New Year, New ideas, same Hippo Camp

I know it isn't the new year really, but I look at November 1 as the end of my farming season and beginning of the next one. We send most of our employees home for the winter, we stop picking veg outside, and we take our time drinking our November 1 coffee rather than chugging it five minutes before employees arrive. We also start to assess, revise, and plan anew.

Our planning process used to be somewhere between haphazard and nonexistent until I had one too many emotional breakdowns (actually, because I get panic attacks like whoa) and decided we needed a change. In 2016 I heard tell of a friend who changed her entire farming business due to a discussion that she and her husband had at their annual business retreat. I was like, wait. I want to hear about this life-changing decision, but can we also get detailed on that business retreat part? That's when our annual Hippo Camp began. (Really lame name having to do with the Hippocampus...I'll explain some other time).

Hippo Camp is now a two day business retreat-yoself that Jake (my husband) and I take each winter. We rent a modest Airbnb within an hour of the farm, throw all of our notes, records, etc etc etc into a box and leave the farm to a sitter. In those two days we follow a step by step annual review, goal setting, and calendarizing procedure. By the end of it our minds are jelly, but we have a set of very clear goals with which to approach the coming season. Not only that, those goals are broken down into steps, which are written (in pen) into a calendar so that even in the heat of an inevitably crazy season, we can still achieve what we meant to.

There are a whole lot of nitty gritties within that step-by-step that are informed by LEAN, HMI, and numerous books on goal setting, habit forming, and management. The ideas were not our own, but the steps are very much so, and I'm happy to share them with you. Follow along in the coming weeks to hear how Hippo Camp plays out for us this year.

Hippo Camp

1. Achievements/Disappointments
2. Stop Doing/Keep doing/Start Doing
3. Yearly Goals: business and personal
4. Ideal Budget
   1. Personal income/savings
   2. Infrastructure investments
   3. Equipment investments
   4. Tool investments
   5. Employee pay rates
5. Make income support ideal budget
   1. Increase income/sales or decrease expenses
6. Sales + Marketing plan
7. Crop review and plan
8. Field maps and rotations
9. Cover crop plan
10. Fertility plan
11. Systems review/refine
12. Weekly schedule
13. Job descriptions
14. Calendar
15. Important dates (FM, CSA, due dates)
16. Plan backwards
    
17. Schedule goal review meetings
    

What does it all mean? Follow along to see how we use Hippo Camp to help reduce decision making fatigue during the season, join our community to work through it as a group, or hire us to work through it one-on-one.

Good luck, and Farm On.

Taylor