According to the calendar, we’ve sailed through the first month of 2023, having simultaneously survived the post-holiday hangover and the doldrums of winter. Imbolc, the traditional Celtic holiday celebrated on the first of February, ushered in the hopeful midpoint between winter solstice and the spring equinox. All very important dates if you’re a farmer. My husband spouts the countdown to spring almost daily. “Forty-six days til spring!” he’ll say over coffee. His other seasonal habit is to routinely quote the hours of sunlight in a day. “We’re getting about ten hours of good sun,” which instantly summons the impulse in him to check the plant babies in the greenhouse and see if they’ve grown in the last five minutes.
On the other hand, I’ve relished the small humor of wishing folks a Happy New Year thirty-some-odd days into the year. I get secret satisfaction at the confused looks, the soft wrinkle of the brow, and the low chuckle-reply of “Ummm, happy… New…Year?” that really says, Where have you been? The year is well underway. It’s February, honey. I am nothing, if not an Aquarius who enjoys watching people squirm at small bucks to convention.
We returned on January 18 from an extended holiday in Mexico where we sopped up joy, pleasure, and rest like toast to a yolk. Re-entry has been slow going, more so for the bakery than the farm side. While we were gone, Jamie’s two-person crew handled the winter tasks of cleaning and resetting beds. They seeded the first trays of the year and kept the farm in forward motion. This was a first, to be supported in this way.
Back when the farm was just a twinkle in our eyes, Jamie and I resolved to build a life that allowed for meaningful time off. The physical labor of farming, baking, and juggling three businesses at once is all-consuming. When the work is on, it’s on.
We want similar rest for those who work with us. The bakery succeeded by giving its one full-time employee an entire paid month off, a perk of staying super small. The farm isn’t quite there (it’s only been a year), but we continue our trek toward a model that creates rest and ease for everyone.
Since being back, we’ve been at the coffee table, computers out, filling the events calendar and making lists for the year ahead. We gathered our small team for a mini-retreat, a half-day where we examined the past year— its highs, lows, challenges, and achievements. I did a recap of the year in a previous post, but our farm meeting was an opportunity for the four of us to collectively review, discuss, celebrate, and dream up plans for this year and beyond.
For the record, we don’t have business degrees or many of the answers most times, but we do have our own work experience and a solid vision that we’ve been putting to practice for almost 10 years.
The retreat was an opportunity to revisit our vision, mission, and values, all of which we consider living documents to be amended by the collective. Some of this lives on our website, some of it doesn’t, but it offers a picture of who we are.
Mission: Old North Farm is a living, breathing entity engaged in reciprocity, mutual respect, and continual learning. We feed our community, serve ecology, and work cooperatively to create a thriving ecosystem. As stewards of the land and its teachings, we share knowledge, value the learning process and honor growth.
Values:
We prioritize people. We serve the Earth.
We take responsibility for our actions and learn from our mistakes. Humility (within ourselves) and reverence (for nature and land) lead the way.
We engage in collective decision making.
Mutual respect is the key to our usefulness.
We build trust by showing up authentically in our relationships. Vulnerability is welcome.
We place care at the center of all we do.
Our long-term vision is to create a robust agricultural community, a multi-faceted and fully functional farm that builds cultures of support into every facet of work. Old North Farm will be a place to host our beloved neighbors and foster community through food. We aim to create opportunities to educate, socialize, and work cooperatively to feed people, grow fresh food, practice our humanity, and serve the world around us.
We looked at the ecosystem of the farm business.
We inventoried the group, examining our disappointments and achievements (thank you, Habit Farming), our top crops and flops (and why?), and identified our top priorities. Processes were a significant part of the conversation, an area we know we need to improve. We have them, but they don’t live on paper in a singular place. Many times over, people say things like, “I don’t know how you do it all,” and the truth is, we don’t. Important work like typing up processes and writing down protocols is often sidelined for the urgent day-to-day priorities. Often the day ends before we get to it all. At the mini-retreat, priorities revealed themselves.
The farm crew decided that bed flipping, soil health, and sticking to the crop plan were top priorities. In non-farmer speak, organization and time management are the watchwords this year.
We looked ahead. In 2023, the crew is focused on growing better. We plan on adding another main season person to the team and making investments to support our cold storage needs (currently, we don’t have a walk-in cooler on the farm), bolster winter growing, and create more ease in the field via simple tools. All of this requires capital, which the farm will need to acquire. Without question, we look to the places where we can generate more income ourselves: a more robust event schedule, increased vegetable production, more value-added products and increased sales and distribution of Old North Shrub. Inevitably, our needs outweigh the speed at which new income flows, which means it’s time to assess risk and consider sourcing capital from elsewhere: loans, investment, lines of credit, etc…
I share this because these are real considerations, especially for folks without generational wealth in the form of capital. To move meaningfully toward our goals, we will likely have to take out a loan this year, a first for the farm. I’ve always wished for more transparency from businesses. Like, how did you build the thing? Usually, I’m left wondering how foundational gains were made because it’s not standard practice to share those things openly. Why?
This newsletter was created with the intention of sharing farm life as it unfolds, including the challenges we encounter along the way, financial and otherwise. I’ve always wished folks would share more of their process. I figured I’d do the thing I wished others would do, and that maybe it could help someone else’s journey.
In all this talk about the year ahead, I wanted to share our plans for Pleasant Living. When we launched the newsletter last March, I knew I would give it the year to see how it shaped itself within our bonkers schedule. I quietly opened up paid subscriptions, but never enacted a paywall. I wanted to see if I could commit to this practice first. Now, with almost a year of newsletter life complete, it’s time to look ahead.
Here’s what to expect this year Pleasant Living:
Monthly Essay– Pleasant Living will publish one essay a month on varying topics– from Community to Why We ‘Farm Lunch’ to more intimate personal essays dealing with farm life, culinary life, and relationships.
More Recipes/Kitchen Notes– We cook seasonally year-round (#farmlife), and we want to share more of that with you. We aim to publish two recipes a month, sharing what we eat at home and the preservation projects we do each season.
Farm Updates/ A Look Inside– Additional writings will focus more on the inner workings of the farm and bakery space. Learn what we’re up to season to season and get a more transparent look at the choices we make to build a sustainable business.
Profiles– We are lucky to know many inspiring individuals. This year, we’re excited to introduce you to them including farmers in our community, culinary personalities impacting their own rural communities, and food people we love. Some of them you know, and some you will get to know.
And now for the inevitable ask…the part I hate, but also recognize as a way to say that the work and time spent creating and editing (shoutout to Jessica Dean Rogers!) stories, recipes, interviews, and new ideas for Pleasant Living is valid. We’re publicly launching paid subscriptions today in hopes that you’ll join us on this next leg of the journey and support the work.
Paid subscribers will get access to all parts of the Pleasant Living community listed above.
Not to worry, the monthly essay will remain free and available to all. We’ll continue sharing all of our content for free until Tuesday, March 28, the eve of our first Substack birthday. After that, we’ll switch to the new model.
Please share this with folks you think will enjoy this work. We love sharing it with you. Here’s to 2023 and this brand new(ish) year!
Please don't stop sharing your process! It is so vital that people understand the difficulties and PASSION behind farming. You and Jamie are such positive energy forces in this world! Mariah and I are going to subscribe next month! :)
So excited for what lies ahead for all of you! Can't wait to follow along your journey.