“I need an Indian virtual assistant.”

“Not American?” Bob has just returned from cleaning the vacation rental after our guests checked out.  He cracks a beer and flops down on the glider beside me, waiting to see where I’m going with this.  

“We’re supposed to seek a more favorable exchange rate.”

Two summers ago I was trying to learn how to use a professional baking oven.  Last summer I was learning to make croissants, run the farm accounts and trying to figure out how to find time for a day off.  This summer I’m trying to learn how to make myself dispensable.  

Since stepping to the helm at Sap Bush, I can’t help but see a glaring problem with our future sustainability:  Every member of our family, including Kate, our herd manager, has created a niche wherein they are completely indispensable.  This is the way of farm culture.  We raise our children to prize, above all, being helpful and needed.  We come of age by convincing our family members that things will not hold up without us.  We die, leaving our descendants in an utter panic about how to hold things together upon our passage.  A few farms hang on and hold together through the transition.  Many more die out.

And so, now that I hold the books and write the checks and study this business through my spreadsheets and first hand  with daily labor, I understand this weakness.  I also see the importance the business has for the community:  we are a port in the storm for people to come in and talk; a source of sustenance as customers seek better health; a wellspring of nutrients for neighboring gardens; a buffer against flooding and drought with bountiful organic matter; keepers of a culture that honors relationships, soil, water, sunlight, fresh air, tall trees and lush fields above all else.  Through every pore of our business we nourish and restore – the soil, the animals, the water, the people.  

There are moments when these facts fill me with pride.  It is a powerful honor to step into this work, to be my parents’ child, to take on this stewardship. 

But lately, there are more moments when I sit alone and gape like a fish, fearful of how precarious it all is.  What if I’m wiped out of the picture?  If the picture can’t go on without me, then I didn’t do my job. I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove myself valuable to my family.  Now my value is our weakness. 

So I continue reading books about business and entrepreneurship; trying to square them with my own ethics; trying to craft a strategy to counteract farming’s culture of indispensability.  

And the current tome I’m reading advises entrepreneurs to outsource their lower-level tasks to Indian virtual assistants – they can do bookkeeping, customer service, correspondence.  This is a natural progression from the book’s opening premise, that I’ve now seen repeatedly in my summer reading:  We are in an information age.  We are no longer in an industrial age.  We are no longer in an agricultural age.  And as entrepreneurs, we should be fully functioning in the information age and taking advantage of global currency values; paying someone in India to do our scut work because they will work for less than an American*.  And, the book argues, by automating and outsourcing, entrepreneurs can be free to enjoy the good life:  salsa dancing in Cuba, scuba diving in Brazil, surfing in Australia, sky-diving over Victoria Falls.

I remember seeing a solicitous message in my email inbox recently for such a service from an individual named Deepak.  In my mind, I hire him, and try to explain his job.

First, he must pay all the bills.  But he needs to sift them, because there isn’t usually enough money in the account to cover the accounts due.  So bill paying doesn’t happen by date due so much as by relationship.   Deepak needs to know that we can wait a little longer to pay this one bill  for electric netting and feeders, because I was the flower girl in those folks’ wedding and she was my babysitter growing up.  Deepak might think I could find the money by going to accounts receivable, because there’s over $7000 owed to us; but that doesn’t work, because I’ve known all of those people for a minimum of 15 years, if not my whole life, and each of those accounts receivable folks are running their own farms and restaurants, waiting for their own accounts receivable to come in.  They all have cash flow challenges.  We share that in common.  Besides.  All these people, on both sides of the balance sheet, are like family.  

Deepak could respond to customer queries about inventory…But there’s this other problem — Many customers ask for certain cuts of meat, but they aren’t actually asking for the cut of meat that would be best for them….Or we might be sold out of that cut, and I’d want to point them to a good substitute.  So I’d have to train Deepak on meat science, I guess.  

Next, I think about the most stressful day we had this past week, and try to vision where Deepak could have come to the rescue…  

It’s Saturday morning in the cafe.  The day before, Eileen from the back apartment told me that her hot water was out.  Bob was divided between working on that and trying to fix the lock on the vacation rental door, which had mysteriously broken.  I called Larry, who helps us with these matters, and he sent a new guy down to the  basement at 9am to work on it.  Nicole from the post office then walks in and asks me if there’s trouble with the power, because the lights keep blinking.  I shrug, consider there’s a stranger in the basement,  and tell her the ghosts who live down there might be a little out of sorts.  They’re protective of our family, and they don’t like strangers in the basement.  There’s nothing I can do.  She shrugs, says she understands, and goes back to work.  Then the dishwasher floods the entire kitchen floor with an inch of water.  Erin, my sister-in-law, comes back to help me clean it.  Just then, Ron and Jeanne walk in with a party of ten, and three parties of two come in on their heels.  Tom, our local forest ranger, comes back to see if he can help Dad fix the dishwasher.  Ula roller skates to each of the tables and starts taking orders.  Saoirse starts pulling shots.  Mom works the front of the house, letting people know that we’ve got a minor kitchen disaster, asking them to be patient.  Meanwhile, I start implementing the work-arounds:  filling the three-bay sink, getting Dad set up to hand -wash the dishes, and lining up the next round of breakfasts.  Erin returns to the front of the house, then pokes her head back.  “Any chance you could go have a talk with the ghosts?  Because we just had a chair break.”

I’m flustered, and I need a minute to catch my breath.  I look out at the crowd and realize I know nearly all of them.  Every one of them will forgive me (and the ghosts) if breakfast is late, if the lights blink, if the floor is a touch slippery.  And every one of them would jump up and run into the back to help if I couldn’t do my job.  

I’m not really living in the information age.  I’m still in the agricultural age.  And in the agricultural age, money moves slower than the work.  It moves slower than the people.  It moves slower than the relationships.  But shit still gets done.  And people living in the information age still get fed by us folks in the agricultural age.  

And while I am valued, in truth,  I am dispensable.  Because in the agricultural age, the work is owned by the community, not by a single entrepreneur.

So we all work as a team, and breakfasts get served.  Between orders I walk out of the kitchen and go down to the basement to have a talk with the ghosts.  I tell them that they need to settle down, that they need to trust me as the building owner, that it’s my turn to make the decisions, but that I will always do what I can to keep their space safe.  

When I come back upstairs, the dishwasher fixes itself.  The lights stop blinking.  Even the upstairs lock fixes itself.  And we finish one of our highest-grossing mornings ever.  Matt comes to see Erin and brings my little niece and nephew.  She puts up the closed sign, and the party breaks loose.  Mom and Dad flop into the rocking chairs in the corner, the kids take to running wild, and we laugh about how much we survived, and we marvel that we didn’t have one fight in the process.  

Deepak couldn’t have done much to help.  Admittedly, I could hire someone to run the kitchen in my stead.  And maybe there will be a day in the future when that’s economically viable.  But the truth is, Saturday was a great adventure.  And while it may not have been as thrilling as sky diving over Victoria Falls, it left me with a more enduring high:  knowing that I can count on my family and neighbors, knowing that I’m not alone, knowing that I’m part of something bigger than myself.   

Yes, I need to find ways to keep all the working parts running without me. But I’ve got several years to make that happen.   It would be criminal if, in the interim, I didn’t get to enjoy the best part of living in the agricultural age:  it’s fun. 

*Although, per my calculations, Indian laborers earn 25% more than American farmers.