Farm Update

Early June was the last I have posted and boy am I sorry! It has literally been a roller coaster ride over the last month and a half and I feel safe to say it's not even close to being over.

We started the month with school wrapping up and jumping right into wedding mode. My nephew and his fiancee were married on our farm and so we spent the last week of May and first week in June cleaning, mowing, scrubbing, decorating trying to get the place in as close to "ship shape" as possible. Everything went off beautifully and they ended up having a beautiful (slightly warm but beautiful none the less) day.

Clint had finished up our cooler about a week or so before so it was perfect to have that ready to store everything in. Given that it was a rocky spring with still having snow well into April and getting everything planted really late we did have to order in a few types of flowers as well as source some additional peonies from friends. Needless to say it all worked out in the end, I had some great help in pulling it off and was definitely left with wanting to do more! I had the opportunity the next weekend to do the personals for a beautiful couple.

I had kind of put things like planting and starting seeds off for about two weeks while we were in full swing around here so the rest of June was spent trying to play catch up between work and family time. I don't know if I've ever had so many early mornings and late nights trying to get things in the ground.

Then late June and July came....I'm starting to not like the month of July very much.

We had laid out fabric for three beds one evening, I stayed out until dark planting and woke super early the next morning to finish everything before work. Some of you may remember my headlamp post on FB. Well, here is what I didn't report....I came home from work that day, it had gotten pretty hot and the sun somehow shrunk or moved the fabric so everything in those three beds was now under the fabric not in the holes I had planted them and pretty much every single thing fried or had their little necks snapped off.

Then we had almost 300 Lilies bloom at once and could barely move them, that actually didn't stress me out too much and was okay that they all didn't sell because I planted them as a trial to see how they would do and I'll take that experience into next year.

There have been some other big, like kind of giant, hangups that frankly have me sick in my stomach and I just can't even talk about yet, maybe that will be for a blog post this winter. For now we are just taking everything one day at a time and learning from it, learning how to do it better next year, trying to build something with a solid foundation that is going to last. I have absolutely no doubt that every small business owner has faced major setbacks and frustrations in the early stages, it's all part of the growing process and it is how you handle it going forward that will determine the future.

When I used to barrel race, one of the first things taught was to look at the "pocket" (the area next to the barrel where you wanted your horse to be), not at the barrel because if you looked at the barrel your horse was going to plow right into it. I've also learned in running, when I watch the ground I run much much slower but when I have my eyes up looking ahead at where I am going that run goes so much faster and smoother. So that is where I am at this morning. It was a morning I wanted to sleep in and get some much needed rest but my brain wouldn't turn off and there I was up before the sun, stressing and worrying, mad at myself but finally realized I just need to keep looking up and ahead, looking at where I want this business to be in five years. Taking the mistakes and applying them to make next year even better.