With intentions to keep up the blog over the summer, I did not set the time aside to do just that. Finding the right balance of the day to day farm maintenance such as planting, weeding, harvesting, and marketing, with the more cerebral process of reflection and writing can be difficult. Which is to say, good time management is always something to strive to do better when it comes to farming (though arguably this holds true in all things.)

 As I reflect on what time management means to me, it reminds me that a couple of weeks ago I wrote a goal setting paper for the farm for the coming years. It was a distillation of the things I want the farm to be. Though every goal on the list is important to itself, the key to achieving the goals successfully will be dedicating intention and time to each one individually. 

To a certain extent, this process of deeply thinking about the direction of the farm, is why I want to farm in Vermont. A place with winters that force me to stop the constant physical busyness of summer and spend time writing and thinking. Though I do spend a lot of time in deep thought and discussion during the growing season, the perfect thing to be doing while harvesting green beans or tedious weeding tasks, I rarely set the time aside to actually write those thoughts down.

The concept of time has been a constant refrain the past couple of years. Among other things, spending time on something gives it importance and meaning. But it can be easy to neglect things that are important (meaningful) because there are so many things that are important. For example: I always want the farm to be clean of tools, totes, and refuse. This means setting enough time aside at the end of each project to fully clean-up the spaces used and make sure everything is put away. To do this well, all the tools used need to have a specific place that they are stored, and those places need to be thoughtfully located for accessibility and ease of use. Otherwise totes, boxes, tools, scrap wood, that don’t have a location will end up in random places that then need to be found at some future time. Which is not a good use of time.

But, and this is just as important as anything, everything on the farm has to be flexible. I often start a project expecting that it will take an hour only to realize after ten minutes that it will take at least two. Then the decision is to finish that project properly, rush through it poorly, or set it aside for another time. This is not revelatory by any means and is not something that is unique to farming. It is something that every business owner has to consider, especially small business owners who have to do everything. 

And now proper time management requires me to move on to my next project of the day: breakfast.