Last weekend, while presenting my Marketing Your Uniqueness workshop at the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) Convention, I posed this question: “Why do you do what you do; what drives you?” Put another way: What is your passion? My workshop attendees were business owners, ranging from farmers selling directly to consumers, to agri-tourist operators, to […]
agriculture
Looking Back at 2019
Isn’t this a cool tractor? It’s a 1939 Ford 9N, packing in 80 years of all-purpose, workhorse reliability. These days its main jobs are moving our chicken coops in summer and hauling wood in winter. With a bit of patience on the startup, this ol’ boy has as much get-up-and-go as the day its treads […]
Bees Motivate Gratitude and Giving
I’m into my fourth year of beekeeping and while I still consider myself a newbie, I do feel I’ve come a long way. For one—and an important one at that—I can now find the queen. Finding the queen—or queenspotting, as they say—is huge in beekeeping. There are books on the subject, like this cool Where’s […]
5 Reasons Business Cards are Still Relevant
I just returned from the Women in Sustainable Ag Conference (WISA), followed by a glorious vacation. Now that I’m back, I’m cultivating relationships with all the wonderful people I met. The business cards I acquired make this an easy task. Which leads me to ask, what do you think of business cards? Do you still […]
Practicing An Honorable Harvest
Happy Harvest Moon! It’s also Friday the 13th, which, if you’re so inclined, could potentially make for a spooky night. What I think is even more interesting, however, is its relation to the autumnal equinox and its cultural tradition (I absolutely love learning new things). According to Almanac.com, the full moon that occurs closest to […]