This pilot year of our farm share was both encouraging and eye-opening, and I wanted to tell you all how it went. Farming at this scale sometimes feels like being crushed between the competing pressures of market price and market share. Not an economist? Me neither, so I’ll explain what I mean by that.
The price we can charge consumers is limited by what they’re willing to pay, and if there are similar products out there for a lower price, consumers are more likely to choose those. Unless my chickens start laying golden eggs, I can’t charge much more than Safeway does if I want to sell them.
In order to produce chickens at a cost that will allow me to make a profit from market price, I need to have access to a large market share. An example of a large market share would be owning a feed silo so that I’m able to purchase feed in bulk at a lower price. These are quite pricey ($20,000+), and to justify the cost I’d need to be raising a lot of chickens. For all those chickens I’d have full-time laborers.
How can a small, diversified farm turn a profit in this economical model? By thinking creatively. Labor ranks amongst the biggest farm expenditures nationwide. People are required to plant, maintain, pick, wash, store and transport all those vegetables. So what would it take to get people to do all that work without paying them?
My customers know they are swapping their labor for all the food miles and extra dollars that would go into their food before they get it. And because we save so much money on farm labor, we’re able to offer our food for lower prices than similar farms. We believe healthy, delicious food shouldn’t only be for the wealthy. We aim to price our products similarly to average grocery store prices to keep membership in the homestead financially accessible. If we were paying laborers market price to produce these cottage industry foods, it would not be financially sustainable. But because we require very little professional labor, we’re able to offer a competitive price point.
Marketing is a time-intensive part of a farmer’s job, especially with diversified products and revenue streams. Our customers paid their annual farm share dues in full at the beginning of the year, so I had capital to purchase seeds and supplies, and the peace of mind of knowing that my food was already paid for. I still do plenty of marketing, but I do it when I want to. I don’t often find myself in a position of needing to offload a large amount of food quickly because a buyer backed out.
Other benefits from this farm share structure included:
- Because they harvest and wash their own produce, our members are able to take all they want, and only what they want, which reduces waste.
- Participating in regular work days keeps the members updated on what the garden needs, and they often voluntarily engage in pruning and weeding while harvesting.
- People who participate in this model want to be involved with growing their own food, and their willingness to help out on the farm is inspiring.
That was the bright side. Now let’s look at the other side. Managing a diversified operation with very little professional labor has required large expenditures in infrastructure to establish systems that can be largely self-managed. For example, all paddocks on the homestead have automatic watering devices that we nonetheless observe daily. Fencing was another large cost. When we purchased the homestead, we received a quote for $60,000+ to complete our perimeter fencing. Finding that out of reach, we taught ourselves how to build fence, and spent two years worth of weekends doing just that. I now know way more than I ever wanted to know about fencing.
Another barrier is what I see as a necessity to provide a fully diversified food portfolio. I’m not sure people would participate in multiple farm shares like this, at different locations. If they had to work at their veggie farm, then turn around and put in hours at their meat and milk farm, they might find that to be too much. Our status as a “one-stop shop” allows customers to shop at farmer’s markets or grocery stores as often as they wish, to supplement the full diet we provide, not as a necessity.
Our members reported that learning how to use the food we produced was one of their greatest challenges, but a challenge that they were happy to accept. Eating seasonally and preserving and storing food are skills that one can build and strengthen over time. And by working together to learn those skills, we can build a strong local food system.
We produced more this year than we thought we could, and I know next year we’ll do the same. This year we provided veggies, meat, milk, eggs and herbs to our members. Next year we look forward to adding wool, honey, and fruit to that list. I can’t wait to see what we can grow together!