PFI Conference & Mr. Fix-it

Last weekend was the annual PFI conference, at which they asked us to present! I love presenting. I know it's weird, but put me in front of a crowd of people and tell me to talk about something and I'm happy. 

I know, I really look happy in this picture, don't I?

There, that one's better. Hazel had a ball playing around and trying to steal the show.

We were presenting our business plan to a panel of experts, one of which was a small business financial expert in from Connecticut for the conference. 

We got some good feedback and people said our session was good. Hazel did not do well traveling, however. She just really didn't sleep on Friday night at all! It made for a long Saturday. 


One of the questions from the audience was something along the lines of asking if we were handy since we were doing things on a shoestring and I'm an engineer. Ha! I laughed out loud. It was very inappropriate. But when I recovered, I basically said that we either didn't do handyman type things, or we bartered product for them. Seriously, our tractor hasn't had an oil change since we got it. It's a miracle the thing runs. But then our dumb soft maple tree tangled its branches in our TV antenna on top of the garage.
This called for drastic measures.

So here's Mr. Fix-it on our garage roof, working it.

Go Ryan Go!

And now we have ABC back. I guess we can be handy when we have to be. 

Conference Season Again & Farmagons

It's farm conference season again, and today was the one for Practical Farmers of Iowa. This is normally my favorite conference and is an affirmation of why we do what we do.
This is fair warning that I'm really going to treat my blog as a diary today.


I don't feel that way after going today. Yes, it was fun. Yes, it was great networking. But I usually come home after one of these things and say, "Ok, what we do is hard, but it's worth it and there's a whole bunch of people rooting for us and doing this journey too." And farming is hard. Really hard. I almost never see my husband. I seldom sit on the couch with him after our daughter's in bed and watch a movie or even just discuss the day. 


I still feel like farming is worth it and people are there to help us, but the positive energy is just missing. Ryan works so so very hard all the time, and I feel like it's wearing him out. There's not always enough "we" on this team, and that's how I feel after today. Not because he's not doing his part, but because I don't do enough to help him manage his workload. Yes, I make the money. But I could do that if he didn't farm and he could put his energy into our family instead of a bunch of sheep that just die (we lost two lambs this morning and another one tonight). 


We did a planning exercise in a session today. It started with us figuring out what we valued most from a whole long list of options. We had to pick our top 20, then our top 7, then the top 3, then the top 1. We both agreed that family was our number one value. Then we drew "Farmagons" where we made a picture of our farm in 5 years. Here's Ryan's Farmagon.

I have to say I just love his drawing of a cow in the bottom right; it's recognizably a Belted Galloway. The map on the left part of the farmagon is one he's been sketching on every scrap piece of paper in our house for the last 6 months. But this was insightful to me because around the sides of the farmagon you see notes about his capital expense goals for the next five years (one year per side). All of everything is in 2011 and a little bit of 2012. I think this is where we're getting burnout because there's no pacing. It's all crammed up to NOW with this ethereal expectation that some of it will drift into LATER. 


Here's my farmagon (we did this exercise without looking at one another's work):

This was surprising to me because it makes my worldview seem so small. I didn't include any pastures or even very much truly "farm-related" in my vision, except that our shop is a functional retail space (the cars I drew are customer cars, not ours). This makes some level of sense because marketing is my bailiwick and while Ryan farms I watch our daughter, but it still makes me feel sad. I can't even articulate well why it makes me sad. Guilt that I'm not more involved in production? Feeling like my best contribution to this vision is having babies? The only capital expenses I could even think of were big expenses to the house and when we'd have babies. Maybe I'd feel better about this if I didn't feel like it just demands more from my partner. 


I hate to quit things. I feel like if we quit people would whisper behind our backs "Oh, those Marquardts just couldn't hack it farming." Ryan's grandfather will have been right not to work with us. We will let down our customers who have begun to rely on us for their meats and eggs. 
But are these really reasons to keep going? 
Why do we farm?


I'd certainly welcome comments from any readers who stuck with me this far.

Conference Season

Well, it's conference season for the sustainable ag community! I like conference season because it's a chance to see what other people are doing, talk about your ideas, and learn and network. The PFI (Practical Farmers of Iowa) conference was in early January, and the INCA (Iowa Network for Community Agriculture) conference was last weekend. (www.practicalfarmers.org and www.growinca.org) Based on talking to people at these conferences, I think we're going to try to do a few things for our business and our customers. We're going to try to make our currently annual newsletter reflect more about our beliefs and goals as well as what we're selling. I think we'll also try to make it a little more frequent. We've decided not to do pork this year, but it's still on the horizon. We did also join the Iowa Food Cooperative which has pickups monthly in Des Moines, and I think that will be good for expanding our customer base. 

 On another note, I finished a little quilt for my friend, Aubrey Ewalt, who is due soon. It's not very big (about 30" square), and it's the first quilt I've machine quilted; which was interesting and kind of fun. I usually hand quilt my work. I've decided to start posting quilts I finish on this blog, with the exception of those that are for other people who haven't seen them yet! (Kate Pickett, I'm talking to you.... I have one done for your currently nonexistant wedding!)  :-)