It probably comes as no surprise that our summers are really busy filled with long days and a really busy schedule. Some of our farmer friends consistently work really long nights, especially before market days. Lara and I realized early on that if we didn't take steps to maintain our farm-life balance that we would burn out. Adding to that, when Addie was born we decided it was even more important that we took time for our family and our lives outside of farming. Here's how we do that.
Lara and I both take our own vacations each summer while the other keeps things moving on the farm. Lara spent time in Red Wing connected with her family and close friends from high school. This Saturday I leave for the Boundary Waters for a camping trip with my brother and a couple close friends from high school. We really like this system as it gives us both a chance to get an extra vacation in and still know that everything on the farm will run smoothly.
We also take a vacation as a family during the middle of the CSA season. We take a week break from CSA deliveries to make this happen and have out farm staff keep the farm running while we're gone. This year our vacation week is set for the week of August 7th-13th. We'll be sending out email reminders about this soon. We've rented a cabin near Pequot Lakes and are planning on fishing, swimming, and attending the local turtle races.
Finally, we've been experimenting with taking Mondays off on the farm and letting our farm staff run the show. This gives us a weekend of Sunday-Monday instead of just Sunday (since we're at a farmers market for most of the day on Saturday). This is going ok. There have been a couple times where we worked part of a day on Monday to make up for a staff member being on vacation.
All of these tactics help us to maintain a farm-life balance where we will be able to continue to grow beautiful produce for you for years to come.
