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things are occurring rapidly
Sep. 3rd, 2024 07:43 pmmy mom finally told us/I convinced her it was fine to quit the farm. Not amazing timing but so be it. She did tell me she wanted to quit the farm back in April but then would have felt guilty leaving before strawberry season. Sigh. She's so cranky about it anyway, at least me and my dad can make ding dang decisions. she's also being really weird about pesticide stuff.
I went to the parents on Friday after work last week and we (mostly my dad and I) spent the whole weekend planning things and working out staff, what we'd reduce on the farm, what we would need to do to get it all done. Schedules. Things I need to take over from mom (extremely incomplete list that mom thought was her to-do list so deleted stuff from it? I still don't understand. "I thought it was weird that it was labeled 'Mom transfer list'" okay mom)
Dad and I went over to the pines to look at the pavilion that is going to be the fourth picnic site. We're having two dedicated group outing tractor drivers plus a third floater in case of overflow groups. New reservation system is enabling this also to make up for lost public sales revenue. We will still be having public sales, but no free hayrides, no field picking of pumpkins and no scarecrow making on the first weekend. People don't come out as much for picking pumpkins off displays as the other stuff. Corn maze will be open since all of the work is already done and it's free money more or less.
We debated a ton about how much of the public stuff to drop but the fall business has a huge customer base that comes back every year, will put up with some nonsense and the distance to the farm, and are willing to spend a lot of money on stuff. So we don't want to fully shut down the fall business if I'm going to take the farm over next year.
It's looking increasingly likely to happen which is good. My end looks relatively easy, I need to set up a new business and do a lot of paperwork, but some of that I can hand off to a farm accountant. The much more difficult things will be on my parents end. I think I will enjoy running the farm, I like doing tedious things like cultivating several acres of strawberries all day. This winter I need to really dig into the financial and management side of things. The farm has definitely suffered in some ways by not having someone full time on the farm and in charge. My mom is full time but doesn't want to make decisions, so things don't get noticed or done or improved. Or even things like they only do maintenance on equipment when they pull it out to use it and then need to fix things. So if I'm on the farm full time and doing a good job, then I should be having someone look at equipment ahead of time. Weekly scouting. My dad never made the leap since he didn't want to shut down his pretty good computer business. I'm writing out goals (hire someone else full time by year two, buy an apple cider donut maker by year three, etc)
The property stuff that I don't want to talk too much about publicly is increasingly likely to end up with my parents acquiring a house and the pines even as admitted by the representative of the organization who were trying to sell it off (don't ask, it's all convoluted, should have answers on all three parts of the property within a year, probably (the decisions of people from the 1890s can come back to haunt/benefit you)). House has a built in office (for separating my personal and business stuff) and is fully livable if very 70s according to my dad. But even if not, my grandma's house is now empty (drama cousin just moved to texas) and I suspect my uncle would rent it to me for very cheap.
I am now doing all the group outing reservation stuff online with the new system with some questions directed to my mom about groups since she has a thousand things she keeps in her mind about the specific groups that come back year after year. I'm going down to the farm a lot this fall since I'm going to be the selling area manager/group outing coordinator on weekends. I'm going to miss one weekend probably for work related things. I won't make it down to NY Sheep and Wool unfortunately, so I'll miss the folks there :( But we just got off the phone about a huge set of group outings now scheduled for that weekend that if we can pull it off, will be really worth it.
I need to sit down with my mom this weekend and go over ordering and purchasing. Ordering so many things of various random stuff. Porta-potties, foam stuff for deco, cooking sticks, etc etc. I'm hoping to have most of the stuff off her plate by opening weekend since she hasn't actually really quit the farm, she's doing the weekday group outing stuff. She's very bad at actually saying no to my dad. They're very bad at communicating. I don't get it. hashtag boomers?
I'm sleeping a lot but not tired, which is great. I have energy, I'm solving problems. Need lots of brain breaks but that's okay. Work being so quiet is the only reason I think this is doable. If I had a vaguely normal workload, it wouldn't happen, but I barely have two days of work a week. I could probably work three day weeks the rest of the fall and it would be fine.
Main restriction on 2025 farm stuff is that I need to talk to F about the house. We had discussed the possibility of me going back to the farm at some point, I had guess four to ten year range, so we'll hit three instead. But we signed a contract that said we'd give the other person six months notice. So my plan is to give six months notice in the next few weeks and ask if she can refinance and at the end of those six months, I switch to a month-to-month rent until the farm stuff gets fully figured out.
All the things. they're happening.
I went to the parents on Friday after work last week and we (mostly my dad and I) spent the whole weekend planning things and working out staff, what we'd reduce on the farm, what we would need to do to get it all done. Schedules. Things I need to take over from mom (extremely incomplete list that mom thought was her to-do list so deleted stuff from it? I still don't understand. "I thought it was weird that it was labeled 'Mom transfer list'" okay mom)
Dad and I went over to the pines to look at the pavilion that is going to be the fourth picnic site. We're having two dedicated group outing tractor drivers plus a third floater in case of overflow groups. New reservation system is enabling this also to make up for lost public sales revenue. We will still be having public sales, but no free hayrides, no field picking of pumpkins and no scarecrow making on the first weekend. People don't come out as much for picking pumpkins off displays as the other stuff. Corn maze will be open since all of the work is already done and it's free money more or less.
We debated a ton about how much of the public stuff to drop but the fall business has a huge customer base that comes back every year, will put up with some nonsense and the distance to the farm, and are willing to spend a lot of money on stuff. So we don't want to fully shut down the fall business if I'm going to take the farm over next year.
It's looking increasingly likely to happen which is good. My end looks relatively easy, I need to set up a new business and do a lot of paperwork, but some of that I can hand off to a farm accountant. The much more difficult things will be on my parents end. I think I will enjoy running the farm, I like doing tedious things like cultivating several acres of strawberries all day. This winter I need to really dig into the financial and management side of things. The farm has definitely suffered in some ways by not having someone full time on the farm and in charge. My mom is full time but doesn't want to make decisions, so things don't get noticed or done or improved. Or even things like they only do maintenance on equipment when they pull it out to use it and then need to fix things. So if I'm on the farm full time and doing a good job, then I should be having someone look at equipment ahead of time. Weekly scouting. My dad never made the leap since he didn't want to shut down his pretty good computer business. I'm writing out goals (hire someone else full time by year two, buy an apple cider donut maker by year three, etc)
The property stuff that I don't want to talk too much about publicly is increasingly likely to end up with my parents acquiring a house and the pines even as admitted by the representative of the organization who were trying to sell it off (don't ask, it's all convoluted, should have answers on all three parts of the property within a year, probably (the decisions of people from the 1890s can come back to haunt/benefit you)). House has a built in office (for separating my personal and business stuff) and is fully livable if very 70s according to my dad. But even if not, my grandma's house is now empty (drama cousin just moved to texas) and I suspect my uncle would rent it to me for very cheap.
I am now doing all the group outing reservation stuff online with the new system with some questions directed to my mom about groups since she has a thousand things she keeps in her mind about the specific groups that come back year after year. I'm going down to the farm a lot this fall since I'm going to be the selling area manager/group outing coordinator on weekends. I'm going to miss one weekend probably for work related things. I won't make it down to NY Sheep and Wool unfortunately, so I'll miss the folks there :( But we just got off the phone about a huge set of group outings now scheduled for that weekend that if we can pull it off, will be really worth it.
I need to sit down with my mom this weekend and go over ordering and purchasing. Ordering so many things of various random stuff. Porta-potties, foam stuff for deco, cooking sticks, etc etc. I'm hoping to have most of the stuff off her plate by opening weekend since she hasn't actually really quit the farm, she's doing the weekday group outing stuff. She's very bad at actually saying no to my dad. They're very bad at communicating. I don't get it. hashtag boomers?
I'm sleeping a lot but not tired, which is great. I have energy, I'm solving problems. Need lots of brain breaks but that's okay. Work being so quiet is the only reason I think this is doable. If I had a vaguely normal workload, it wouldn't happen, but I barely have two days of work a week. I could probably work three day weeks the rest of the fall and it would be fine.
Main restriction on 2025 farm stuff is that I need to talk to F about the house. We had discussed the possibility of me going back to the farm at some point, I had guess four to ten year range, so we'll hit three instead. But we signed a contract that said we'd give the other person six months notice. So my plan is to give six months notice in the next few weeks and ask if she can refinance and at the end of those six months, I switch to a month-to-month rent until the farm stuff gets fully figured out.
All the things. they're happening.
