Tooting Our Horn
All this blogging is quite self-indulgent and I am aware of that. So I am even more aware that telling stories that keep on describing all the good fortune in our lives can become a pattern that is off-putting (like when people spend their whole Christmas letter telling about their spectacular children and their accomplishments). I try to be sensitive to this.
With that disclaimer, I want to toot our horn about the farm for a minute. It's about the farm as a business more than about growing vegetables.
But before I even go there, can I just say that Carrie is so great? For years we have been finding that we share the same brain in many ways. We are completely different people but because she grew up in a family business and had a father with a big personality and has been here for so long, she knows how I think and she also thinks that way. It makes working together seamless and friendly and productive. We are a perfect match for how much we want to work (a lot). We watch out for each other -- when I roll in from Loudoun with a load of vegetables, I have graduated to being the old lady with the stupid knees so I get to take the baby and hold her while Carrie unloads the crates. When she isn't there, which does happen sometimes, I unload myself without trouble but it is so much more fun to hold a baby while someone else does the work. Yesterday a load of seed potatoes was supposed to arrive in the afternoon and I texted Carrie to ask if she could handle that, and if the forks were on the loader. They were not, and she had to figure out how to disconnect the hydraulic hoses from the snow blade. I got on the golf cart and went to see if I could help figure it out. We ended up calling Jon for advice, after we both were flummoxed. Then I went to the car to get Olivia out of her car seat (she weighs more than ten pounds but I was careful, and did not twist or strain) and sat with her while Carrie wrestled with the machine. We are a high functioning team.
Anyway, yesterday we finally got the numbers from 2018 from the accountant. Every year we send all our records off in February and we wait for about a month to get our report card. We know that we are always living on the edge, when it comes to cash flow, but there are machinations that we don't understand completely (mostly how the tax code works). Fifteen years ago, when Ellen was here and thinking a lot about ways to make things better for everyone, we set up a retirement account that we could contribute to whenever we made a profit. Most of the time we do make a profit, almost always. It is usually small, but enough to give a nice present to long time employees.
We didn't make up the rules for SEP but they are egalitarian and simple: everyone who has worked for three of the last five years and is at least 21 is eligible. Everyone gets the same percentage. So the calculations are simple -- we find out how much we made in profit and we divide it all up equitably. It is one of the most fun annual emails I get to write. "We made a profit! You get a bonus!" But you are not allowed to touch this money until you are old.
2018 was a slog, agriculturally. We were working in monsoon conditions much of the time. It was hard. But we never gave up, of course, and we squeezed every penny out of every vegetable. New ideas emerged, sometimes on the spur of the moment. The bottom line is that we made $40,000 more than we spent. This feels so great, even in long hindsight.
Every farmer we know in our region had a miserable year. I can't write to them and ask how they did -- that's too pointed -- but I can tell all of you that we pulled through, with experience and luck and grit, and now we can give presents. I hope they all found that they did better than they thought too. I bet they did.
With that disclaimer, I want to toot our horn about the farm for a minute. It's about the farm as a business more than about growing vegetables.
But before I even go there, can I just say that Carrie is so great? For years we have been finding that we share the same brain in many ways. We are completely different people but because she grew up in a family business and had a father with a big personality and has been here for so long, she knows how I think and she also thinks that way. It makes working together seamless and friendly and productive. We are a perfect match for how much we want to work (a lot). We watch out for each other -- when I roll in from Loudoun with a load of vegetables, I have graduated to being the old lady with the stupid knees so I get to take the baby and hold her while Carrie unloads the crates. When she isn't there, which does happen sometimes, I unload myself without trouble but it is so much more fun to hold a baby while someone else does the work. Yesterday a load of seed potatoes was supposed to arrive in the afternoon and I texted Carrie to ask if she could handle that, and if the forks were on the loader. They were not, and she had to figure out how to disconnect the hydraulic hoses from the snow blade. I got on the golf cart and went to see if I could help figure it out. We ended up calling Jon for advice, after we both were flummoxed. Then I went to the car to get Olivia out of her car seat (she weighs more than ten pounds but I was careful, and did not twist or strain) and sat with her while Carrie wrestled with the machine. We are a high functioning team.
Anyway, yesterday we finally got the numbers from 2018 from the accountant. Every year we send all our records off in February and we wait for about a month to get our report card. We know that we are always living on the edge, when it comes to cash flow, but there are machinations that we don't understand completely (mostly how the tax code works). Fifteen years ago, when Ellen was here and thinking a lot about ways to make things better for everyone, we set up a retirement account that we could contribute to whenever we made a profit. Most of the time we do make a profit, almost always. It is usually small, but enough to give a nice present to long time employees.
We didn't make up the rules for SEP but they are egalitarian and simple: everyone who has worked for three of the last five years and is at least 21 is eligible. Everyone gets the same percentage. So the calculations are simple -- we find out how much we made in profit and we divide it all up equitably. It is one of the most fun annual emails I get to write. "We made a profit! You get a bonus!" But you are not allowed to touch this money until you are old.
2018 was a slog, agriculturally. We were working in monsoon conditions much of the time. It was hard. But we never gave up, of course, and we squeezed every penny out of every vegetable. New ideas emerged, sometimes on the spur of the moment. The bottom line is that we made $40,000 more than we spent. This feels so great, even in long hindsight.
Every farmer we know in our region had a miserable year. I can't write to them and ask how they did -- that's too pointed -- but I can tell all of you that we pulled through, with experience and luck and grit, and now we can give presents. I hope they all found that they did better than they thought too. I bet they did.
I am reading Ellen's (and Forrest's) book about farming, understandably dedicated to you Hana. Not because I plan to start a farm but because I am in awe of people who do, and do it well. Congratulations on a good year!
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