
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.


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.

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.


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.
Pete Larson
Just a Few Acres Farm