Holy Pandemic, Batman!

It's been a minute since I've posted here, and I apologize for it. Now that we're here, how are you? How's your farm? Your family? Doing well, I hope. We're doing alright, but yeesh this is hard. I've been swinging back and forth between feeling terrified for our business's future to awed and humbled by the outpouring of support for local agriculture. Mostly I've been unsure and overwhelmed, but me feeling shitty isn't what I wanted to talk about today.

If you've been following along this past winter you'll know that Jake and I are big planners. As of February 1 we felt like we had solid financial, marketing, production, and distribution plans in place. We were going to conferences, I was researching employee handbooks in order to give ours a facelift, and we were nearly ready to start the season. Then, of course, everything changed. In mid February we found out that we're (if all goes well) expecting a baby in early November. Days later we both went down with the worst sickness (flu? COVID? we don't know) that either of us have ever experienced. We quarantined ourselves in our house because the virus with a capital V was just entering the US and there weren't tests available in Vermont at the time. Right as we were feeling better our state started shutting down. That means that we've been self-quarantined for six weeks now, I've never met my OB (baby doctor) in real life, and like most of you we've been forced to re-imagine our entire business.

To be fair, in comparison to many, we are doing totally fine right now. I do feel like I'm living a weird dream in which I'm pregnant in the middle of a pandemic, starving and emotional but unable to get to the Fruity Pebbles I've been craving. Other than that we're busy, healthy, have plenty of food and toilet paper, and really truly feel like an essential piece of our community. That said, I feel heavy a responsibility to my crew, my customers, my family, my friends, to Jake, and to myself, and it sometimes feels quite overwhelming. I haven't felt up to writing here, or sharing too much online because I've felt so uncertain and so under prepared.

Last week Jake and I decided that we'd had enough of the uncertainty and took a whole day to revisit the goals and priorities we set out in this year's Hippo Camp. Our priorities have always been to first provide for ourselves (financially and emotionally), then our employees, then our community. The rationale being that we can't serve our community if our crew is struggling, and we can't support our crew if we are struggling. The clearest way for us to meet those goals has been through a budgeting process that supports first the income that we need to make in order to pay ourselves and our employees, then builds up from there. That number has already been set for this season, so we had something to start working with. As we looked at that number, and considered the current state of markets and restaurants, we wondered if that goal was still realistic. We went back and looked at how much money we absolutely positively had to make in order to pay our bills and keep our crew employed, compared that number to how we think our markets are going to be affected this year, and realized we had some hard decisions to make.

First of all, one of our income streams comes from a farmers market that is usually slammin busy (for a small Vermont market) from mid-May through mid-October. In order to meet our original financial goal we needed to average $2k per market to make it work. That number has typically only been possible when the market is popular, bustling, and we can hardly keep up with the line. So we asked ourselves: can we still hit a $2k average with one of the alternative market styles we've seen popping up on the West Coast and in New York? Would we be able to uphold our commitment to keeping ourselves and our crew healthy at one of those markets? The answer to both was no, which was why we emailed our market manager right away to give her the news. Within hours we got calls and emails from a local organization asking us to reconsider and help keep markets open, the rationale being that the community needs a safer way to shop than the grocery store, and that EBT shoppers need a way to buy. We hold the community in our top three values, but because we put ourselves and our employees above our community we held firm. We also felt that we could solve the grocery store and EBT problem without asking the community to form crowds at a market or putting ourselves at risk. Instead we decided to ask our community what would serve them best, and heard back that they wanted food that they could trust. Food that only our crew had touched. With that input we  decided to increase our CSA by double and offer no-contact pickup or delivery in twice the locations as usual. We'd also add an online store so that people could increase the size of their weekly CSA, or order a la carte if they didn't want a CSA. If CSA sign ups continue the way they've gone all month, and if we can pull off packing 150+ orders per week, then our numbers might work out.

This past Friday, a week after we made the decision to leave the market, our governor closed all Vermont farmers markets for the Summer, allowing for some modification if it felt safe. Our particular market decided to close its doors for 2020, and will not be looking to try modification or online sales.

We certainly don't have this season figured out. We're trying to balance the safety of CSA members who have cancer, heart disease, immune deficiencies, and asthma while not crossing the line into paranoia. We're trying to protect this unborn baby from a risk that, without more time and research, is still unknown. In the past week I've found so much power and confidence in using values that were established in a time of clarity to inform impossible decisions in a time of crisis. If I can get my hands on some Fruity Pebbles my life just might start to feel more manageable.

Now that we have a plan and are back on our feet I hope to start writing more regularly. As always, let me know if and how I can help. I really, deeply, hope that you all are making it through without too much hardship.

Farm on.