Hey Gang,
At these kind of events you hear presenters going on about all the things they do, but Greg Huber took me aside on a NAFDMA bus tour and reminded me to ask, “What’s the story behind the story here?”
The weather was picture-perfect for nearly all of our two-day, three-night NAFDMA ALR in Charleston & Buffalo, WV. We rolled in the night before to meet up and head out to dinner with other attendees, and spend the evening catching up, laughing, and relaxing.
My team had just finished setting up and running HalfTober Fest in our new barn. Debuck’s were fresh from Tulips, and everyone was running had with spring projects, planting season, strawberries, and prepping for summer.
Gritt’s were already deep into greenhouse season, running two remote farmer’s market stands, one of which we’d visit later, and shifting gears from the Spring Festival, which included tulips. They hosted us in the farm park inside the new corn barn, now emptied of kernels.
In the final session, a NAFDMA classic entitled “No questions left unanswered,” the group asked question after question. To me it became obvious – Gritt’s Farm for all the hype, food and beautiful surroundings, generation after generation, was a bunch of quitters.
In the history session, we learned that after subsistence farming in the early days, Gritts quit that and specialized in chickens, eventually raising up to 15,000 layers two generations back. Brad’s father, Bob Gritt, quit chickens, and was farming 1,000 acres of grain in the hills of West Virginia in the early 70s. It was so unusual in the area, that Gritts getting a new big tractor made the local paper!
They then quit heavy row crops to grow veggies, start a greenhouse business, and eventually Agritourism.
They quit their original layout, quit using the pavilion for their corn box, quit adult Easter egg hunts, quit weddings, quit shuttling food from one kitchen to many locations, quit, quit, quitters!
Every NAFDMA event is an explosion of ideas. We’re all hungry for new, novel, exciting, the next profitable item or streamlining process, but sometimes you need to know when to quit.
My challenge for you this week is to figure out something you are going to STOP doing; a process you’ve “always done that way” but that you’ve outgrown, a line of business or event that isn’t performing that you (secretly) have known needs to end, an item you should stop baking, and finally bring an end or a change to it.
Sometimes the biggest improvements can come from quitting. The Gritt family, generation after generation has embraced change and been able to leave behind outdated practices to keep things moving forward in their operation. Gritt’s Farm is great at “quitting.” 🙂
Have a great week,
Hugh
