They never tell you that running a small business is easy, I guess they don’t tell you this because it is not. They do tell you that growing vegetables is not easy, it is not profitable, but it is very satisfying these facts they were right about. Nevertheless we are one of the final 60 commercial vegetable growers left in Ireland, we are still at it after 19 years.
Either way as a small business, things that bigger businesses shrug off can have a very deep impact on those with less resilience. Resilience in terms of money and people that is. Smaller businesses have less of both, and small enterprises in the food growing and fresh retail business are at the bottom end of the bottom end, having large labour requirements and low margins on the produce they sell.
These last five years have been difficult, and you start to wonder if it is ever any other way. I am beginning to think that is just the way life is, I guess on the cusp of my 51st Birthday I should know by now that suffering (as the Buddhists would say) is part of the journey! But this week it has been the perfect storm of issues coming together that have made it very difficult for us to deliver the service we expect to deliver.
The cold snap hit us hard, making it difficult to harvest things, coupled to this was an error on our part for planning harvest and purchasing of other fresh produce, that led us to have low stock levels.
We hadn’t anticipated after being closed for two weeks that everybody would want fresh produce on our return (we should have caught that) and the fact that the weather was challenging meant people wanted home deliveries, as a result demand skyrocketed this week. This is in general is a wonderful problem to have, but on this week, it was tough and not so wonderful.
It was very hard, because coupled with our harvesting issues, and our logistical and stock problems, several members of our team were off with the flu, leaving us severely short staffed, and we struggled to get through the work that was before us. The team that was here worked exceptionally hard in the freezing cold conditions of our warehouse and did amazing work in getting orders out the door.
But we were stretched, stretched too thin and as a result things may have slipped through, I hope they didn’t but inevitably when the pressure is on and you are trying to do too many things all at once, something gives.
I hope if you have had an experience with us this week that is not in line with what you have come to expect that you will give us another chance. It is only through your support that we get to continue to grow food and try, however tricky and difficult it can be, to, bit by bit, build a more sustainable food system, a food system that provides fresh, healthy, clean and safe food in a way that protects biodiversity and our beautiful planet.
As always thank you for your support without which we would not be here. Please if you can at all do place an order next week. We will have rectified our stock and harvest situation and hopefully we will have our team members back.
Kenneth