We paused our sales experiment on the lake yesterday. We spent the past week communicating to our customers about the upcoming pause, and interestingly, our regulars understood why we were doing it and were ok with it, even if it means they need to source their produce from somewhere else for the time being.
Why did we pause something that seemed to be working well, you ask?
The reality of transitioning seasons was upon us. Seeds or saplings are planted, they grow and some time 45 days or so after planting, we start seeing the results of our efforts. They bear fruits and vegetables for some time and then they reach end of life, and must be replaced with new plants. This also typically matches with a change in season - in our case, from summer to monsoon. We had to remove our plants (mostly turn them over into the soil, so their nutrients are retained in the ecosystem), prep the fields by adding compost and other nutrients and remake the beds and sow new seeds / saplings.
This could have been managed better - we could have had a phased transition where some farms were transitioned earlier and some later to ensure our produce did not stop. But, it required better planning, a diversified farm base and a lot of luck (we struggled for water in some of the farms at the peak of summer, which is when we would have had to sow new plants).
Now, solving this problem using science, technology, planning & management is exactly why we started on this journey - but we do have miles to go before we get there 🙂
We did, however, increase our acreage this sowing season by 30%, bought a tractor of our own and achieved significantly better efficiencies SoS (Season on Season) in field preparation and sowing by some interesting and frugal engineering by Saurabh S.'s team - more on that in subsequent posts.
Our tractor starts work at the new farm, with a feathered welcome committee. Connect with us to learn more about our work and visit our farms. 🌱
Principal at Laurus Insurance Consulting
1moBRAVO to all of the great folks at the SFB in Mississippi.