Just a few days ago we received some tough news from one of the company’s that we grow for. They were no longer going to be doing business and handling the crop that we contracted to grow with them. At first I was very upset, it’s most frustrating because we had already planted half of that certain crop, the other half of the acres was still bare ground. There was an article in the paper saying that the farmers were not effected too much because we had lots of options for crops to still plant. Unfortunately that is not the whole truth, and as of Tuesday it was looking more like summer fallowing our land was our only option.
But this isn’t a blog about our hard times, and it isn’t about the company and what they did wrong. Honestly I truly feel like they did their best and treated us very fairly, this is just one of those things that happens, that’s terrible and hurts not only us as farmers, but our industry as a whole. This blog is more about how in the past two days I have learned about what to do when everything seems to be going well, and all the sudden someone shows up at your farm and the whole scenario changes.
I know for a fact that we aren’t the only ones hurt by this substantial shift. There is an entire industry here in the Willamette Valley that will struggle through this challenge. Also there are many people who were employed because of this company who are going to be hurting. It’s a tough deal, but it’s also life. I just hope that we can all keep moving on, working hard, and being thankful for our blessings we have now.
I have learned that you can’t just give up and take a trip to Hawaii, although that crossed my mind many times! You have to dig in, start calling, start working hard, and figuring out what you need to change to make this work for your operation. For us we have chosen to grow a new crop that we have never grown before. I’m looking forward to learn something new, and also excited to see if this can be something that will work into our operation for years to come. The future is yet to be seen, and I don’t know for sure that everything will all work out in the end. But I did learn that even when the rug is pulled out from under you, you can get upset and moan and complain, or you pick up and move forward. I’ve always been told that farming is a gamble, but until this week I never really understood the stress of what that can mean. I’m hoping that we can look back at this adversity and be thankful because in the end it led our farm down a healthy path of more diversity.
NuttyGrass 