I know you know that it is a good idea to stop and reflect on the past growing season to make sure you learn all the lessons you’re supposed to learn.
And from year one at Tourne-Sol, where I farm, we always made a point of doing a season review every fall.
But it wasn’t until year 10 that I realized we might not be getting everything we could out of our review,
Up until then, we’d kept the season review to the 5 farmers who ran the farm. But in year 10, we decided to open up the review and bring in the 5 other folks who worked for us in the field.
We did this to build team solidarity and recognize that they had valuable perspectives.
We just didn’t expect how clear and deep their insight would be.
Going into the review, the 5 farm managers had some ideas of how to make next year better, but what came out of that meeting was not at the top of our list.
Our team told us that ONIONS had to change. Those days we cured onions on a ground cover onions in a caterpillar tunnel. Our team was tired of kneeling on the ground in that tunnel with a pair of scissors and working their way through onion after onion only to end the session kneeling in a rotten patch and leaving with onion stink embedded in their knees.
When we understand the misery of these tasks, improved onion systems became a priority.
My co-farmers, Fred and Reid, began to work on some bulk handling and forced air drying systems.
Nowadays, with half an acre of onions to clean and process in a few weeks, onions are still a big job , but it is no longer a miserable job. And most of the time, when the crew is standing around the onion cleaning tables in good ergonomic positions, it is even a fun job!
And to top it off onions now take a fraction of the time to clean and pack.
So not only is onion precessing more pleasant but it is more profitable!
We’re all glad we made these onion changes but it wasn’t on our priority radar until we changed our season review process.
And that is when I realized you could run a season review in a way that really unveils what is happening on your farm and what needs to change. I want to lead you through this process, And so,
You Are Invited To The Season Review Challenge!
The challenge runs for 4 weeks from Sept 22 to Oct 13.
Each week begins with a live webinar on Tuesday at 7pm Eastern.
In the live webinar, I will
- guide you through the key parts of that week’s season review topic,
- set you up with some action items to complete in the following week, and
- provide you with some tools to make it easy to carry out the challenge on your farm.
By the end of the challenge, you will have a clear understanding of what went right and what went wrong during the growing season. You will also have ideas on how to continue with what went right and change what went wrong.
Oh yeah, and there is no cost to join. It’s FREE!
Sign up here for Farm Season Review Challenge
I hope you can make it!