Have you thought about your seasonal workload?
On our farm, we grow vegetables for 500 weekly CSA baskets.
We also grow seeds for an online store.
These are very similar activities: We grow plants, harvest a crop, pack it up, and get it to the client.
But these activities don’t happen the same way for vegetables as they do for seeds. That has a huge impact on seasonal workloads.
We grow, harvest, and sell vegetables at the same time of year.
But with seeds, the growing and harvesting happens in one season and the selling happens in another season.
This makes for crazy vegetable summers.
Yes, summer is definitely busy for the seed crew. But winter is when things get crazy. The orders just keep coming in and we’ve got to make sure they ship in a timely fashion.
I’ve sketched out what that kind of looks like:
Yes, this is a dramatic oversimplification.
But thinking about how work changes in the season really helps us plan for when we need extra hands, and when we need to pay attention that we don’t burn out.
What are your seasonal workloads?