The pigs are back from the butcher, this season’s winter stock of chickens are in the freezers, and the mad rush of distributing turkeys for Thanksgiving is over. The cows are in their winter quarters in the barn, and the layer chickens are settled into the hoop houses. Soon our winter batch of feeder pigs will be arriving, ready to butcher next May for the summer 2015 markets. It is time to start wintertime projects: restoring some old haying equipment, refinishing furniture bought at auction for the house, working on another book, and cutting firewood for next winter.
How did Just a Few Acres do this year? In business terms, this year was about managing cash capital to fund growth, and growing markets to sell more product. In human terms, this year was about Hilarie and I being able to keep up with a four-fold growth in livestock management, processing, and marketing. We streamlined our production techniques, especially the butchering process, and I think we will be ready to grow by another factor of two in 2015.
When we started this venture, we resolved to keep the banks out of our business; to grow with cash. My Great Grandmother Clara (above) managed the farm for 50 years this way. Rapid growth is one of the things that tests a business's cash flow, with the need to reinvest in the business's growth rather than taking all its profits as personal income. So far our cash ethic has worked and the farm has been profitable enough to reinvest its proceeds into its growth. This would not have worked without the savings we started the farm with. No wonder young farmers, without land, equipment, and start-up cash have such a hard time making a go of it.
Our farm is a part of our communities: our neighbors, our town, and our markets. We are working to increase the health of our communities via good food, local commerce, and stewardship of the land. We want you, our community to share in our business's growth. What follows is a frank explanation of our successes + challenges for this year, as well as our future aspirations.
How did Just a Few Acres do this year? In business terms, this year was about managing cash capital to fund growth, and growing markets to sell more product. In human terms, this year was about Hilarie and I being able to keep up with a four-fold growth in livestock management, processing, and marketing. We streamlined our production techniques, especially the butchering process, and I think we will be ready to grow by another factor of two in 2015.
When we started this venture, we resolved to keep the banks out of our business; to grow with cash. My Great Grandmother Clara (above) managed the farm for 50 years this way. Rapid growth is one of the things that tests a business's cash flow, with the need to reinvest in the business's growth rather than taking all its profits as personal income. So far our cash ethic has worked and the farm has been profitable enough to reinvest its proceeds into its growth. This would not have worked without the savings we started the farm with. No wonder young farmers, without land, equipment, and start-up cash have such a hard time making a go of it.
Our farm is a part of our communities: our neighbors, our town, and our markets. We are working to increase the health of our communities via good food, local commerce, and stewardship of the land. We want you, our community to share in our business's growth. What follows is a frank explanation of our successes + challenges for this year, as well as our future aspirations.
Roaster chickens were our first and remain our most popular product. We are thankful for the loyalty of our regular customers. We butchered chickens every week from June through October to bring fresh birds to market. Doing our own butchering is a point of pride for us. Changes in NYS regulations allowed us to provide chicken cuts (breasts, legs, wings, etc.), instead of only selling whole chickens. These cuts have proven to be popular for those who are intimidated by the thought of roasting a whole chicken or do not have the time to do so. In addition, regulations changed to allow us to sell to restaurants, and we now provide chicken to the Mahogany Grill in Ithaca. Next spring we will be constructing a new butchering facility to keep pace with our production.
Every year thus far we have doubled our egg laying chicken flock, and every year we have regretted not quadrupling it. We had no extra eggs to sell at market all summer; they were all pre-sold to our CSA shareholders and to the Harvest Café in Montour Falls. Although our profit margin on eggs is the least of any of our products, they are in high demand and we feel their quality defines us as a top-shelf farm. For this reason, in January of 2015 our laying flock is increasing from 100 to 200, then to 300 in Summer 2015. If you drive by our farm next summer, you will see not one egg mobile on the pasture, but rather a train of two or three egg mobiles hitched together.
We’re sour on ducks. Our four Cayuga yard ducks are great entertainment, but our summer foray into raising Pekin ducks for meat was, frankly, a pain. The ducks grew well on pasture, but butchering them was difficult. Hilarie and I did not enjoy the smell of their extended dunk into the scalding pot to loosen their water resistant feathers, nor hand plucking them and pulling stubborn pin feathers with pliers and tweezers. Raising these birds is probably in our past.
We’re sour on ducks. Our four Cayuga yard ducks are great entertainment, but our summer foray into raising Pekin ducks for meat was, frankly, a pain. The ducks grew well on pasture, but butchering them was difficult. Hilarie and I did not enjoy the smell of their extended dunk into the scalding pot to loosen their water resistant feathers, nor hand plucking them and pulling stubborn pin feathers with pliers and tweezers. Raising these birds is probably in our past.
On the other hand, we love raising turkeys. From summer into fall, our turkeys following us around the pasture as we took care of their feed and water. They are gentle and trusting. This year we raised enough turkeys to feed over 1,000 people on Thanksgiving Day. What an honor to provide the centerpiece of the holiday meal for so many people. We learned this year that turkey cuts sell well, so next year we plan on raising a batch of turkeys in the spring, as well as our regular fall holiday flock.
Pigs pigs pork…chops, sausage, ham, and bacon. We ran out of last year’s pork in April, and regretted a whole summer without sausage and chops for the barbecue. Once again this winter, our pork is going fast, but this year we are raising a winter batch of pigs in addition to our summer batch. We will be butchering pigs just in time for the summer market season.
Heritage beef is on the way. It take a long time to build a beef cattle herd, especially with a lesser-known variety. Our Dexters are a small-framed Irish breed, known for excellent beef and milk on pasture without grain supplements. We feel the local market is saturated with dairy beef; dairy steers or cull cows, and with Black Angus and Hereford beef. We are eager to carve a marketing niche based on a unique offering. But it has been quite an investment for us in just this first year. Buying the animals, building fences, paying breeder’s fees, and building winter quarters have all been expenses we know we will not see a return on for at least two years. With beef we need to think long term; in five years we hope it will become at least a third of our farm’s income.
Markets…large or small? We grew faster than our markets for the first ¾ of this year. Hilarie and I entered September wondering, “how are we going to empty all these freezers?” There were seven large chest freezers and two refrigerator/freezers, all full at the time. Then November arrived and we wondered, “How are we going to meet demand through the winter months; almost all of our freezer stock has been pre-sold.” The same thing happened last year and we should have trusted our past experience. Throughout the summer we struggled with the question of where to go with our markets. We are loyal to the Homer market; to the good people we sell to and sell with. But we wondered how to move more volume to keep up with our farm’s growth. Should we go to the Regional Market in Syracuse? Should we endure the complications of vending at the Ithaca market? In the end, we decided to vend at the Homer market on Saturdays and at the downtown Ithaca market on Sundays. It appears we will not be vending at the Friday Triphammer Market in 2015.
Pigs pigs pork…chops, sausage, ham, and bacon. We ran out of last year’s pork in April, and regretted a whole summer without sausage and chops for the barbecue. Once again this winter, our pork is going fast, but this year we are raising a winter batch of pigs in addition to our summer batch. We will be butchering pigs just in time for the summer market season.
Heritage beef is on the way. It take a long time to build a beef cattle herd, especially with a lesser-known variety. Our Dexters are a small-framed Irish breed, known for excellent beef and milk on pasture without grain supplements. We feel the local market is saturated with dairy beef; dairy steers or cull cows, and with Black Angus and Hereford beef. We are eager to carve a marketing niche based on a unique offering. But it has been quite an investment for us in just this first year. Buying the animals, building fences, paying breeder’s fees, and building winter quarters have all been expenses we know we will not see a return on for at least two years. With beef we need to think long term; in five years we hope it will become at least a third of our farm’s income.
Markets…large or small? We grew faster than our markets for the first ¾ of this year. Hilarie and I entered September wondering, “how are we going to empty all these freezers?” There were seven large chest freezers and two refrigerator/freezers, all full at the time. Then November arrived and we wondered, “How are we going to meet demand through the winter months; almost all of our freezer stock has been pre-sold.” The same thing happened last year and we should have trusted our past experience. Throughout the summer we struggled with the question of where to go with our markets. We are loyal to the Homer market; to the good people we sell to and sell with. But we wondered how to move more volume to keep up with our farm’s growth. Should we go to the Regional Market in Syracuse? Should we endure the complications of vending at the Ithaca market? In the end, we decided to vend at the Homer market on Saturdays and at the downtown Ithaca market on Sundays. It appears we will not be vending at the Friday Triphammer Market in 2015.
Farm Infrastructure and Equipment. We keep detailed financial records of each farm enterprise: roasters, eggs, pork, etc. Separately from those we track “infrastructure costs.” These are costs that crosscut farm enterprises. They include equipment; mowing machines, tractor restorations, wagon purchases, fencing, etc. This year we purchased and/or refurbished a complete line of haying machinery to provide winter forage for our cattle, and we set up a bulk purchase grain storage and feeding system for our poultry. Everything was purchased used at auction and paid for itself in the first year of use. This approach minimizes our initial cash outlay, but it depends on our ability to turn “just this side of junk” equipment into “just this side of new” via restoration work. It also depends on keeping up with periodic maintenance of equipment, and on being patient when things break down in the field. 2015 will test our “growth with cash” ethic once again, as we plan to install 15 acres of new pasture and perimeter fencing, 2,300 square feet of new barn space, a new butchering facility, and thousands of feet of livestock watering piping.
Writing and other the winter projects. “A Year and a Day on Just a Few Acres” has sold better than I thought it would. To date we have printed over 150 copies and the Finger Lakes Public Library System has perennially had it out or on hold. I enjoy speaking about my life journey, and continue to book engagements to do so. This winter I hope to be either working on a sequel (Two Years and Two Days?) or a fiction novel titled “Sum Drover.” This will be mixed with machinery restoration and repair in the workshop, and woodworking and clock repair projects.
2015 Challenges: Starting and growing a farm is not an easy thing. Often I focus on the positive sides of farming, but there are lots of challenges that make it difficult for beginning farmers to be successful. At the top of this newsletter I mentioned the large amount of capital needed to start a farm: to purchase land, livestock, and machinery, and to build barns, fences, and other infrastructure. We were lucky to own most of this already. Still, in 2014 our infrastructure expenses were almost as much as all our livestock growing, butchering, and marketing expenses put together. This is because we are growing fast and need lots of new infrastructure. Starting our farm is a sort of race; we need to grow our production capacity, farm infrastructure, and customer base quickly to bring our net income up to what our family needs to sustain itself, before we deplete our cash reserves. This is quite a balancing act. We could have chose to temporarily level or reduce our growth this year and taken more income from the farm to support our family, but instead we chose to grow the farm as fast as possible and to rely more on our cash reserves.
Small scale family farming is a difficult financial equation to solve. I guess I enjoy this challenge, especially when many folks think the era of the small family farm is over. We cannot compete with cheap prices of the industrial food system; the Perdues and Tysons of the world, so we have to focus on high quality products and minimal overhead costs instead. Still, the modern world has placed obstacles before us that we are powerless to remove, that did not exist in my ancestors' time. Though we have no debt, we still have fixed yearly overhead costs for property taxes, and health, property, and business insurance. If I add these four costs together, they equal almost the amount of money our family needs to make a living. In other words, we have to double our farm's net income just to cover these four costs. While this is discouraging, I try not to focus on it too much because there is little I can do to change the situation.
Hilarie and I are resolved to overcome these challenges by growing our farm following our original ethics of avoiding debt and minimizing overhead expenses. This way a greater percentage of our gross income falls to the bottom line.
Small scale family farming is a difficult financial equation to solve. I guess I enjoy this challenge, especially when many folks think the era of the small family farm is over. We cannot compete with cheap prices of the industrial food system; the Perdues and Tysons of the world, so we have to focus on high quality products and minimal overhead costs instead. Still, the modern world has placed obstacles before us that we are powerless to remove, that did not exist in my ancestors' time. Though we have no debt, we still have fixed yearly overhead costs for property taxes, and health, property, and business insurance. If I add these four costs together, they equal almost the amount of money our family needs to make a living. In other words, we have to double our farm's net income just to cover these four costs. While this is discouraging, I try not to focus on it too much because there is little I can do to change the situation.
Hilarie and I are resolved to overcome these challenges by growing our farm following our original ethics of avoiding debt and minimizing overhead expenses. This way a greater percentage of our gross income falls to the bottom line.
Happiness and Family Affairs...IMO, these should be on every business’s balance sheet. Those of you who have read “A Year and a Day” know how difficult it has been for me to escape my former life as an architect. It has taken longer than a year and a day, but I feel more and more released from my former profession. I am happiest feeding the livestock on summer mornings, working with antique equipment, and spending my days with Hilarie, my children, and my parents. Hilarie has truly become a farmer in this past year, and I am proud of her. Our daughter Grace recently wrote in her class newsletter that she most cared about her farm, and that when she arrived home from school she most liked to do chores with Mom. I am hopeful we are teaching our children about what is really important in life, and that an eighth generation will inherit the farm.
Thanks for trusting us to provide for you and your family’s table,
Pete Larson
Just a Few Acres Farm
Pete Larson
Just a Few Acres Farm
