My BUFA Story: My Farming Experience - Failure is the Process

Several of the BUFA co-founders were talking the other day after working at the farm planting & weeding. For months we were all "anxious" to get seeds in the ground and just get something planted. We had a perfectly designed selection of crops for our winter planting, but gophers and rabbits delayed the build out of our raised beds. We had to add gopher wire to the bottom of the raised beds so the gophers wouldn't eat the roots and snatch the crops before we could get to them. I actually saw a gopher steal a beautiful head of romaine lettuce. First I saw the lettuce move side to side, then the next second it was down the gopher hole. So, wire on the bottom of the beds was not an option.

Then, one Friday afternoon out of the blue we got a curve ball thrown into our plans. Co-founder Susan Small called and said that she was at the AG Center in Stockton and there were flats & flats of transplants being donated by a local nursery. Enough transplants to equal $300-$400 if we bought them retail. So the Aldridges and McMillons drove to the AG center to meet Susan and load up the trunks of our cars with the FREE transplants.

We weren't too worried about whether the transplants were on our list of planned crops or not. They were in perfect shape, they were FREE and there were lots of them. We loaded up on leeks, cabbage, kohlrabi, lettuce, sage, parsley, onion, arugula and did I say cabbage? We had 4 different varieties of cabbage and we grabbed them all. A few 6 packs of mustard greens were nestled in the group and we grabbed them too.

We got the transplants late Friday evening and stored them in an old mobile home that we are using as our makeshift office at the farm. Every available space was taken up but it was well worth it.

The BUFA War Room/Prayer Room/Board Room - a blessing from Ms. Kitty Brown. A lot of work & brainstorming gets done in this trailer

Monday morning we went to the farm to check on the transplants. We took them out of the trailer and staged them on a makeshift table my husband built and began making plans for getting all of these transplants planted.

Did our crop selection and planting plan fail? Technically yes. We did not follow what we had planned for the raised beds and did not grow the selected varieties of produce. Whatever our planting process was, it went out the window when we got those FREE transplants. But in doing so, I learned something...that sometimes you create the design as you go with what you have to work with. In our case, those transplants caused us to tweak our crop selections and get a jumpstart on the growing season with different crops.

I was channel surfing one day last week and came across an episode of Steve Harvey where he was interviewing four 20 & 30 something millionaires. They were all entrepreneurs, but had one thing in common. At some point early in their careers, they were all thrown a curve ball where they had to "ad lib" and risk failure. Through some of their off the cuff decisions came success in a way that was different than most of them planned.

I know this is a snapshot of a much bigger issue and yes, you do need the business plan, feasability study, strategic plan, marketing plan, budget, 5 year projection.....I think you follow me. Those things are all necessary to ensure you have a solid business model. But, sometimes to use Steve Harvey's words, you have to let "failure be the process" and just JUMP!

Even though our initial planting process failed, it turned out better than we had hoped. We are days away from harvesting arugula, kale, cauliflower & red giant mustard greens. Now, we are hesitating because we don't yet have a firm "process" in place to sell our goods. The research isn't complete on the average prices statewide, nationwide and locally. Do we try to do better than the big box stores and established commercial farmers? Fact is, I am learning one thing for sure. When you are passionate about your product, know the quality is superior and know how your food was grown, you can be confident that others will see the value as well. We asked friends if they would pay a certain dollar amount for our fresh, locally grown crops and almost all agreed YES they would.

I say we continue to prepare the documentation to show we did a price survey and compared what other growers were getting for comparable crops. But what matters is what our customers will pay. If our prices are off, we can adjust. But while we're adjusting we can be making our crops available to the local market AND making some money!

Our Arugula is ready and we will be selling small bags for $2.50. A great buy for locally grown, organic Arugula. Large bags will sell for $5. We have pre-sold about 15 bags so far. Considering this was not a planned crop, this sounds like SUCCESS!