Once a year our staff takes a few days to get together to look back at the last year and make plans for the future. In the early years, our staff was so small that we could have had the meeting around a card table. This time we took up the double classroom (in all we have 29 employees at the farm). For me, these meetings are really energizing. Besides talking about the operations of the farm we also had some lively debates. In one session we watched the movie Food Inc. and then spent some time talking about the state of modern agriculture and the relationship between farmers, consumers and the retail/producers. In our society this is one of the many complex issues out there that has to find a resolution soon. The final part of the meetings were spent working in teams around the farm. This year we tackled cleaning the farmhouse, relabeling cans in the 1930's store and splitting wood. All in all it was a productive couple days.
