Leading Ladies
Last week I wrote a probably-too emotional post on social media, the kind of thing maybe you just keep to yourself or maybe you just keep within your inner circle of hand-holders and tear wipers. Maybe.
But maybe not.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about social media and its eerie but necessary role in the development of this business, something I absolutely never expected. Then again there’s much I never expected when scratching that first sketch of the dairy onto some torn out piece of paper. Frantic scribbles that were never developed much further beyond a rudimentary phase before handing them to a builder, telling him to BUILD IT, they will come! I likely wore a notably goofy grin on my face, and I’m sure if you looked closely you’d have seen actual, legitimate stars in my eyes. It was back when I drank the Kool-Aid, spiked heavily with milk.
In my post last week I mentioned some of the really really real struggles that have been plaguing this place, the trajectory of our growth and – more importantly – my optimism: sales. It’s the sort of dirty laundry I feel like not many of us talk about openly, and I wonder why not? I mean it’s no secret that farming is not a profession for folks with aspirations of wealth; instead it’s for those with aspirations of hard work, satisfaction in achieving goals, an unbending belief that “it will all turn out.” It’s a blind faith in the best of things working their way through all that cannot be controlled: namely weather and health, both of which ultimately impact the bottom line. It’s the part of all this that I understood going in, that the majority of the Most Important Factors are beyond our control, and I think it’s my own thrill seeking need for drama and a good gamble that made me chase after the thing despite the uncertainty. The rest of it? The part where we take the hard-won (painstakingly, sweat-inducing, up all night worrying about) milk and turn it into cheese? Oh, that was the easy part, “that’s the part I can control,” I must have thought while thrusting my crumpled paper covered in gibberish and incorrect dimensions over to the builder. Selling this stuff will be the easy part.
This is a discussion I remember having repeatedly with Jeremy in those years before we broke ground on the place. We were smugly certain we’d struck gold finding a spot to farm in such close proximity to a town hungry for locally produced, humanely raised food. It’s not that I thought people would be lining up to throw money at me as I tossed pieces of cheese into open hands from the dairy porch, but my vision wasn’t so far from that expectation. So while perhaps this is more an admission of extreme naiveté than a cautionary tale, I do believe – the more I meet with and talk to other folks starting their journey – the expectation is that the hard part is the farming part. That the hard part is the weather and the loss of life and the hopes spilling down drains with every spilled gallon, with the emotional turmoil of raising and tending and breeding and birthing. (And that’s the just the animal part.) Most of us think that’s the hardest part.
In fact, for us and for many others at the same point in their dairy farming journey, the hardest part is actually selling the cheese we’ve nearly (not to exaggerate. but seriously) killed ourselves to produce. Perhaps this is taboo and perhaps it’s more than you’d like to know about the inner workings of this place, but then if you’ve followed me this far down the rabbit hole, I figure you can hear this, too.
The majority of my mental real estate, planning, emailing, meeting, scheming, negotiating, researching, networking – it’s all related to sales. We learned quickly that sales must extend beyond the actual cheese to create a viable operation. I’m not just selling you food. I’m selling you an experience, an emotion, a connection, a place. This place. What’s it worth to you? Do you want a piece of what we put together, to come take a few pictures, mementos of an hour or two in la la land before packing up your car, turning it west into a city so saturated with “farm to table” food that it’s got very little room for more local farms on their tables? The reality is that we compete daily for the attention, not just of the businesses that buy directly from farms to bring us closer to the city, but for YOUR attention, your likes – ultimately – for your dollars. Because it’s the dollars that keep the lights on, the animals fed, the milk flowing (and flowing and flowing).
3 years ago, the old me would have tried to use words to paint a pretty image here involving a hillside and sunsets, the murmuring sounds of the girls when laying around chewing cud, eyes half open, heads raised towards the sky and ears dangling lazily. I’d try to seduce you with a description of what it feels like – what it physically feels like – to watch an animal you raised trust you enough to trot onto a stand, elect to place her head into an enclosure and then stand patiently while all the food she’s created for 12 hours is removed by a loud, aggressive machine. It’s a relationship that defies logic, stuns me in the depth of its trust, the honor I feel that these animals allow us to manage them so closely, to shepherd their life cycles so completely.
But that’s what the old me would have written.
Today, right now, these days – I don’t want to sell it anymore. I don’t want to convince, haggle, paint pictures, tell stories. I don’t want to negotiate a price on what is truly a story so personal, so deeply emotional, so expansive while also remaining very small. We are drowning in the typical summer slump of August in which sales are slow, heat is high, patience is thin, days are long – too long. It wears on all of us, feels like one of those infuriating beggars lice weeds that manage to always ball themselves up into my waistband. Not painful, but chafing, and constant. That’s the worry I wear, that all of us doing this walk with daily.
That’s the story behind a complaint I made on social media, a caption beneath a picture of two of the most beautiful udders on the farm – two of the girls who make me the most proud – goats whose presence I realize lately I’ve forgotten to appreciate. We are actually doing fine, more than fine. Lucky as hell for the support we have and the way the farm’s been embraced by so many. But there are still battles I have to fight daily to make sure this place gets the respect it deserves, even if the story is just mine, even if the farm is very small. I feel like each season so far has had a theme that’s driven all our decisions, goals, behaviors. This year has been “advocacy” – and I wake up every morning with my hackles raised, claws out, just in case. Just in case.
I wonder, do you care what’s really going on behind the pictures on social media, a medium that’s become the backbone of the business, for which I have a passionate love/hate relationship? Of course you know it’s all filtered to hell, the margins erased to smudge out the dirtiest bits. For the folks who have told me this is a dream life, I know that you’re right and I’ve got constant gratitude for your constant optimism, reminding me what I have going on here, reminding me it’s probably a sin to covet my neighbors’ shrink-wrapped, suburban lives. I hope for now you’ll forgive the tone, be kind with your concern and don’t waste any of it on me. I’m fine – but exhausted – trying to maintain a leading lady status when, these days, I’d like to be the alternate. As a friend and fellow small business owner said recently, “I want someone else, just for one day, to be the one who has to decide to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to all the things.” We star in a show with no script.
With all that said, I’m still floored by our victories this year, some I’ve mentioned, some are forthcoming, but none happening as fast as I want. And I guess that’s the thing – I still want, start each day wanting this to work, constantly, unconsciously casting and re-casting myself and all the players, imagining plot twists, writing off characters – then writing them back in. It’s not exactly a business plan, but it’s an evolution of a business, an adaptation of reality into a story you hopefully want to hear, a show you’d watch, a place – whose value I can’t quantify – that’s actually worth something to you.
