The Things I've Learned 5 Years In

Now that I’ve been at this for a while I’m often asked for advice on getting into farming as well as what I’ve learned since starting this journey. Since we’ve gone head first into a global pandemic, the questions are coming in even more regularly as folks become increasingly interested in where their food comes from and how they can be more self reliant when it comes to feeding their family.

I think more than ever, in recent years, producing food has become a trendy thing to do… could it be that farmers might just be the next rock stars? I kid. Sorta.

When I started thinking of writing this post I couldn’t help but chuckle thinking of how little I knew or fully understood when I began Central Park Farms. Heck even a couple years in! And I’m sure as I go down memory lane in another 5 years in the industry I’ll be laughing about my knowledge level now. That’s one of the things I love most about farming, you never truly stop learning something new.

1) Don’t judge other farmers

I see this a lot in the industry and to be honest, I will fully admit I did it a great deal in the beginning too.

I came into agriculture under the belief that what we were doing with Central Park Farms was better than some larger farms. I literally cringe at the number of times I used the term ‘factory farm’ during those first couple years. Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly proud of what we do here on the farm and am happy to tell customers we pasture raise our animals and choose the methods we do, but I also now fully understand why some other farms operate differently than ours.

I will never condone the mistreatment of animals, but I also no longer turn my nose up at larger scale operations assuming that’s what is happening there because I understand that based on current customer demands for food, farms like mine aren’t a fit for everyone. Now I realize it was pretty darn ignorant for me to perpetuate lies that I believed to be true about large scale agriculture when I was so uneducated on the topic. Thankfully through the past 5 years I’ve had the ability to meet more well established farmers, tour their farms, and work alongside them in the various agriculture boards I have sat on so I could learn first hand. 

Please take it from my experience, if you’re not well versed in agriculture and farming practices please try not to jump on the trendy bandwagon of believing everything you see in ‘documentaries’ or that you hear from your friend. Try speaking directly to farmers or experts before forming your opinion.

To my fellow farmers, let’s all commit to skipping the judgement, this industry will always be stronger if we’re united and not divided based on small versus large, conventional versus organic. 

2) Don’t judge consumers

This leads me to revelation number two — Don’t judge consumers for their purchasing habits. Do I wish every meat consumer out there chose farms focused on sustainable and regenerative farming practices? Absolutely. 

But, will I judge someone for not? Absolutely not.

While I don’t think I ever openly judged consumers in the past, I will say that occasionally language I chose may have implied that consumers were responsible for poor farming practices. While it is true that consumer buying habits such as a growing demand for cheap meat has lead to an increase in larger more concentrated farming operations, I am also far more aware of the impact what I say can have on people in my community.

As we’ve grown in popularity I know that we have a large number of followers who, for whatever reason, don’t purchase from our farm. In recent years, I’ve made it a point to avoid any language that ‘shames’ people on their buying behaviour because although there are likely many people following me who could afford to support farms like mine but choose to shop at large box retailers, I also know that there very well could be folks who want to learn more about farming but simply cannot afford our products.

The idea that there could be a mama out there religiously following us on social media and sharing our farm life with her kids and telling others about our farm, all while struggling to get any food on her table for her babies, would ever feel shamed by me for not being able to afford to financially support a farm like mine is heartbreaking. Mama, if you can’t afford to support farms like ours, please never feel bad for supporting a different style of agriculture to feed your family. You are fully welcome and appreciated here.

3) What will stand in your way of business growth is the government

Before I got into farming I could never imagine how heavily regulated it is. Now if your goal is growing vegetables then this section likely doesn’t apply too much for you but if you’re plan is to produce meat, buckle up and be prepared for a whole lot of red tape and government BS holding you back. Everything from the challenges faced trying to get into supply chain managed industries like dairy, chicken, eggs, and turkey or regulations around l’abattoir and butchery access. Heck even our local municipalities will stand in the way of our right to farm… animal agriculture in the province of BC is headache.

For example, it still absolutely blows my mind that I have the customer demand for more beef yet I can’t expand because we don’t have sufficient access to slaughter in the lower mainland. Yet we also don’t qualify for different slaughter licensing in our area since we’re technically within range of other abattoirs… even though they don’t have capacity. I literally have cattle on the ground for this winter and zero available appointments to harvest. 

And don’t get me started on the fact that I barely have any competition in chicken in the Fraser Valley or Metro Vancouver because so many other farmers don’t have access to licensed slaughter or the access they do have is so ridiculously expensive that most consumers wouldn’t be able to afford to by a chicken that factored in those costs.

Some might read that and think, it must be nice for me to have so little competition when it comes to chicken but I see it completely the opposite. I want more farmers producing chicken at smaller scales and in pastured and free range environments because a heck of a lot of folks eat chicken — way more than I can feed — so more farmers able to produce meat means we can better work together to supply the growing group of consumers choosing farms like ours.

The way I see it, my competition will never be other direct-to-consumer farmers, my competition will always be big box retailers like the Costco’s of the world so I’d love to have more voices in small to medium sized animal agriculture in my community. Even if it’s just so I have someone to lean on for advice or who also understands the struggle. 

4) It’s so freaking expensive to get into animal agriculture

Woah, you guys I could have never imagined how expensive it is to farm! I’ve been in business my whole adult life, for most of it playing an active role as an Operations Manager running a multi-national company generating millions in annual revenue working for Fortune 500 companies. I. Still. Did. Not. Get. It. I knew so little about agriculture that I didn't really understand all the small and large costs that go into it. Keep in mind, I never set out to be a farmer, I was simply wanting to produce food for my family and fell into doing this full time.

Take beef for example. When we started raising Black Angus cattle, I scraped together close to $30,000 to buy my first breeding stock — 8 bred heifers and a registered bull. Then I put in infrastructure like calving stalls, a squeeze, repaired fencing, purchased hay feeders, the list goes on and on. After that, we raised those pregnant heifers for the remainder of their gestation period (at that time we acquired them, around 200 days), then continued raising their calves for between 18-24 months… all while feeding them high quality alfalfa that I was having shipped in by the b-train load at a cool $10,000+ a load. We fed all those mouths for at minimum 740 days, paid any vet bills, and incurred expenses on them without a single penny of revenue. I ran cattle for 740 days without a single cut of beef to sell.

I don’t say this to scare away future farmers, I say it because I often hear feedback regarding the cost of food that makes it very clear many people don’t understand the true cost of food production. I get it, because before I started CPF I didn’t fully understand it either. 

5) If you’re looking to get rich, choose a different industry

If you’re considering getting into farming, please make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, because I can say for certain that the ratio of work for pay isn’t likely to be in your favour. Thankfully Jay and I love what we do. Yes it’s crazy hard but I take a lot of satisfaction from helping feed my community and I love getting to work on my terms… and by ‘my terms’ I clearly mean on our animals’ schedule haha.

As we’ve grown from what I would consider small scale to a more medium scale, we’ve started to receive push back from some members of our community. It’s helped me realize that I’m obviously failing at the educating piece of our business which was one of the main reasons I’ve opened myself up online so publicly in the first place. Even when it means I have to say the things you likely aren’t supposed to say out loud in business.

Margins in farming the way we do are tight. I’d argue that margins in farming are tight for most (if not all) styles of farming but in this case I’ll only speak for myself. When people are upset that we’ve grown, I struggle with it a little bit because what I don’t think people realize when they’re criticizing is that by allowing ourselves to grow a little bit, it allows me to treat Jagger to basketball camp for example or to start paying Jorja a proper wage for the hard work she does to allow her to pay for her horse Buddy. Farming is our whole lives and when our kids are at our house, it’s their whole lives too so it’s certainly important to me that we can try our hardest to also position our farm to be able to occasionally afford to treat the kids to something fun. 

Please know, that no one is getting rich out here. What we are doing is everything in our power to avoid being one of the many local farms who’ve either gone out of business in the past couple years or had to move out of the lower mainland for less expensive land options. 

6) You’ll never please everyone

Oh goodness you guys, this one was almost the death of me. In the beginning I wanted to please everyone. I wanted to farm in a way that matched the ideals of every customer and potential customer.

And then one day I realized that is impossible and frankly insanely stressful. I will never please everyone and that’s ok because thankfully I don’t have to. This is why I speak out so publicly about issues that I see in this industry because I hope that somehow it will make even a small change or improvement so that we can continue to foster new entrant farmers because variety and choice in agriculture is a beautiful thing.

Maybe I don’t raise the breed of pigs you prefer? That’s ok, because I have a list of friends who do and I’d love to point you in their direction. Do you only want certified organic meat? That’s cool too, I’ll let you know who to support. Perhaps you don’t even eat meat, you do you — I know lots of fantastic vegetable growers doing amazing things that I can direct you to. 

Farming is so stinking hard sometimes but thankfully it’s also crazy rewarding. I’m proud to be part of this industry and I get to celebrate it every time I cook a meal and my plate is full of a bounty grown and raised by me and my friends. It’s an honour that’s difficult to explain.

Thank you to each of you for following along with us and caring enough about where your food comes from to read pieces like this. I know they might not always feel uplifting but they come from a place of reality and me wanting to share with you the things I didn’t realize before starting on this journey.

If we want to change the way we consume food, we must first understand what we’re up against when it comes to how it’s produced.

Kendall ~ Boss Chick at Central Park Farms