We have known that beef, egg and hog producers are in
trouble, largely due to increases in feed and transportation costs.

And now, vegetable crop producers are in trouble as well. For vegetable farmers, it’s mostly about fertilizer and supply costs.

At the farm, we have not been immune to the fertilizer, chemical, packing, cooling and transportation cost escalations, which are all related to the spike in oil prices earlier this year.

Unfortunately we have recently had to lay off some of our employees. And in these tough economic times, that is something we just did not want to do.

We were doing okay at the farm until two things hit us at once. During the summer we started to see a production slow down, and we were slow to react. When you look at something every day, it’s easy to miss changes. But the plants just weren’t doing well.

Then, at the same time, we discovered a virus outbreak. All of a sudden, we had our hands full.

We have been removing all the virus-infected plants, which numbered in the thousands. I feel we have the problem under control now, but there are bald spots in our production houses. It will take us a couple months to work our way out of this.

More serious was a general weakness in plant growth during the summer. A month ago, we tried different fertilizer and water programs and today, it’s looking a lot better. We are still fine tuning.

As a result of this, I have resigned from almost all the boards I belong to. It doesn’t feel appropriate to be concentrating my efforts elsewhere when I am having to lay off my own workers.

We are hopeful all will be back to normal in about two months.  However, something like this makes one stop to think about the future. Such as, where do June and I want to be in 10 years. It’s an interesting question to ponder.