Sometimes I think to myself, “What are we doing with a website and a blog and a name for a fictional farming entity that has never produced a single product?” I also frequently wonder, “What the heck do other people think of all this?” Here we are, two city-folk with no background in farming, no real experience on a farm, and we have all this stuff online purporting to be “Little Seed Farm”. Not only that, but we are using pseudonyms! Strange, right? If I were in the reader’s shoes would I be thinking about the absurdity of what we’re doing? Probably. So maybe it would help to explain some of our thinking.
There’s a few reasons why we decided to get going with all this stuff way ahead of time. One reason was completely unplanned, but is definitely a great reason in hindsight, and it’s that now we are completely “pot committed”, as they say in poker. We broadcast our hopes and dreams to the world and now we have a little more pressure to actually make it happen. There’s no doubt in my mind that it would happen anyway, but now there’s more at stake than just a dream between two people.
The original reason that got all this going was that we wanted to share our story with other people and find a community to share our knowledge with and to gain knowledge from. After less than two months we’ve already started finding that. Knowledgeable readers, aspiring farmers, hobbyists and many others have been in touch. We’ve exchanged ideas and dreams and answered each others questions. Sometimes they have different thoughts and goals, but either way we know we’re on a similar road and it’s good to have that engagement.
We’ve also been surprised to find existing farmers that have enjoyed reading about the story and are happy to answer a few questions every now and then. I especially enjoy it when a farmer asks us a question that really gets us thinking. That’s been a nice surprise, and we certainly didn’t expect it, but I could see how it’s kind of fun. If I were a farmer I think I’d find it pretty entertaining to casually follow a couple city kids as they journey into farming. It’s like the Clampetts in reverse!
Another important reason to get going early is because we wanted to do everything we could to prepare ahead of time for the transition. It took us about two months to find the time to build the site and get it all up and running, and I think that was pretty fast! I can’t imagine how long it would’ve taken if we’d waited until we actually started. There’s going to be so many other things to do that taking care of a few things here and there beforehand really helps. That’s also why we’re reading so much and visiting as many farms as we can. We have the double-edged sword of needing to wait to get started, so while we wait we might as well try to prepare.
Sharing our thoughts also forces us to better think through our ideas and subject them to public scrutiny. Comments from readers have evolved into many fun discussions for us and helped clarify things in our minds. I have always been a proponent of writing everything out as well. So while I may have had our “Vision” written many months ago, Farm Flows, Farm Hopping and other posts really make us think more deeply about what we’ve learned and how we can apply it to our future. It’s easy to take a weekend trip and come home thinking you’ll remember all about it and the next thing you know you’ve forgotten 90% of it.
Last, but not least, it helps to develop an identity for the business. We want everyone that’s interested to be able to visit the Little Seed site and know exactly what we stand for and why we stand for it. We also want visitors to see each step of the journey and understand how this all came about. You can’t just create that overnight, you have to get out there and tell the world.
So readers, what do you make of this? Would you have waited to put it all out there, or do you think starting ahead of time is a good idea?
