It was an Irish lamb stew, made from our farm’s grassfed lambs, local root vegetables and a bone broth that we simmered for 72 hours straight. It came with a wedge of fresh baked Irish soda bread with local grassfed butter, a slice of Irish apple cake topped with custard cream, and a pint of locally brewed stout.
It was the St. Patty’s Day special we created for the cafe for March 17, 2020. I had made the stew the night before and had assembled all the ingredients for the cake and the soda bread. We never got to serve it.
The pandemic forced us to shut the doors of the cafe and withdraw from our farmers’ market of over 18 years. It caused us to lose access to our processors and butchers, our suppliers, our employees and our customers.
The past year and a half has been full of upheaval, sorrow, and fear for all of us. And yet, Sap Bush Hollow Farm & Cafe is still chuffing along. At the same time, my aging parents have stayed healthy and happy, our teenagers have grown powerful and confident, and Bob’s and my marriage has remained strong.
Like most small businesses, we “pivoted.” We pivoted so much, we’ve grown tired of the word. In that first year, we saw articles about it online and in the newspapers. The local Chamber proselytized it, business websites profiled cases on it, and Cooperative Extension offered online workshops on how to do it. The belief was that pivoting was the key to saving small-scale businesses.
But looking back at it all, pivoting hasn’t really been the key to our success.
It was family.
As a family business, we were able to work as a pod, when pods were required, minimizing our risk of exposure to Covid. Three generations were able to look out for each other. The teens stepped in to work when employees left to address their own family needs. Mom and Dad’s savings provided an emotional safety net, freeing Bob and I, who are the middle generation, to experiment, take risks, and find the opportunities in the chaos to build a business that was better at nurturing our quality of life.
Too often, the family is lost in family businesses. Younger generations are alienated and feel like they can’t do anything right. Older generations can’t understand why the younger ones can’t do anything right. Marriages fall apart from the financial constraints and the work pressures. If the businesses manage to hold on, too often they become a prison for the family members who work within them, or burdens of guilt for those who escape. It shouldn’t be that way. A resilient family business should provide greater freedoms, enrich our quality of life, nurture creativity and relationships, enable spiritual and emotional growth and deepen a sense of community and abundance. Today, in this last podcast for the 2021 season, I’m going to outline some tips to make that happen.

1. Expand your definition of “wealth.”
Too often, wealth is misunderstood as simply money in the bank. Instead, think of true wealth as the ingredients for a good life: the ability to take off on a weekday morning for a hike; to drink in the glories of a mountain stream or the gardens in a city park. It’s fresh air, rich soil, clean water. It’s the freedom to sit with your kid over a cup of coffee and ponder the great mysteries that reveal themselves in algebra. It’s the time we can give to keep a marriage solid, and to maintain good relationships with our children It’s the opportunity to debate with our elders over news, politics, or inevitably, business matters. It’s a chance to share labor with them, rather than fixate ad nauseam on aches and pains, prostates, blood pressure and mortality. True wealth is the food on your plate, the smile of a neighbor, the laughter around the family dinner table. Even confronting the problems that we examine and debate keeps us engaged in learning and spiritual growth throughout life. With this broader definition of wealth, we start to see that financial ups and downs are merely a small part of an overall wealth portfolio. Often, financial hardships help us to develop deeper connections and more resourcefulness, building our resilience and adding even more to our true wealth bank account. When we see how much of this true wealth a family business allows, suddenly we see it as a lot more profitable.

2. Welcome the next generation into the workplace with clear processes and written protocols.
Too often, we bring our kids into the workplace expecting them to have osmosed skills by simply watching us. We don’t prepare them to do a good job. When they fail, we parents tend to push them aside, grumbling that we “need to make sure this gets done right.” But if they can’t do it right, that’s on the parents.
In order to successfully teach, we must first examine our work process. Process is sequencing. In our cafe kitchen, that means knowing that home fries take longer to cook than eggs. It is also arranging, making sure that all the tools and materials are placed in exactly the same spot every time. And finally, it is about cleanliness. In order to do a job efficiently and well, we need a welcoming and orderly workspace.
The beautiful thing about a well-examined process is that it takes the skills that each of us have internalized and lets us communicate them to the next person by means of a written protocol. With each revision, the protocol is updated, work becomes more efficient and quality improves. When we teach a new task to our kids, a written protocol prompts us to prioritize essential procedures and puts a guide to work in their hands. This sets them up for success. Even when interruptions happen, protocols give family members assurance that they can complete a job start to finish with certainty, able to put their full attention on whatever task comes next. Moreover, established protocols make skills more readily transferrable to whomever enters the business.
3. Be present on the job.
It’s impossible to merge family and business and not have conflict. On the good side, the loving familial bonds keep us from firing one another, and it is easier to blow off steam. The downside is the high likelihood of violating personal boundaries and failing to self-moderate. Therefore, we must maintain mental presence on the job.
Presence is about giving ourselves to the moment. It is about letting go of all the tension that might be flying through the air, all the drama that may have happened at home, or yesterday, or five minutes ago, and fully giving the work at hand our utmost attention, devotion, and love. If we can’t maintain presence—let go, forgive, forget, and move with the moment—all that emotional detritus spills over into customer service, and that’s a stinking mess. Or worse, it could alienate your child, causing you to lose a future business partner, your legacy, and one of your best friends.
4. Learn the money paradox
We talked about this a few weeks ago…I’m going to review it again, because it’s important! The money paradox is this:
Ultimately, money has nothing to do with true wealth.
Money is a tool for facilitating transactions, but it is not the fresh air, the pure water, or the fertile soil. It is not the caring neighbors, words of encouragement from an elder, or a child’s hug. It is not laughter, inspiration, or fascination. It is not delicious, and it is not warm. Money is a great tool, and I am not saying that we can create a society free of it. But I’ve learned that when I get fixated on the idea of scarcity, suddenly pursuing money becomes detrimental to my happiness, and I miss out on all the riches that surround me in a family business. Instead, I’ve learned to crunch my numbers and work my business with a different goal – true wealth – in mind. Then, before I get swallowed up in money problems, I remind myself of three corollaries to the Money Paradox: 
 a. Increased income does not guarantee increased happiness; 
 b. Too much material wealth can be stagnating (essentially, the more we have, the more we have to lose); and
 c. We will always want more money.
If we accept these phenomena as simple facts of life, it is easier to detach from financial complaints. When we don’t beat down our family life by fretting over money, the family stays whole and vibrant. When a family stays whole and vibrant, they work together. They innovate, grow, and thrive, and so does the business.
5. Let the business evolve
Just because the business works today doesn’t mean it will work the same way in a decade. The best people to identify the new directions of a business may well be the members of the next generation. Their ideas need to be taken seriously. And those changes aren’t necessarily going to be dictated by changes in the industry you’re in; a family business needs to evolve to reflect evolution of the family and its needs. My grandfather’s sheep farm had multiple breeding cycles per year and he sold all his lambs at livestock auctions and to wholesale buyers. He kept the flock in a barn and fed grain. My mom and dad loved selling to the local community and didn’t want to stress the ewes with high production demands. They wanted to raise their sheep on the lush hillside pastures. They moved their farm toward direct marketing and switched to rotational grazing. Bob and I liked the sheep, but our best skills were in developing markets and serving customers; and we loved working together in the kitchen, which is how Sap Bush Hollow Farm evolved into Sap Bush Hollow Farm & Cafe…and hence the Irish lamb stew we were preparing to serve as the pandemic hit.
In the past year and a half, our daughters have taken to studying fashion design, learning to construct their own sewing patterns, turning tablecloths and curtains into capes and gowns. Ula took up violin and dreams of being a rock-star violinist. Saoirse worked on her singing, joined several local productions, and has even joined the board of the local theater project. All the while, they trained the new guardian donkeys, packed orders for customers, fed the hogs daily, took care of the baby lambs, and on weekends, pulled lattes at the cafe espresso bar and served up heaping plates of farm-fresh food. When they talk of chasing their big dreams, they also envision how to work them back into Sap Bush Hollow Farm & Cafe. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll add a line of up-cycled fashions, perform concerts, or do costume design. And while that’s no guarantee that our children’s dreams will lead them back to the family business, we’re certain that squelching them will either lead them to abandon it, or leave them stuck here with unfulfilled hearts and resentment.
So we encourage all their dreams, however far-reaching they may be. As multi-generational business owners, we’ve learned that the dreams we chase help us grow and develop new skills and perspectives which helps the business expand in ways that wouldn’t have been imaginable before. In turn, this helps create a more diversified, vibrant community where more family businesses can succeed. And that’s what we’re here for.

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Oh my gosh, folks. This is it! We’ve completed another season of The Hearth of Sap Bush Hollow Podcast. If you’re like me, you’re forever on a quest to live more deeply, make time for what matters and still keep the bills paid. For me, that quest for deep living requires down time where I live more quietly to tap into my creativity, focus on homeschooling, and work on other writing projects. But if you’re worried about missing these podcasts through the winter, there are over 50 back episodes in the archives, as well as over a decade of blog post essays that were written before I started podcasting. You can find all of them, and revisit all the joys of raising two girls at Sap Bush Hollow Farm, right here on the blog.

This podcast happens with the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And for this final week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Kim Kobersmith & Katie Waters-Smith.

Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t put this season together without you!  If you’d like to help support my work, you can do so for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.  Remember!  Your show of gratitude for this season’s productions enables me to rest, recharge, reflect and return with lots of new ideas in the spring!