Prefer that I read this story aloud for you? Happy to oblige! You can listen to the podcast version from The Hearth of Sap Bush Hollow here:

Lamb stew for the weekend’s special simmers on the stove in the cafe kitchen as I walk over to the cash register and sign in to my meeting.  A group of us from across the country will are organizing for an online class for farmers on meat marketing in a few days.  My co-presenter, Matt, will be talking about pricing.  I’ll be talking about meat cuts and how to communicate with customers about cooking them properly.  We chat for the better part of an hour, and the soup is starting to smell like it’s almost finished.  I’m eager to log off and wrap up for the day. 

“Shannon, one more question,” Matt says.  

“Yes?”

“What’s that sign mean on the wall behind you?”

The one about the fact that the facility serves nuts?  I look behind me, then back at him, quizzically.

“The number 40.  What’s that all about?”

“Oh!”  I shrug.  “Sap Bush Hollow is celebrating 40 years in business this year.”

Celebrating is a gross over-statement.  It consisted of Saoirse and Ula drawing out those giant numbers and coloring them in last January.  Not sure what else to do with them, I taped them up by the register.  Celebration over.

“Oh!  Please mention that during your introduction!”  One of the organizers urges  “These farmers will be so happy to know that.”

I nod and sign off after jotting her comment on my pad.  It’s so easy to forget the years.  Days come, days go, problems come, problems go.  We’re still together.  It’s normal for us.

But it’s not normal.  According to the US Census Bureau, the average person in the US moves residences more than 11 times in his or her lifetime.  We’ve lived in West Fulton since 1979. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average number of jobs a person works in a lifetime is 12.  I left grad school in 2001 and I’ve worked in partnership with my husband, mom and dad ever since.  Farm Bureau reports that farmers make up less than 2% of the population and receive a measly15 cents out of every food dollar.  The economics are deplorable, and our very existence is apparently counter-cultural.  

And yet, despite what the mainstream economy teaches us about changing jobs for higher pay, the secret to our wealth lies in staying put.  Despite what our movies and Netflix series tell us about American family dysfunction, we’re happy sticking together.  Our ability to work as a family and devote ourselves to one place has been spiritually and economically profitable.  

The more I think about those 40 years, the more I want to change the content of my upcoming class.  I want to push aside my explanations of beef cuts and meat science and roll something else out on these new farmers.  I want to share a few secrets about what it takes to survive in family farming for 40 years.  

But I can’t do that.  Because they’re really counting on learning more about grassfed grilling.  And that matters, too.  But here are four tips for helping a family farm make it to 40:

1. To magnify wealth, share wealth.  No one in our family is loaded with cash.  But our combined purchasing power, focused on shared quality of life and business goals, enables us to leverage our wealth.  This can be as simple as sharing tools between households to reduce duplicate purchases; or joining forces for larger capital investments, like real estate.  It also expands our non-tangible wealth.  True wealth is about more than money.*  It’s about joy, love, clean water, fresh air, the exhilaration of learning, health, laughter and great food, among other things.  Viewed this way, every member of the family, from infancy up to the elders, possesses wealth equally.  Youth possess curiosity and rebelliousness that push us to learn and try different things.  Middle age adults have skills and physical strength.  Elders have savings and wisdom.  Children and babies have the magical ability to force us to step outside our heads and experience joy and laughter.  All of that is valuable.  If we didn’t share it, we’d only experience a small segment of wealth at any given phase of our lives.  By sharing between the generations, we have far greater abundance.
2. Diversity is security.  Mom and Dad are the animal lovers.  They built the original farm.  Bob and I came along, and we valued what they did, but our strengths were very different.  We wanted to spend more time in the kitchen than in the barn.  That wasn’t the end of Mom and Dad’s farm.  That was the start of the growth.  Ula loves the animals, but she’s a fantastic artist, too.  Saoirse has less interest in animals, but seems to have a solid interest in business and, of all things, fashion.  Our security doesn’t lie in hammering every person into a version of Mom and Dad.  It lies in our ability to keep welcoming the next generation, and watching how their gifts and passions unfold to enable our family and business to adapt to the changing times.  Every quirky talent can find a home here.  It’s just a matter of figuring out which way the business is going to grow.   
3. If you’re not growing, you’re dying.  The inference behind this adage is that if the gross sales and net profits aren’t on the increase, the business is on the wane.  But family business growth happens in many ways.  Occasionally that growth is reflected in the spreadsheets.  More often, we see it elsewhere.  Younger generations step into increasing responsibilities.  Elders get their minds bent by someone’s radically different perspective or wild new enterprise idea.  We learn to communicate more effectively.  We learn patience.  We figure out how to do a task more efficiently.  We learn to sit back and take more pleasure in our day. All of that is growth.  And it’s true.  If that type of growth is happening, the business lives on, because it’s helping each one of us to develop more fully as human beings.  
4. Forgiveness is good for business.  We have screaming matches, slam doors, give each other the middle finger.  We tell each other “no” and proclaim we can’t endure another minute together.  And then we promptly forget the words we said.  We take turns making bad business decisions, and find ways to shake it off and keep loving.  We lose things and break things.  That’s all part of the game we’re playing….Which is why the ability to forgive each other and ourselves is so important.  At the end of the day, we are able to look past our frailties, faults  and fallibilities and know that we love, and we are loved.  And that means that when tomorrow comes, we will rise again and keep going.  

I can’t wait to see what we learn in the next 40 years.   

Happy Birthday, Sap Bush Hollow Farm!

*I’ve talked a bit more about true wealth here, and cover it more in-depth in my forthcoming book.