m trying my best to sit back and relax, knowing that at this exact moment there’s nothing that I can actively do for the farm. It’s a restless feeling during this part of the season, when you have to wait around. You could have everything plotted out perfectly on paper (I don’t) but that doesn’t mean you can do anything about it until the timing is right. That’s where I’m at now; the waiting around part.
The next steps will be planning out my spring garden beds (where to plant what), and then my succession plans (when to plant it all). This will all determine which seeds I start and when. Most plotting and planning of a garden is about doing the backwards math. I told myself when planning that this year’s fall months would be for prepping beds, starting compost, and getting the business side of things squared away. Well, I’m proud to say I’ve accomplished it all before Christmas!
Something I’ve already spoken a bit on is that I originally wanted to “dip my toe” into the cut flower farming game. To see what I could actually accomplish, and then see if that takes us anywhere. My husband lovingly told me that what I was proposing was a business selling flowers, and that I should approach it accordingly. He reminded me that we want to expand our farm and that this is a logical next step- one that we’ve seemingly missed all along! I was thrilled at his support, but scared at the prospect of failing.
Not one to be easily deterred, I researched with a new outlook. I no longer skimmed over things that weren’t going to be a possibility for me, because now they are! Instead of looking around for the usual DIY garden props that I normally find lying about the farm, I’m looking for deals on the best professional farming tools and supplies. A whole new mindset.
This also meant a new mindset when it came to accounting and marketing, and all the fun stuff in between. I quickly became overwhelmed with the prospect of learning Quickbooks, and things like Mailchimp seemed like overkill. Luckily, as I was beginning to get stressed by all of the “not fun” parts of business, my new flower books arrived in the mail and I quickly became engrossed in all things cut flower growing! Basically, I got a much needed mental break by reading about growing flowers. A beautiful reminder of why I’m doing this to begin with- because I love growing flowers! The backwards math, the science, the dirt, the hard work, and the determination necessary to succeed are among the things I love about gardening. This pivot in planning also helped because I had been putting off buying seeds (the backwards math), and with the new knowledge from my books I could narrow down my lists and get an order in before everything was sold out. I was then able to come back to the business side of things with a fresh viewpoint.
Quickly, my husband and I decided that it would be best to limit as many services and accounts as possible for the business. This should streamline things as well as limit costs. Not exactly an easy task, so we went with a bit of process of elimination. What do we absolutely need? What can wait until we’ve grown a bit more? First thing is to make the business official- file with the state, etc. Next step, get a business bank account. The next question after that is how to make sales and then account for them? This is where the overwhelm starts to come in again! There’s so many accounting options, emailing options, POS options, and the list goes on. OH, and the website, social media, and creating an actual road side farm stand. Lots of deep breathes and research helped us come to some decisions that so far we are very happy with. At the end of the season we’ll look back and decide what worked and what needs to be improved.
So I met my farming goals for the fall (as I write this it is the first day of winter!) and I’m enjoying my holiday time with my family as I head in to the winter months and set my sights on seed starting! (Ah!)
