Every year my new year’s goal is to publish more blogs. (Note that I didn’t say “write” more blogs, because I tend to write plenty, but then not publish them for being off topic, too dark, or not things that folks want to read.

This year we are retooling our blog for real though, adding our CSA newsletters to it, as well as recipe posts, the normal farm blogs, and my more random farm blogs (which I’m going to tag “muddy thoughts” even though I really want to call them “dirty thoughts.”

I’m kicking off this resolution with the big issue on the farm this week, seemingly random as it is:

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TECHNOLOGY SMALL FARMERS HAVE TO LEARN TO USE???

So two days ago, we were supposed to start selling CSA shares to returning members.

Are you a returning member who is just now thinking, “Oh yeah, I didn’t get an email about that, did I?”

Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

This fall, like every fall, I put in a few days and really troubleshooted how to make the signup process better and what platform to use (that’s part of why we were encouraging pre-registration—to get it all set up to save you time!).

On Monday, I finalized everything and then…. (drumroll please)… the shares didn’t show up.

Different browser tried and they popped up, and then disappeared, reappeared, disappeared and so on. Seven browsers, 50,000 window refreshments, twenty-four hours, and countless tech emails later, the shares still weren’t visible to us 75% of the time, but apparently are quite visible and on sale in Canada (where the host operation for our online store is located), and for the one sole member that successfully navigated the system (are you the human antidote to our tech issues?).

This is par for our course/curse. Matt thinks I should give up farming and become a hacker, because every tech “solution” I touch gets fried.

This was in NH, when it flooded at market every week for a summer! When it rains, it pours?

The most spectacular manifestation of the curse (any accountants reading this, please cover your ears) ended in us using only paper and Excel old school ledgers for business accounting (my grandfather would be proud).

Do we know that online systems exist? Are there 500 courses a year to help farmers get set up in Quick Books? Did we actually spend a lot of money with a consultant years ago to do just that? Sure we do/did.

My tech curse power is SO STRONG that somehow our teeny tiny farm’s data on Quick Books Online intermingled with data from a multi-million dollar company in Florida. Before the QB corporate office had to actually shut down our account to entirely rewrite code for THREE WEEKS, they spent a full week trying to convince me that I did in fact have a business in Florida with seven employees and fourteen credit cards (all of who I had full access to at that time) that I must have somehow forgotten about. Even with the re-coding, Quick Books never worked quite right again for us.

Which is unfortunate, because in the world today, using every tool you can to be effective at managing, communicating, and selling online is super important, even if we only focused on our very in-person, connected with our customer/community product.

Most farms our size do our own web design, ecommerce, accounting, bookkeeping, marketing, graphic design, social media, emailing, and so on. On one hand, it’s kind of fun to get to do so many different things—I actually love getting to play with graphics and work on the website.

But on the other hand, when the curse strikes, everything gets so frustrating that it makes me yearn for the days of the good old hand drawn CSA brochures and Microsoft Publisher!

Last night I was lucky to be a part of group of women in business hearing how others work around all these programs and challenges. Karli of Head and Heal (folks, have you tried any of their CBD products? They are amazing—Matt finds they help with sleep and they ease my tendonitis. You can snag them a lot of places locally, including at 20 East in Cazenovia) shared some of the tech they use and how they’ve addressed some of these challenges.

It was a good end to a day that had me bouncing my head on the computer keyboard to hear that other farms and businesses are in the same situation at times as us, even without a curse of their own.

And it inspired me to wake up at 6am this morning and start ALL OVER again on our 2021 signups, with yet another system, and I think it might be working now. If not, like in past years, we’ll have a paper signup link for folks who because of your own curse or not, want to go old school and register via paper.

Returning member signup runs through January and theoretically works on our website. Folks on the waitlist can sign up in February, and for potential new members, registration opens in March. You can also click here to get added on the waitlist. And thank you all for your patience—we look forward to the very analog act of getting veggies to you!

Like I said, I love doing silly graphics!

Farm Blog

Technology is Hard (and other Hartwood Farm curses)...

Hartwood Farm